{"id":393549,"date":"2026-01-07T18:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/393549\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T18:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:01:07","slug":"guardians-re-sign-dom-nunez-to-minor-league-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/393549\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians Re-Sign Dom Nu\u00f1ez To Minor League Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardians announced Wednesday that they\u2019ve re-signed catcher Dom Nu\u00f1ez<\/a> to a minor league contract. The ALIGND Sports client will be in major league camp as a non-roster invitee this spring.<\/p>\n

Nu\u00f1ez, 31 later this month, has spent the past two seasons with the Guardians, mostly with their Triple-A affiliate. He briefly appeared in majors in 2025, going 2-for-7 with a pair of singles in two games, but has taken 561 plate appearances and caught nearly 900 innings with their Columbus club dating back to 2024. He became a free agent after the season when Cleveland passed him through outright waivers.<\/p>\n

Originally a sixth-round pick by the Rockies back in 2013, Nu\u00f1ez has appeared in parts of four big league seasons but owns just a .182\/.280\/.371 slash (58 wRC+) in 354 trips to the plate. He hasn\u2019t hit much in five Triple-A seasons either (.206\/.333\/.383, 27.6% strikeout rate) but has shown a knack for drawing walks and has some pop in his bat when he does make contact.<\/p>\n

Nu\u00f1ez, however, has a sound defensive reputation. He\u2019s posted solid framing and blocking marks in the minors and majors alike, and he\u2019s nabbed a strong 29% of would-be thieves on the bases in his minor league career. Cleveland clearly places immense value on catcher defense \u2014 hence the team\u2019s repeated re-signings of Austin Hedges<\/a> \u2014 and Nu\u00f1ez will give them a quality defender to plug into the depth chart in the upper minors.<\/p>\n

On the big league side of things, Hedges will reprise his role as backup to Bo Naylor<\/a> (another plus defender with a light bat), but that pair increasingly looks like a placeholder for top prospect Cooper Ingle<\/a>. The 23-year-old Ingle hit .260\/.389\/.419 with more walks than strikeouts in 510 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A last year. Ingle played only 28 games in Triple-A last season, so the Guards seem likely to send the 2023 fourth-rounder back to Columbus for a bit more seasoning, but a debut in 2026 seems likely as long as he stays healthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Guardians announced Wednesday that they\u2019ve re-signed catcher Dom Nu\u00f1ez to a minor league contract. The ALIGND Sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[190650,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-393549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-dom-nunez","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}