The Cleveland Guardians have decided where Travis Bazzana will start the 2026 season.
It feels inevitable that Travis Bazzana will, at some point during the 2026 season, be up at the big-league level and make an impact with the Cleveland Guardians. However, that won’t be happening on Opening Day.
Manager Stephen Vogt shared on Monday that the team informed Bazzana he will not be on the Opening Day roster but will still be sticking around camp for the next few days. Cleveland’s No. 1-ranked prospect will begin the year at Triple-A, which is where he was promoted to earlier in September of last season.
(Vogt also shared that Dom Nunez, Milan Tolentino, and Pedro Avila are in the same position as Bazzana; they will not be on the Opening Day roster, but will stay with the team for the next few days.)
Bazzana has only appeared in five Cactus League games this season, after spending the majority of the Spring with Team Australia in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.
The 23-year-old only returned to Goodyear on Friday after spending the previous few weeks traveling around the world, including in Japan. He has some catching up to do, not just on the baseball field, but in terms of jet lag, too.
Feb 24, 2026; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Cleveland Guardians second baseman Travis Bazzana hits a three run home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers during a spring training game at Camelback Ranch-Glendale. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn ImagesBazzana has had some success both in Spring Training and the WBC, totaling two home runs, while also coming up with a couple of clutch hits for Australia, too.
Even though Bazzana won’t be with the team as they depart for Seattle for the first series of the season, Bazzana still impressed a lot of people in his limited action this spring.
“Like I told him, I think I've seen him play six times now, and every time out, I get more and more impressed,” said Stephen Vogt.
“We see more of his game: the base running, the defense. We know he can hit, but just seemed like every time Travis was out there, we got to see a new element of his game. I told him, ‘Go play, go stay ready.’ We know this kid's going to help us a ton and win a lot of games. But again, needs to go play and get every day at bets and continue to develop.”
Vogt does make a decent point about needing to play and time to develop. Bazzana missed two months last season with an oblique injury and has only 23 Triple-A games under his belt. He had an OPS of .813 in that small sample, but also posted a 26.3 percent strikeout rate.
It’s hard not to see Bazzana being up with the Guardians at some point this season, but after Vogt’s comments and Cleveland’s decision on Monday, the question now becomes, when will that happen?
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