An older thread on the same topic: Cleveland Indians considering a name change [Edit: It's "Guardians"]
[Moderating]
I’ve merged a couple of threads on this topic.
I guess the Cleveland Native Americans just wasn’t catchy enough.
Oh you think the Spiders sound like an XFL team?!
The Guardians are an XFL team.
Or at least they were before it folded, not sure if they’ll still be around if The Rock brings the league back.
No more “Tribe”, eh? I am sensing a remake of Major League now, since Hollywood is out of new ideas anyway.
Thanks. My ignorance is showing. But Spiders does sound like it’s trying to be edgy. Most of the teams made for animals are either pretty birds, or pretty fish, or baby bears.
So, as possibly the biggest Cleveland Baseball fan you know (currently sitting here in my block “C” tank top) I just want to let you guys know that I’m good with it. I was happy to get rid of Wahoo and happy to change the name away from “Indians”.
The names had pretty much been a tossup between “Spiders” and “Guardians” for a long time. Someone on Reddit pointed out that the reason the full “Guardians” Logo looks wonky is that it’s “Marketing 101” to try to transition between two logos, not to just up and change to something completely new. I’m sure the similarity between the word “guardian” and “indian” had a lot to do with their choice over “Spiders.”
I’m glad the choice has been made and now we can move on. I ditched all of my Wahoo gear years ago and still have a lot of red & blue. Now I just gotta upgrade to the new new C logo.
And I’m totally ready to get my souvenir winged helmet!
The original Cleveland Spiders were an NL team, from 1887 to 1899. That’s one reason I was hoping the Indians would resurrect the name.
The other reason is the killer logo.
Yeah that logo is so badass.
Maybe because they’re actually the Guardians of Traffic. 
And see:
https://www.thatsclevelandbaby.com/tag/guardians-of-traffic/
To be the people saying “The name could be worse”, how can it be worse? Besides being another stereotype or being a one syllable word like “Cleveland Speed”?
Nationals, Athletics, both Sox, Phillies, Reds, Twins, those are all extremely generic names and definitely worse to me. And the Braves have another name I expect to eventually change.
It’s definitely not a bad name and at least as good as most of the existing ones in the MLB, even if it’s not a particularly exciting one.
I’m saying it’s not a bad name. It’s fine. It doesn’t give me goosebumps, but I’m not sure it needs to. It has meaning in the city, apparently. It’s harmless, lets the team keep the same “look” on its jerseys, and works for “Let’s Go Guardians!”
You just know somebody submitted a baseball version of “Boaty McBoatface”.
Twins, at least, has something relating to the city - the Twin Cities.
Didn’t the Athletics start out in Cleveland?
It could be a boring generic animal like the Cleveland Wildcats, a non-plural collective concept with Fun* spelling like the Cleveland Wylde, or a completely unrelated mascot like the Cleveland Knights (though that wouldn’t be all that bad, since the basketball team name is related).
Philly to Kansas City to Oakland.
Philadelphia, with a stopover in Kansas City, on their way to Oakland.
Sorry - it was the RAMS that started out in Cleveland. Too many teams move.
As do the Phillies, but it’s still extremely generic. It’s pretty much what the cities are called. And are you saying that “Guardians” has nothing related to the city? They’re named after landmarks in the city, as has been repeated in this thread multiple times.
I guess you can add “Mets” to this. Their name comes from the fact that they were previously called the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club.
My point isn’t that these names are awful and need to change, but that there are existing names worse than “Guardians”.