MLB teams compete to win the World Series each year, but they also think about what’s next. All of them prioritize the future, which sets the tone and shapes their decisions and strategies. The goal, after all, is to be sustainable.
When talking about sustainable powerhouses, the Cleveland Guardians should rank at or near the top of the league. They continually run some of the lowest payrolls in baseball, yet they manage to compete to make the postseason almost every year.
Since the 2016 season in which they reached the World Series, Cleveland has only missed the playoffs three times. That’s an impressive rate, even better than some of the strongest contenders in today’s game.
Guardians’ president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti always makes sure to give the draft, the amateur free agent market, and the trade market their due importance. This way, he has been able to build one of the strongest cores in the league.
ESPN ranked all 30 squads’ cores, or roster foundations if you will, and the Guardians were comfortably in the top half. It’s important to clarify that they included players of all ages if they felt they could still contribute, which is why you will see the soon-to-be-34 Jose Ramirez named in the article.
“The Guardians just keep churning through players to field the competitive big league squad that works within their payroll parameters. Positioning these waves of players to continually stay competitive (only one year under a .490 winning percentage since 2012) without having the payroll to outspend a bad wave or continually trading to fill holes is impressive,” Kiley McDaniel wrote.
McDaniel classified players of each team in three categories: elite, plus, and solid. The ‘elite’ group is empty in Cleveland, which can always change in the future, and there were four ‘plus’ players: Ramirez, Parker Messick, Chase DeLauter, and Gavin Williams.
The ‘solid’ tier has multiple players, ranging from prospects like Khal Stephen to established stars like Cade Smith, who had a very good case to be a tier or two above.
There’s a chance that, in some time, players such as DeLauter, Messick, Williams, Travis Bazzana, Smith, and others become part of the elite. There’s no denying, however, that many organizations envy the Guardians’ core of young, impactful talent.
NEXT: Guardians Reliever Goes Under The Knife
