CLEVELAND (AP) — José Ramírez has had two consistent goals throughout this major league career — playing for one team and winning a World Series.
Ramírez's $175 million, seven-year contract with the Cleveland Guardians likely accomplishes that first goal.
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Chris Antonetti, Cleveland Guardians president, baseball operations, speaks during a news conference to announce the contract extension of third baseman Jose Ramirez in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Paul Dolan, Cleveland Guardians owner, chairman and CEO, speaks during a news conference to announce the contract extension of third baseman Jose Ramirez in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez, left, speaks as Agustin Rivero, right, Guardiansmajor league coach & Spanish interpreter, looks on during a news conference to announce his contract extension in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez smiles during a news conference to announce his contract extension in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
“It’s important to me to say that this is the organization that gave me a chance,” Ramírez said through interpreter Agustin Rivero on Thursday as the deal was announced. “There’s a lot of discussion about why this contract happened, but for me it’s important to be in Cleveland. This is where my family is and where I look forward to completing my career.”
The 33-year-old native of the Dominican Republic has played his entire 13-year, big league career in Cleveland. He had three years and $69 million remaining on the seven-year, $141 million contract he signed in 2022, and will now average $25 million over the next seven years under the superseding contract.
The contract is the largest in franchise history. As is with the case with some big contracts throughout the majors, Ramírez agreed to have $10 million deferred each season. Those payments are scheduled to begin in 2036.
Ramírez first approached his agent, Rafa Nieves, about trying to get a new contract early last year. Nieves asked Ramírez to hold off for a little bit but Ramírez made it a priority to get it done.
“It’s rare that you look with three years left on the contract, that you would look to restructure things, but we’re talking about a very unique player with José Ramírez,” Guardians president Chris Antonetti said. “There’s no one else like him in our organization’s recent history. And so when José made it clear what his priorities were, we wanted to try to find a way to make it work.”
Ramírez remarked that he realizes he is leaving money on the table by signing a long-term deal that would keep him in a Cleveland uniform until age 40, but the desire to remain with the Guardians was more important.
Owner Paul Dolan went one step further on Ramírez's impact to the franchise and Cleveland when he said: "there may be a few Bob Feller fans who might argue differently, but I think Jose will go down as the greatest player in the history of our franchise.”
Guardians minority owner David Blitzer, who has an option to buy the team in 2028, also had a role in the negotiations.
Ramírez — a seven-time, AL all-star — had a career-high 44 stolen bases last season and became the fourth player in MLB history with multiple seasons of at least 30 home runs and 40 steals. He had a .283 batting average, including a career-long 21-game hit streak from May 6-28.
Cleveland has reached the postseason eight times since Ramírez was called up to the majors in 2013, including losing in seven games to the Chicago Cubs in the 2016 World Series. The Guardians have won the AL Central the past two seasons.
“I feel the same sense of pride from Cleveland than I have from the Dominican Republic” Ramirez said. “I’m 50-50, 50% Dominican, 50% Cleveland. My sons were born here, so I take that pride of the city and what that represents to me.”
Ramírez became the first player in franchise history to have at least 250 home runs and 250 stolen bases last season and just the second switch-hitter, joining Carlos Beltrán (435 homers, 312 stolen bases). He goes into 2026 with 285 home runs and 287 stolen bases.
Ramírez also is the franchise leader in extra base hits with 726 and 27 multi-homer games. He is second in home runs and RBIs (949).
“When he was a young player he played the game the right way from day one. He sets the standard for the organization and every player coming up. He's the guy who leads by example and he has grown into being a strong voice in the clubhouse,” Guardians general manager Mike Chernoff said.
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Chris Antonetti, Cleveland Guardians president, baseball operations, speaks during a news conference to announce the contract extension of third baseman Jose Ramirez in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Paul Dolan, Cleveland Guardians owner, chairman and CEO, speaks during a news conference to announce the contract extension of third baseman Jose Ramirez in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez, left, speaks as Agustin Rivero, right, Guardiansmajor league coach & Spanish interpreter, looks on during a news conference to announce his contract extension in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez smiles during a news conference to announce his contract extension in Cleveland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union agreed Thursday to list Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization over Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests, the bloc’s top diplomat said, in a largely symbolic move that adds to pressure on the Islamic Republic.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said foreign ministers in the 27-nation bloc unanimously agreed on the designation, which she said will put the regime “on the same footing" with al-Qaida, Hamas and the Islamic State group.
