
Ex-OF Tyler Naquin attempting to make Guardians as pitcher
A right-hander, Naquin last played a major league game in 2023 for the Chicago White Sox. He played in only five games that year and did not play in 2024.
Naquin, who turns 34 next month, reported to Cleveland's spring training facility in Goodyear, Ariz. He's never pitched in a major league game, even as a mop-up man in a blowout.
Naquin began his career with Cleveland, playing five seasons there from 2016-20. In 562 career games with Cleveland, the Cincinnati Reds (2021-22), New York Mets (2022) and Chicago White Sox (2023), he batted .263 with 61 home runs and 237 RBIs.
He played all three outfield spots but primarily a mix of right field (248 career games) and center (230). He is credited with 32 career outfield assists, illustrating his arm strength.
--Field Level Media

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Reuters
5 hours ago
- Reuters
Eagles sign veteran pass rusher Ogbo Okoronkwo
July 22 - The Philadelphia Eagles signed defensive end Ogbo Okoronkwo and defensive tackle Jacob Sykes on Tuesday. The team also waived defensive end K.J. Henry and running back Lew Nichols as training camp got underway. The Cleveland Browns released Okoronkwo last month with one year left on a three-year, $19 million contract. Okoronkwo, 30, recorded 23 tackles and three sacks in 16 games (five starts) last season. A Super Bowl champion with the Los Angeles Rams, Okoronkwo has totaled 132 tackles and 17 sacks in 80 career games (13 starts) with the Rams (2019-21), Houston Texans (2022) and Browns. He was selected by the Rams in the fifth round of the 2018 NFL Draft. Sykes, 25, played for the UFL's San Antonio Brahmas from 2024-25. He spent the 2023 offseason with the Seattle Seahawks after going undrafted out of UCLA. Henry, 26, has 2.5 sacks and 22 tackles in 14 career games (three starts) with the Washington Commanders (2023), Cincinnati Bengals (2024) and Dallas Cowboys (2024). Nichols, 23, was a seventh-round draft pick by the Green Bay Packers in 2023 and spent the past two seasons on the Eagles' practice squad. --Field Level Media


Reuters
12 hours ago
- Reuters
Streaking White Sox take stab at Rays, chase five straight wins
July 22 - The Chicago White Sox have set a season high for consecutive wins since the All-Star break. They take a stab at a fifth straight victory Tuesday night when they face the host Tampa Bay Rays. Hapless through the first half of the season with the worst record in the American League, the White Sox bolted out of the break by winning each of their last four games by at least five runs. In sweeping the Pittsburgh Pirates and winning the opener against the Rays, the White Sox outscored their opposition 35-10 and slugged six homers, 24 extra-base hits and a .302 batting average. Most impressively in that four-game stretch, the AL Central's last-place team is hitting .353 with runners in scoring position. "I think the focus has been really good, the intensity has been really good and we've been doing a great job of picking each other up, getting big hits with guys on base. That's what it's about," right fielder Mike Tauchman said. "Keep moving the line. It's been really good, and we want to keep it going." Luis Robert Jr. went 2-for4 with two RBIs and pushed his hitting streak to eight games in Monday's 8-3 victory. Six of the team's 11 hits went for extra bases. "I'm proud of how our group responds to tough times," Chicago manager Will Venable said. "Our ability to overcome adversity is just going to pay dividends down the road." The White Sox did not announce a starter for Tuesday's game. The Rays will be looking to rebound after an awful series opener in which starter Shane Baz allowed a career-high eight runs. The loss also continued a disappointing trend: Tampa Bay fell to 22-22 against teams possessing records under .500 and is 2-6 in their past eight contests with the White Sox. "It's the big leagues. Anything can happen on any given night," Baz said after dropping the matchup with Chicago, a 65-loss club with a .356 winning percentage. They also will be hoping to see All-Star Drew Rasmussen excel as the team eases off of physical restrictions. In an effort to limit innings due to his history of arm problems, Tampa Bay held Rasmussen to three-, two- and two-inning starts in his final three outings before the All-Star Break. A healthy, effective Rasmussen (7-5, 2.86) will be crucial to stabilizing a staff that has been inconsistent at times. As he meandered through the three short starts, the Rays faltered. Tampa stumbled into a midseason slumber, dropping 11 of 14 and slipping to fourth place in the division. Over three starts against the White Sox, Rasmussen is 0-1 with a 3.18 ERA. A series of other ailments are hindering Tampa Bay. In Monday's loss, starting shortstop Ha-Seong Kim left in the fourth inning with lower-back tightness after walking and stealing his fourth base. Tampa Bay also is minus All-Star second baseman Brandon Lowe, Kim's double-play partner who is hampered by plantar fasciitis. "Felt OK, nothing great," Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said after rehabbing left-hander Shane McClanahan's 10-pitch bullpen on Monday. "So we'll see how he comes in tomorrow." --Field Level Media


