The Cleveland Guardians head into the offseason with plenty of questions, but most of them come back to the same problem. Cleveland’s pitching staff carried the team to a third straight AL Central title and Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, while the lineup struggled to keep up for much of the year. The Guardians finished 24th in the majors in runs scored, 26th in OPS and 27th in home runs, and they scored just eleven runs over the final five games against the Tampa Bay Rays. Now that free agency has officially opened, the front office has to figure out how to change that.
ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle summed up Cleveland’s biggest offseason priority in one word: “Power.”
“Power. Whether it’s development from within or acquisition from without, this team needs a couple of hitters whom opposing teams must game-plan around. Maybe one of those players can be the healthier version of Jose Ramirez, but this lineup badly needs that middle-of-the-order power threat which on the open market has always existed beyond the Guardians’ means/willingness to spend,” Doolittle wrote.
Doolittle explained that whether the help comes from inside the organization or from another team, the Guardians need a couple of hitters that opponents have to plan around. He suggested a healthier José Ramírez could be one of them, but said Cleveland badly needs a power threat in the middle of the order, the type of player who has always been out of the team’s price range or beyond what it has been willing to spend in free agency.
The numbers show how real that need is. No player who opened the 2026 season with Cleveland hit twenty home runs. Angel Martínez led that group with eighteen, followed by Chase DeLauter with sixteen, and Brayan Rocchio and Travis Bazzana with fifteen each. Jo Adell finished with 23 between the Angels and Guardians, but only seven of those came after he arrived in August. Ramírez, slowed by hand surgery, hit just twelve.
Doolittle also raised a bigger issue about the identity of the offense. He compared Cleveland to the Milwaukee Brewers, who just won the World Series, and the Rays, two smaller market teams that lean on contact hitting and aggressive baserunning instead of the home run. The Guardians share some of those traits, but Doolittle noted they do not score enough runs in other ways to win like Milwaukee or Tampa Bay. At the same time, they do not hit enough homers to be a true power offense. In his view, something has to change.
There is help coming from the farm system, too. Top prospect Ralphy Velazquez hit 29 home runs between Double-A and Triple-A this season, and Welbyn Francisca has been one of the best hitters in the Arizona Fall League. Neither is a sure thing for 2027, though, and both hit from the left side.
The good news is that the Guardians do not need to rebuild their offense from scratch. With strong pitching and a young core in place, one or two impact bats could change everything. As Doolittle put it, it all comes down to power, and Cleveland’s offseason will be judged on whether it finds some.
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