Pedro Avila’s latest move leaves the Guardians with one less emergency arm at a time when they can barely afford to lose any.
Avila officially signed with the SSG Landers of the Korea Baseball Organization on Wednesday, ending his second stint with Cleveland after the club had released him from Triple-A Columbus last week. That earlier release had some room for confusion, since the same thing happened once before this year and Avila eventually returned on another minor league deal. This time, though, he’s gone for good.
The timing matters because Avila had quietly become the kind of pitcher a staff leans on when things start going sideways. He wasn’t lighting up the radar in Columbus, where he posted a 7.50 ERA in 60 innings while working out of the rotation, but he still represented a possible fallback option if the Guardians got hit with another injury.
That’s where Cleveland’s current pitching situation makes this departure sting. Khal Stephen’s elbow injury last month already took a major chunk out of the rotation depth, and the group behind the big-league starters wasn’t exactly overflowing before that. With Avila now overseas, the margin for error gets even smaller.
Avila’s path with the Guardians had already included a useful big-league run in 2024. In a longman role, he put up a 3.25 ERA across 74 2/3 innings, the kind of work that doesn’t always grab headlines but can save a bullpen over and over. He also got postseason innings, throwing four scoreless frames against the Yankees in the ALCS.
Before that, Avila spent parts of five seasons with the Padres, where he logged a 3.77 ERA in 71 2/3 innings. After the 2024 season, Cleveland designated him for assignment, and he spent 2025 with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in Nippon Professional Baseball, finishing with a 4.04 ERA.
The Guardians brought him back on a minor league deal after that, and his presence in Columbus at least gave them a name they could point to if the rotation got squeezed. Now that option is off the board, leaving Logan Allen, Austin Peterson or Yorman Gómez as possible call-ups if the Guardians need help on the mound.
Wednesday’s signing makes one thing clear: Avila won’t be part of Cleveland’s picture this season, and the Guardians’ already thin pitching depth just got thinner.
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