Donovan Mitchell is about to trade his Cavaliers jersey for a ceremonial role at Progressive Field.
The Cavs guard will throw out the first pitch before Game 3 of the ALCS, according to Zack Meisel of The Athletic, who shared the news via a social media post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.
It’s a neat crossover for a player who’s known as a New York Mets fan, but who also seems fully bought in on the Cleveland Guardians’ October run. And right now, that run has real momentum.
Cleveland is one of the final four teams alive in the MLB postseason and sits three wins away from reaching the 2026 World Series. That wasn’t exactly the shape of the story a few days ago, either. The Guardians dropped the first two games of their American League Division Series against the Chicago White Sox and looked on the brink of elimination, only to answer by winning the next three and punching their ticket to the AL Championship Series.
Jose Ramirez and the Guardians kept the comeback vibe rolling Monday, stunning the AL top seed Tampa Bay Rays with a 7-3 win at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg in Game 1.
The work is nowhere near done, though. Mitchell is hoping his appearance can bring a little extra luck to Stephen Vogt’s club, and the Guardians will try to keep tightening the screws on Tampa Bay in Game 2 Tuesday night.
If things go the way Mitchell and Cleveland fans want, the Guardians could be looking at a 2-0 series lead by Thursday.
In Other News...
James Hardens New NBA Standing Says A Lot About Clevelands Ceiling
James Hardens place in the league may not look the same as it once did, but the Cavaliers are still betting on what he can do for a team with real postseason ambitions. Bleacher Reports latest ranking slotted the veteran guard 30th among NBA players, a reminder that he is no longer being discussed in the same tier as the leagues absolute elites. Even so, Harden still gave Cleveland steady production last season and remains a central part of a starting group built around Donovan Mitchell, Peyton Watson, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.
Hardens role matters because Cleveland is not asking him to carry everything anymore, only to help lift a roster that believes it can make a deeper run. He averaged 19.2 points and 5.5 assists in the playoffs last season, numbers that hint at why the Cavaliers brought him back on a three-year contract. The bigger question now is how much higher this group can climb with Harden in a more defined position, and whether his standing around the league matches the value Cleveland thinks he still brings. [Read more 🡒]
LeBron Still Looms Over How Cavs Fans Judge This Team
LeBron James set a standard in Cleveland that still hangs over every conversation about the Cavaliers, from the parade of Finals runs to the title in 2016. Even after his departure, the franchise has shown it can climb back into the Easts upper tier, but the measuring stick for fans remains unusually high because they once watched him carry this team to places it had rarely been before.
That backdrop matters now because the current group is being judged as much by what came before as by what it is building in the present. The Cavs have moved well past the post-LeBron reset, and the core they are trying to shape has made real progress, but the next step is always framed against a legacy that still defines what success looks like in Cleveland. [Read more 🡒]
Cavaliers Still Have One Familiar Problem They Must Fix Fast
The Cavaliers are out of preseason now and into the part of the calendar where the details start to matter more, especially the ones that have been easy to overlook in exhibition play. Cleveland has already identified a few issues to clean up before the games count, but the one that stands out most is the same sort of hard-nosed problem that tends to show up again if it is not addressed quickly: rebounding and the physical tone of the game.
Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen have carried a lot of that load inside, but the Cavaliers need more help from the wings if they are going to hold up over the long haul. Kenny Atkinson also wants this offense moving with more purpose, with less reliance on isolation and more shared ball movement, and those two fixes often go hand in hand. If Cleveland can sharpen both ends at once, it will look a lot more like a team ready to compete the way it expects to. [Read more 🡒]