Major League Baseball

MLB 26-and-under power rankings: No. 4 Cleveland Guardians

Updated Mar. 23, 2023 1:13 p.m. ET

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Jake Mintz

FOX Sports MLB Analyst

FOX Sports' 26-and-under power rankings are a new spin on the classic prospect rankings. Yes, prospects are important, but with all the game-changing young talent already in the bigs, farm systems alone can’t tell the whole story. So we’re diving deep into every single MLB club, ranking them all by the players in an organization entering their age-26 season or younger — from the bigs to the farm. Each weekday through March 27, we’ll count down from last to first. 

No. 4 Cleveland Guardians
26-and-under total score: 22 (out of 30)

The 2022 Guardians were a children's birthday party: soda for everyone, no adults allowed. MLB's youngest team partied its way to an AL Central title, outlasted the Rays in an unforgettable wild-card series and pushed the big bad Yankees to the brink in the ALDS. A 29th-place finish on the team home run leaderboard meant bupkis to a horde of young contact merchants like Steven Kwan, Andrés Giménez and Josh Naylor. And now these pesky youths are back and hungry for more.

Only three players over 30 years old (Bryan Shaw, Anthony Gose and Luke Maile) played more than eight games for the 2022 Guards. Their 26-and-under hitters had 1,330 more plate appearances as a group than the second-place team. Quite simply, this is a big-league club built on youth; a huge reason why Cleveland rates so highly on our young talent rankings.

Big-league position players: 7 (out of 10)

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Per Baseball-Reference, Giménez was the sixth-most valuable player in MLB last season (7.4 bWAR). The only players ahead of him were Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Sandy Alcantara, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. Despite middling power, Giménez turned in a magnificent offensive performance (.297/.371/.466 with a 141 OPS+) and played elite defense. That earned the free-swinging infielder, a key piece of the Francisco Lindor trade, a sixth-place finish in the AL MVP race.

So why aren't people completely freaking out about a 24-year-old second baseman who just torched the American League in his first full MLB season? Giménez swings too much. More importantly, he offers too often at bad pitches. Only five qualified players swung at pitches outside the strike zone at a higher rate than Giménez last season. When he did make contact, Giménez posted the fifth-highest batting average on balls in play. Some of that can be attributed to his elite speed, some to his legit feel to hit, but there's also a hefty amount of good fortune involved.

It's hard to fluke your way to a 7.4 bWAR season and Giménez's defensive ability raises his floor, but the offensive numbers should take a step back in 2023. Even if they do, Giménez is still an outstanding player and a key part of Cleveland's present and future.

What hasn't been said about Kwan, the game's singular singles slinger? The diminutive outfielder immediately took MLB by storm in his debut season, not swinging and missing at the first 116 pitches he saw, reaching base 15 times in his first four games, collecting a five-hit game in his first week, etc, etc, etc. But Kwan proved himself more than a flash in the pan, finishing the year with a 124 OPS+ and a third-place finish in the AL ROY behind two can't-miss über-prospects in Julio Rodriguez and Adley Rutschman.

Kwan is downright abysmal at one aspect of hitting (making hard contact) and downright elite at two (making contact and not chasing). That offensive profile, combined with spectacular outfield defense and great baserunning, makes Kwan a prototypical throwback leadoff guy and one of the most entertaining and unique players in the league.

Oscar Gonzalez (your buddies know him as the SpongeBob theme song guy who hit the walk-off in the wild-card game), is the opposite of Kwan — he makes horrible swing decisions, but absolutely blisters the ball whenever he makes contact in the zone. Also, Gonzalez is 6-foot-4, 240 — seven inches and 70 pounds above his outfield mate. In his rookie year, the massive Gonzalez swung at a whopping 48.3% of pitches outside the strike zone, but still managed to hit .296/.327/.461. Even though he's a plus-plus runner with a 99th percentile throwing arm, Gonzalez fares poorly in the outfield because he struggles to track down fly balls. It's one of the more bizarre profiles in the game, but if Gonzalez can elevate the ball more often in 2023 and turn some of those doubles into taters, watch out.

Naylor finally applied his prodigious offensive potential and hit well over a full season, providing Cleveland with another much-needed power bat alongside José Ramírez. And while he plays like a hyena on fire, Naylor's profile is pretty straightforward: He's an above-average first baseman with good-not-great power who walks less than you'd like, but does enough damage to make up for it.

Will Brennan debuted in late September and caught such fire at the plate that he started five of the Guardians' seven postseason games. He's a splendid contact hitter who doesn't K a lot, but lacks impact power. He'll start the season as a capable, plus defensive fourth outfielder on Cleveland's bench. Gabriel Arias will join Brennan there. A consensus top-100 prospect last year, Arias struggled to cut down his strikeout rate in Triple-A and during a brief stint in the bigs. Unlike many of the prospects in this system, Arias faces big hit-tool and swing-decision questions, but can absolutely smoke the baseball. A plus infield glove gives him a great base to build upon and he'll serve as the team's utility infielder while seeing if he can make some adjustments in his first full season.

Big-league pitchers: 8 (out of 10)

Consider Triston McKenzie fully broken out. The slim right-hander chucked 191 1/3 innings in ‘22 with a 2.96 ERA and just under a strikeout per inning. But the biggest development? McKenzie cut his walk rate in half without sacrificing his stuff. He's now squarely one of the best 30 hurlers in the sport, and at just 25 years old, should only continue improving now that he's figured out how to control his yards of limbs on the mound. 