“Those who operate through terror must be treated as terrorists," Kallas said.
Economic woes sparked the protests before they broadened into a challenge to the theocracy before the crackdown, which activists say has killed at least 6,479 people.
“Any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working toward its own demise,” Kallas said.
Other countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have previously designated the Guard as a terrorist organization.
Iran also faces the threat of U.S. military action in response to the killing of peaceful demonstrators and over possible mass executions. The American military has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Mideast. It remains unclear whether President Donald Trump will decide to use force.
Iran issued a warning to ships at sea Thursday that it planned to run a drill next week that would include live firing in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially disrupting traffic through a waterway that sees 20% of all the world's oil pass through it.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the designation as a “PR stunt” and said Europe would be affected if energy prices surge as a result of the sanctions.
“Several countries are presently attempting to avert the eruption of all-out war in our region. None of them are European,” he wrote on X.
Kristina Kausch, a deputy director at the German Marshall Fund, said the listing was “a symbolic act” showing that for the EU “the dialogue path hasn’t led anywhere, and now it’s about isolation and containment as a priority.”
“The designation of a state military arm, of an official pillar of the Iranian state, as a terrorist organization, is one step short of cutting diplomatic ties," she said.
The Revolutionary Guard now has time to comment before the listing is formally adopted, said Edouard Gergondet, a lawyer focused on sanctions with the firm Mayer Brown.
The EU on Thursday also sanctioned 15 top officials and six organizations in Iran, including those involved in monitoring online content, as the country remains gripped by a three-week internet blackout by authorities.
The sanctions mean that affected officials and organizations will have their assets frozen, and they will be banned from traveling to Europe, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said.
The Revolutionary Guard holds vast business interest across Iran, and sanctions could allow its assets in Europe to be seized.
Iran already struggles under the weight of international sanctions from multiple countries, including the U.S. and Britain.
The Guard emerged from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its Shiite cleric-overseen government and was later enshrined in its constitution. It operated in parallel with the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s. Though it faced possible disbandment after the war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted it powers to expand into private enterprise, allowing it to thrive.
The Guard's Basij force likely was key in putting down the demonstrations, starting in earnest from Jan. 8, when authorities cut off the internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85 million people. Videos that have come out of Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.
Once they reach the age of 18, Iranian men are required to do up to two years of military service, and many find themselves conscripted into the Guard despite their own politics.
Meanwhile, a notice to mariners sent Thursday by radio warned that Iran planned to conduct “naval shooting” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and Monday. Two Pakistani security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, also confirmed the warning had been sent.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the drill. The hard-line Keyhan newspaper raised the specter that Tehran could try to close the strait by force.
“Today, Iran and its allies have their finger on a trigger that, at the first enemy mistake, will sever the world’s energy artery in the Strait of Hormuz and bury the hollow prestige of billion-dollar Yankee warships in the depths of the Persian Gulf,” the newspaper said.
Such a move would likely invite U.S. military intervention. American military officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Elsewhere, Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose Green Movement rose to challenge Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election, again called for a constitutional referendum to change the country’s government. A previous call failed to take hold.
The World Health Organization also said at least five doctors have been detained and multiple health workers assaulted while treating injured patients in Iran since the protests began.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that the violence in Iran has killed at least 6,479 people in recent weeks, with many more feared dead. Its count included at least 6,092 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 118 children and 55 civilians who were not demonstrating. More than 47,200 have been arrested, it added.
The group verifies each death and arrest with a network of activists on the ground, and it has been accurate in multiple rounds of previous unrest in Iran. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll.
As of Jan. 21, Iran’s government put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces and labeling the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.
That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
People pray at the Saint Abdulazim shrine in Shahr-e-Ray, south of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
FILE- A currency exchange bureau worker counts U.S. dollars at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
This handout image from the U.S. Navy shows an EA-18G Growler landing on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 23, 2026. (Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Daniel Kimmelman/U.S. Navy via AP)
This handout photograph from the U.S. Navy shows sailors taxiing an F/A-18E Super Hornet on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on Jan. 25, 2026. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Shepard Fosdyke-Jackson/U.S. Navy via AP)
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
