Cleveland Baseball Insider

Guardians Announce 2025 Player Development Promotions And Hirings

Cleveland has named Stephen Osterer its new Farm Director, while also naming two new Assistant Directors of Player Development.

Logan Potosky

May 25, 2022; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco Giants major league coach Alyssa Nakken (92) celebrates after a win against the New York Mets at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
May 25, 2022; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco Giants major league coach Alyssa Nakken (92) celebrates after a win against the New York Mets at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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While the Cleveland Guardians had a remarkable 2024 season, so too did the team's player development system.

All four of the team's Minor League affiliates finished with a winning record this year.

And three of them, the Triple-A Columbus Clippers, Double-A Akron RubberDucks, and High-A Lake County Captains, made the postseason, with Lake County winning the 2024 Midwest League Championship. This marked the Cleveland organization's 29th Minor League title since 1963.

On Wednesday, two weeks after announcing their 2025 Major League coaching staff, the Guardians announced some promotions and hirings for their player development system ahead of the upcoming 2025 campaign.

Among these promotions and hirings, Cleveland named Stephen Osterer its new Vice President of Player Development/Farm Director.

Osterer had been the Guardians' Director of Pitching Development for the last three seasons, and previously served as the team's Pitching Resource Coordinator in 2020 and 2021. He succeeds former Director of Player Development Rob Cerfolio, who joined the St. Louis Cardinals' front office last month.

Cleveland also named two new Assistant Directors of Player Development in Alyssa Nakken and Will Huntington.

A baseball coach wearing a black jacket and a black hat.
May 25, 2022; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco Giants major league coach Alyssa Nakken (92) celebrates after a win against the New York Mets at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

Nakken, whose hiring was reported last week, joins the Guardians after serving as a Major League Assistant Coach with the San Francisco Giants for the last five seasons. Huntington had previously been a Baseball Operations Analyst for the Guardians in 2022 and 2023 before serving as an Assistant Director of Baseball Operations this year.

Ilana Mishkin remains an Assistant Director of Player Development as well, a role she has served since the 2022 season.

Mishkin joined Cleveland as a Baseball Operations Fellow in 2019, later serving as a Baseball Operations Assistant in 2020 and the team's Player Development Coordinator in 2021.

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Logan Potosky
LOGAN POTOSKY

Logan Potosky is an aspiring play-by-play sports broadcaster who, to date, has called approximately 350+ hours of professional, college, and high school sporting events. He is currently the Play-by-Play Broadcaster for the Lake County Captains, the High-A Affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians. He graduated from John Carroll University in May of 2023 with a degree in Communication, with a concentration in Digital Media, and a minor in Entrepreneurship.

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