The Guardian
19 hours ago
- The Guardian
Trump wants to force the Commanders to revert to a racist name. It's unlikely he can
Haven't the fans of the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians suffered enough? For decades, each team had to endure the twin indignities of on-field futility and off-field scorn. Until last year, when they enjoyed a resurgence under rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, the Washington NFL team had won exactly only one playoff game in the 21st century. Cleveland's baseball team have been competitive this century, but they once went 41 years between playoff appearances (from 1954 to 1995) and came out on the losing end in the 'whose drought will end?' World Series of 2016, in which the Chicago Cubs won the championship for the first time in 108 years at the expense of Cleveland, whose epoch without a World Series win now stands at 77 years. Off the field, both teams faced backlash over their names. Cleveland were known as the Indians until 2022, when a name change to 'Guardians' went into effect. Washington had a more disturbing name referring to Native Americans until they became the 'Washington Football Team' in 2020 and landed on 'Commanders' from 2022 onwards. The Commanders took another step forward in 2023, when a consortium led by Josh Harris bought the team from Dan Snyder, one of the most reviled team owners in NFL history. Coincidentally – or perhaps not given Snyder's failings – the Commanders reached the conference championship last season for the first time since 1991. But Donald Trump, whose quest to make the intellectual and public-service classes miserable is a cornerstone of his presidency, has decided that these two fanbases need more suffering. On Sunday he insisted on social media that the teams should reclaim the names they dropped after decades of pressure. His reasoning, as far as it could be discerned from his typically stream-of-consciousness post, was that changing the names back would be respectful to the many Native Americans who found them offensive in the first place. 'Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them,' Trump wrote. The first thing to say is that Trump often decides to fire off a broadside at sports, when he is looking to distract from other problems, rile up his base or target groups he has contempt for. See, for example, his attacks on the US women's national team, Black NFL players who knelt for the national anthem or transgender athletes. The second thing to say is that Trump is unlikely to get anywhere with his demands. The Guardians immediately squashed any notion of reverting to 'Indians,' and Trump has no leverage to force them to do his bidding. The Commanders' situation is a bit more complicated, but Trump is unlikely to prevail there, either. Trump has implied that he will force the Commanders to revert to their old racist name if they want to be allowed to move back to the District of Columbia from their current home in suburban Maryland. The problem is that Joe Biden, in his last weeks as US president, signed a bill transferring the site in question from the federal government to the DC city government. Barring any creative legal maneuvers, the most Trump could do would be to attack the municipal government on other fronts as an indirect way of putting pressure on the Commanders. The team's potential new home in DC is occupied by the decaying ruins of RFK Stadium, where the Team Now Known As the Commanders played from 1961 to 1996. The Washington Nationals also played there from 2005 to 2007, when Nationals Park was completed. Other than that, the stadium was the home of Major League Soccer's DC United and other soccer events until 2017, when DC United moved to their new home at Audi Field. Even before United moved out, the stadium was renowned for its decrepit state, though raccoons occasionally found it hospitable. RFK Stadium, though, had many things going for it. It was named for Robert F Kennedy, a distinguished attorney general who may well have been elected president in 1968 had he not been assassinated while campaigning. The stadium had history. It was also an easy walk from a Metro station. The Commanders' current home, now known as Northwest Stadium, has none of those things. It is a stadium devoid of charm, notable wins by the home team, and good transportation options – even by the standards of a city with brutalist architecture, sporadically successful sports teams, and traffic obstacles. Shortly before his death, then-owner Jack Kent Cooke convinced the US Postal Service to accept that the stadium's zip code would be known under the placename 'Raljon,' a combination of his sons' names (Ralph and John), prompting Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser to quip that everyone was lucky that his kids weren't named Peter and Ennis. At one time, the Washington NFL team had a long waitlist for season tickets. While the number of people on that waitlist at any given time is heavily disputed, it's certainly true that the typical fan could not simply buy season tickets without spending a few years waiting for the opportunity. By the end of Snyder's reign, even with Northwest Stadium's capacity reduced from 91,000 to about 62,000, the waitlist no longer existed. So a return to the old RFK site would be very attractive to the Commanders and their fans. But they have other options as well in the suburbs and exurbs, and even without presidential opposition, some local politicians have raised objections to the city's proposed $1bn investment in a new stadium. And that issue leads back to the federal government – which has the power to force DC to slash its budget, even if local tax revenues are sufficient to cover it – and occasionally threatens to do so. So Trump and his allies in Congress could, in theory, cut the DC budget out of spite if the Commanders refuse to change their name. But name changes and stadium development take a long time, and the clock on Trump's tenure in office is ticking. By any other name, Washington's football team had been in the DC metro area for close to 80 years before Trump's arrival, and it will be around long after he has packed up for Mar-a-Lago or another destination for good.