CLEVELAND -- As Steven Kwan settled under the final fly ball in foul territory, there was silence. And when it landed in his glove, there was a roar.
The Guardians had sealed a 3-2 victory over the Rays in Game 3 of this ALCS. And now they were two wins away from the World Series. And now the faithful in attendance at Thursday’s Progressive Field matinee could let out the kind of sound that can only come from a fan base that has suffered through the longest active championship drought in the sport and maybe, just maybe, can envision it ending.
A roar piercing the silence helped get the Guardians here. This is a franchise that tends to position itself for the playoffs not because of transaction aggression but because of measured progress.
That’s why it was so surprising to see the Guardians make a relative roar at this summer’s Trade Deadline. While their activity did not register on the Richter scale the way the Tarik Skubal swap did, the specific deals for Jo Adell and Nathaniel Lowe in the lineup and Foster Griffin in the rotation were earth-shakers in the clubhouse.
“This is my fifth year here, and I hadn’t seen anything like that,” said Kwan, who sweated through the Deadline last season when he was reportedly on the block. “I'm kind of accustomed to [the fact that] we either do nothing or we sell off some pieces.”
Kwan was walking out of a movie theater after watching “The Odyssey” when he turned his phone back on and saw the series of trades the Guards made on Deadline Day.
Silence. Then a roar.
“Super, super exciting,” Kwan said. “Obviously, we believe in ourselves, but it's nice to know that the front office believed in us as well to make those moves.”
The last time Cleveland had been quite that aggressive at the Deadline was in 2016. A deal that summer for catcher Jonathan Lucroy famously fell through, but the swap for setup man Andrew Miller -- and his ensuing, unorthodox usage in high-leverage situations, no matter the inning -- got Cleveland within one win of ending a World Series title drought dating back to 1948.
This 2026 team shares some DNA with the 2016 unit in terms of outperforming expectations. But whereas ’16 aggression was a no-brainer with that club well out in front in the AL Central, this year was a little more nuanced. The Guards went into the Aug. 3 Deadline three back of the White Sox in the Central and, at a game over .500, only in the third Wild Card spot by the graces of a weak AL. The offense, especially, was not inspiring confidence in a lengthy run, and addressing it on the fly was a lot easier said than done.
“There have been years where we felt that we're a competitive team, but the market prices were just too expensive and we weren't willing to mortgage that much of our future for it,” Guardians president Chris Antonetti said recently. “This year, fortunately, we were able to line up on some things that we felt helped make us better at a reasonable cost.”
Adell was on the seventh hole at Trout National, the golf course co-founded by his Angels teammate Mike Trout, when he learned he was now a part of the Guardians’ plans. His phone buzzed, piercing the quiet fairway.
Silence. Then a roar.
“I was able to finish nine holes and then bounce,” Adell said with a smile. “My golfing went downhill after the trade, for sure.”
But his baseball life improved. Adell had endured the silence of past Octobers on an Angels team that hasn’t been to the playoffs since he was a sophomore in high school. Jumping into the race invigorated him. He brought a needed power presence to the middle of Cleveland’s order, with seven homers and 10 doubles down the stretch. In the postseason, he drove in five runs across Games 3 and 4 within the ALDS comeback against the White Sox, then two more in Game 1 of this ALCS.
“I’ve been able to make something happen when I can,” Adell said humbly.
On a going-nowhere Reds team likely to part with him as a pending free agent, Lowe was at home on an off-day, waiting for hours for a call that, by 5:30 p.m., he began to assume might not come. Then at 5:50, he saw he had two missed calls from a Cincinnati number.
Silence. Then a roar.
“I was ecstatic,” Lowe said.
Lowe spent all season with the Rangers in 2023, when they won it all. Jumping into a contender midstream is a much different experience. And in a year in which he lost his mother, Wendy, to brain cancer and uprooted his family midseason, he mostly labored at the plate in the season’s final two months. In Game 1 of this series, though, Lowe met the moment with a go-ahead, two-run single in the eighth inning.
Silence. Then a roar.
So that brings us to Game 3. It was a scoreless tie in the second with Adell leading off against Rays starter Griffin Jax. A 1-2 changeup below the zone was called a strike by home-plate ump Bill Miller. Adell didn’t hesitate to challenge despite the early inning and was rewarded when it was overturned to a ball.
It was a decision that changed the at-bat and maybe the game. Because two balls later, Adell was aboard at first, bringing Lowe to the plate.
Adell has said that, since he joined the Guards, he’s had some of the best at-bats of his career. The experience of playing for something has helped unlock the best of his abilities.
“It was nice to see him confident, knowing that a ball's a ball,” Lowe said. “You know, in that situation, you’re grateful for the challenge system to back it up when you take a ball that's outside of the box. So it was impressive for him to get to first base right there and give me a chance to knock him around the bases.”
Lowe did just that. With the runner aboard, Jax challenged Lowe with a four-seamer that stayed over the middle. Lowe lined it sharply to deep right. When the ball took a goofy bounce at the wall away from right fielder Victor Mesa Jr., Adell was able to motor home and slide in safely headfirst with the game’s first run.
Silence. Then a roar.
“That's why he's here,” Lowe said of Adell, “and thankfully, that's why I'm here.”
They’ve lengthened a lineup in need. And between the runs they’ve teamed up to produce, and Griffin gamely taking the ball in Game 1 when the rest of the staff was gassed after the ALDS went the distance, the Guardians’ trade activity has loomed large in this series.
By their standards, the oft-silent Guardians made a roar. Now their fans are doing the same.