The Cleveland Guardian's Triston Mckenzie talks approach to game

Triston Mckenzie talks to Ken Rosenthal about how he approaches each MLB game.

With Edwin Díaz likely out for the year after his freak WBC injury, Emmanuel Clase is now the consensus best reliever in baseball. Clase, still only 25, doesn't have the otherworldly strikeout rate you'd expect from an elite closer, but his 100 mph cutter elicits so much weak contact that it doesn't really matter. The pitch was barreled up only three times all season. Clase rules.

Sam Hentges, Cody Morris and Nick Sandlin are all 26-year-old relievers you've never thought too much about who combined for a 2.57 ERA in 129 2/3 innings of relief. Spencer Strider had a 2.67 ERA in 131 2/3 innings last year (albeit with way more strikeouts than this three-headed monster). Hentges is a huge lefty with a good four-seam/sinker combo and a beautiful, touch-the-sky curveball, all of which helped him to the eighth-best groundball rate in 2022. 

Morris debuted late last year and made the playoff roster thanks to a 2500 rpm fastball (91st percentile), but has a checkered injury history. Sandlin is a righty sidearmer who throws almost 50% sliders and dodges barrels Steve the Pirate-style. That trio, alongside solid spot starter Konnor Pilkington, should spend most of 2023 in one of baseball's best bullpens.

Prospect position players: 3 (out of 5)

Bo Naylor, Josh's younger brother, came up for the season's final week and got just eight plate appearances in his first taste of The Show, which is why little Naylor is on this part of the list. After a horrific 2021, Bo exploded in ‘22, becoming the first catcher in the last decade to hit 20 homers and steal 20 bags in the same season. Even though he's a below-average hitter right now, the low offensive bar at catcher means that Naylor projects as an everyday backstop thanks to burgeoning power. He is a phenomenal athlete with a superb work ethic that should enable him to stick behind the plate even if he's a bit unrefined back there right now. So even though he'll start the year in Triple-A and play second-fiddle to Mike Zunino once he gets the call up, Cleveland sees Naylor as their catcher of the future.

Brayan Rocchio is also set to reach Progressive Field at some point this season. A switch-hitting shortstop with average tools across the board, Rocchio looks like a solid big-league infielder. There's nothing sexy about the profile, but he's yet another high-contact Cleveland hitting prospect who should have a long big-league career.

George Valera's offensive future is a bit hazier. Mechanically, the Dominican outfielder's swing looks a lot like Robinson Canó's, but Valera doesn't have the same hand-eye and feel for the barrel that made Canó one of the best hitters of his generation. According to evaluators, Valera's raw, pull-side juice is undeniably real, but his propensity to swing and miss in-zone limits the ceiling. He's still only 22 and Cleveland has a phenomenal track record of developing hitters, so there's still room for change.

Prospect pitchers: 4 (out of 5)

Daniel Espino threw 18 1/3 innings in April of ‘22 then spent the rest of the season on the shelf with a knee and then shoulder injury. As he ramped up his workload this past winter, Espino felt some shoulder discomfort. An MRI showed he'd torn the anterior capsule in his right shoulder. He's unlikely to even throw a baseball for another month or so.

Even still, this is a name you need to know. In that April amuse-bouche, Espino flashed an elite heater that sat at 100 with outrageous amounts of carry. In one start, he punched out 14 hitters in five innings. If he's healthy by the All-Star break he will be in the Futures Game and will throw a pitch 103 miles per hour while striking out the side and everyone will lose their minds.

Cleveland boasts perhaps the game's most respected and productive pitching-development group. The Guardians helped turn McKenzie into McKenzie, Shane Bieber into Shane Bieber and Corey Kluber into Corey Kluber. But it was still a massive shock to hear that Tanner Bibee, a run-of-the-mill, control-command right-hander who didn't even get drafted when eligible in 2020, was suddenly sitting in the mid-90s and touching 98. In 132 2/2 minor league innings last year, Bibee struck out 167 batters with his newfound heat while posting a 2.17 ERA. He could be a rotation contributor as soon as the end of this year.

Gavin Williams is another arm to know. The club's first-round pick back in 2021, Williams fell in the draft thanks to a shaky medical. Cleveland scooped him up with the 23rd pick and sent him to high-A, where he absolutely dominated. A midseason promotion to Akron didn't slow him down, either. In 115 innings he punched out 149 hitters with a 1.96 ERA. If he can stay on the field — something that opposing evaluators obviously have concerns about — Williams could contribute to Cleveland's rotation at some point this season, as well.

Summary

Cleveland's ranking is a testament to its organizational depth. Most of the other teams in the top 10 of this list boast a no-doubt MVP level under-26 year old player. Atlanta has Ronald Acuña, Michael Harris II and Austin Riley. Houston has Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker. Seattle has J-Rod. Baltimore has Rutschman.

But what the Guardians lack in true top-shelf talent, they make up for with a magnificent amount of organizational depth. Few teams in baseball can tout such a symbiotic relationship between the acquisition and development side. Scouts in Cleveland know what type of clay their player development folks like to mold from and target players accordingly.

They've developed a reputation for being particularly stingy with their own prospects, which is perhaps why Cleveland has never really capitalized on their stacked system to acquire an All-Star type via trade.

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, poorly at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and rides his bike, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.

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Major League Baseball

Cleveland Guardians

Steven Kwan

Andrés Giménez

Oscar Gonzalez

Triston McKenzie

Bo Naylor

Jake Mintz