Guardians Take Unconventional Route During 2023 MLB Draft

The Cleveland Guardians focus more on position players rather than pitchers in the 2023 MLB Draft.

Tommy Wild | Jul 12, 2023

Guardians Take Unconventional Route During 2023 MLB Draft /

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Cleveland Guardians

The Cleveland Guardians organization is known around baseball as being one of the best at developing pitching. They routinely take college arms in the draft and work them up to being some of the best in MLB.

We're currently seeing that today as Gavin Williams, Tanner Bibee, and Logan Allen establish themselves in the Big Leagues.

The process of producing Major League arms starts years before those prospects reach The Show. First, they have to be selected by the team and then work through the farm system.

This makes what the Guardians did in the 2023 Draft appear a little bit head-scratching as they abandoned their typical strategy from the last few years.

Let's take a look back at the previous drafts to understand their method.

Cleveland selected 21 prospects in 2021, including Bibee and Williams. Out of those 21 draftees, 19 of them were pitchers. SS Jake Fox and OF Connor Kokx were the only position players taken over the three-day span.

The Guardians took 20 more prospects in 2022, going with a similar approach as 2021. They selected 13 pitchers scattered throughout the draft.

That brings us to the 2023 MLB Draft which wrapped up on Tuesday afternoon. Cleveland welcomed 21 more prospects into their system, but this time the focus was clearly more on position players rather than pitchers.

Here is a breakdown of each day:

In total, they took 12 pitchers, with four of them coming in the first two days. Eight of the pitchers they selected were on day three when there can be the most uncertainly surrounding a player's potential or their intention of signing.

Perhaps the organization feels confident with the young pitchers they have in their system right now and didn't want to shake that up. Or they simply just didn't find this draft class to be as strong as the past years.

Selecting the least amount of pitchers in the past three years wasn't the only eye-popping move the Guardians made in this draft.

Let's think back to a month ago when fans were begging them to call up top prospect Bo Naylor to take over the catching duties for the future. The front office then went out and selected three catchers in the draft, including Ralplhy Velazquez who was their first-round pick.

It is important to remember that players can always change positions as they move through the system, but this certainly stood out on paper.

Before we can talk any further about the team's newest prospects, the organization needs to sign them. The deadline for that is on July 15 this year.

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Published Jul 12, 2023

TOMMY WILD