The Cleveland Guardians surprised everyone in northeast Ohio and frankly in baseball as well by winning 92 games and the AL Central Division title last season.
That has their fans very excited for the 2023 season because, after all, with a young core of position players and pitching staff that had the 4th best ERA in the American League, why wouldn’t they?
They also seemed to take care of their weak spots in their lineup. The DH spot was a huge hole because Franmil Reyes collapsed, and the catching spot was completely devoid of any offense, as they signed 1B/DH Josh Bell and C Mike Zunino as free agents.
However, there is an old saying in the game that a player’s statistics will match those on the back of their baseball card, meaning players have track records, and usually they will produce close to what they’ve done in the past.
Unfortunately, very few Guardians’ have a history of performance because they are so young. Of course, we know Jose Ramirez, if healthy, will be in the mix for the AL MVP. He has finished in top five in the voting four times in the last six years.
And you know what you are going to get from Amed Rosario too. He going to hit around .280 with a 700 OPS, and he’s going to not walk much.
Even Josh Naylor has only one season with more than 250 at bats at the big-league level.
The newcomers have been around for a while, so you can figure Bell is going to hit 20+ home runs, knock in around 80 or so, and have an OPS around 800. Zunino will hit the long ball more often than the Guardians’ catchers last season, but he will strike out. A lot.
We would all like to be optimistic about the young players who had marvelous seasons in 2022, but the truth is, we don’t know what Steven Kwan, Oscar Gonzalez, and even Andres Gimenez is going to do in 2023 for sure.
That doesn’t mean they will not be productive in 2023, but it’s difficult to count on each player to meet or exceed what they did in 2022.
Because we are a big believer that future success is based on knowledge of the strike zone, obviously we think Kwan has the best chance for improvement. We think he learned as the season progressed to pick his spots in driving the ball, so we think his slugging percentage will improve and he could approach or surpass 10 homers. Still, that’s not his game, so it needs to occur naturally.
Gonzalez is the opposite of Kwan, not walking much, but as we have suggested before, maybe Gonzalez is the Cleveland version of White Sox’ Tim Anderson, a hitter who succeeds with a poor strikeout to walk ratio. Still, he’s a player to watch.
Gimenez was spectacular last season, starting the All-Star Game and winning a Gold Glove, but it was also his first season with more that 210 plate appearances. His strikeout to walk ratio isn’t good (112:34) and his on base percentage (.371) was high because he was hit by a league high 25 pitches.
As proof it can happen, look at Myles Straw. In his first full year in the big leagues, 2021, Straw hit .271 with a .349 on base percentage. Last year, his second season, he hit .221 with a .291 OPS.
We aren’t saying everyone will regress, and quite frankly, we think Straw will rebound and be much better next year.
We are saying it is hard to judge players without a firm track record. For the most part, the pitching staff has that. It’s the offense that is more of a concern.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 