Name a Third Guardians Position Player

“Nobody believes in us!” is usually the cheapest heat in sports. I hate it. It fosters a base, provincial mindset among fans and players alike. It turns the joy of competition and success into hostility at a perceived (frequently imagined) slight. I’m just gonna come out and say it: If you need “the haters” to motivate you, you’re a small-minded person! If I never heard “nobody believes in us” again, I’d be a happy man.

Fortunately, I don’t have to hear it as much these days, because the 2019 Patriots — a year removed from their sixth Super Bowl win and ninth appearance in the Brady-Belichick era — rolled out the line and got laughed at. There’s a difference between “nobody believes in us” and “nobody likes us,” and the Patriots found out the hard way. They haven’t won a playoff game since.

Even though “nobody believes in us” is unimaginative, and usually untrue, and hackneyed into utter meaninglessness, I want to extend a waiver to the 2025 Cleveland Guardians. I’ll put my hands up; I didn’t believe in you.

Yes, the Guardians won the AL Central last year and even got to the ALCS, but the Tigers and Royals had made promising runs to the postseason as well. Last year’s AL Central is actually the only division in major league history to produce three teams that won a playoff round in the same season. Surely the Twins wouldn’t collapse again. This figured to be quite a competitive division.

Especially after Cleveland did nothing but dismantle its 2024 roster. Alex Cobb and Matthew Boyd, who combined to make half of the Guardians’ playoff starts last year, left as free agents. Josh Naylor was traded to Arizona, Andrés Giménez got traded to Toronto, and erstwhile starting center fielder Tyler Freeman was shipped off to Colorado.

Their big free agent move was to rope Carlos Santana back in for a third go-around with the team. He hit .225/.316/.333 and got cut at the end of August. That’s substantially more than what Cleveland got out of John Means, who has yet to pitch in the majors this year. He’s currently on a rehab assignment after undergoing Tommy John surgery in early June 2024.

I know the Guardians are as much a fixture in October as jack o’lanterns. (Maybe we should call them the Cleveland Gourdians.) I know these guys win 90 games and make the playoffs every year with a roster of anonymous, barely ensouled Quad-A guys, but this year’s crop of transient homunculi was especially anonymous, even by Cleveland’s standards.

I picked the Tigers to win the division.

What happened next? Well, the Tigers roared off to a double-digit lead, while the Guardians wobbled around .500. Last year’s big deadline acquisition, Lane Thomas, basically wrote off his season due to a number of injuries. Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz got tangled up in a gambling scandal and have been unavailable for months.

At the trade deadline, Cleveland sent former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber up the well-traveled path (canal?) to Toronto. I wrote up the trade and thought nothing of it; the Guardians were bang-on at .500, with a 12.2% chance of making the playoffs, and they’d just lost Clase. Of course they’d be selling. As recently as September 10, the Guardians’ playoff odds were under 5%.

Usually, when a team is bound for the playoffs, they show us at least one single solitary reason for optimism before the start of football season.

By now, you know what’s happened over the past two weeks. The Guardians, who were a game under .500 on September 4, are 17-3 since. Far from backing into a playoff spot, the Guardians are the second-hottest team in the league. (The 17-2 Mariners spoiled the narrative fun here.) That includes taking five of six from the Tigers, who are in the midst of the greatest stretch-run collapse in major league history.

How they’re doing this is pretty simple; during this streak, the Guardians have allowed half as many runs as any other team in baseball. In the month of September, the Guardians are first in the league in ERA by almost a run. (No. 2 is the Pirates, who have gone 8-13 over that stretch.) Cleveland is third in strikeout rate, second in K-BB%, and second in opponent batting average.

But the Guardians are only 12th in wRC+ over that time. Not that you need to score a lot of runs if you’re only allowing a run and a half per game, but that’s less than I would’ve expected. If you move the date range up a couple ticks to coincide perfectly with this 17-3 run, Cleveland is hitting just .244/.310/.411 as a team. That’s a wRC+ of only 102. That’s ridiculous! A team that’s winning at a better clip than, well, the Brady-Belichick Patriots only has an average offense!

In the article about the Reds that I linked earlier, I mentioned that Guardians hitters are turning into prime Jimmie Foxx in high leverage, and that’s still true. But it got me thinking.

Specifically, it got me thinking about the Billy on the Street bit where he goes up to people (on the street, hence the name) and asks them to name a woman.

This turned into a meme because, confronted with a loud man and a microphone, people vapor lock when they’re put on the spot. (Playing along at home, I admit that I needed a couple seconds to come up with a name, and when I did snap out of it the first woman I could think of was Sandra Day O’Connor.)

What I want to do is ask people to name three current Guardians position players.

Obviously, José Ramírez is the way, the truth, and the life. He is Cleveland’s gleaming angel. When I mentioned in Slack that I was going to try to find the Guardians’ third-best position player, Jay Jaffe — ever the incisive wit — asked if no. 1 and no. 2 were going to be Ramírez batting left-handed and Ramírez batting right-handed.

Most casual baseball fans can spot you Ramírez, as well as Steven Kwan. Kwan isn’t having a great season by his standards, but with 21 stolen bases and plus defense in left field, he’s still a three- or four-win player.

But what happens if you keep going? Thomas is on the IL. So is David Fry, after his scary brush with Tarik Skubal earlier this week. Santana’s off the team. Nolan Jones, another recidivist Guardian, is out with a strained oblique and was a below-replacement-level player this year anyway. Jhonkensy Noel is back, but he’s hitting .154/.176/.273 (19 wRC+) and has walked only four times in 67 games. If this is Big Christmas, it’s like a Christmas where nobody remembers to defrost the turkey and during the ensuing fight you realize your parents probably ought to get divorced.

Asking someone to name a third Guardians position player is a tougher proposition than asking them to name a woman. These are not big names. RosterResource has Cleveland platooning at four of the nine spots in the lineup. Out of the 14 position players currently on Cleveland’s active roster, only Ramírez, Kwan, and Austin Hedges entered the season with at least two years of major league service time. And of the four rookies on the Guardians’ roster, the highest-rated prospect is C.J. Kayfus, who was ranked 10th in Cleveland’s system and not at all on the global list. Nobody else came in higher than 25th.

Here’s a fun little bit of trivia: The Guardians have three hitters with an OPS+ of 85 or better in 150 or more plate appearances this season: Ramírez, Kwan, and Kyle Manzardo. That’d tie the record for the fewest such hitters on any playoff team in AL/NL history.

“Surely, there’s a caveat for 2020 in there,” I hear you asking. Nope! Even in 2020, when 150 plate appearances was almost enough to qualify for the batting title, all 16 playoff teams could scrounge up at least three hitters with an 85 OPS+ in 150 or more PA. The record low for a playoff team in a full season is five. Last year’s White Sox, who lost 121 games, had six hitters with an OPS+ of 85 in 150 plate appearances.

This is not a high bar to clear.

I’ve kind of spoiled the game here by mentioning multiple other Guardians position players. You probably knew Hedges, Noel, and Manzardo. Bo Naylor’s been around for a minute now, as has Brayan Rocchio, and you’ve probably heard of Daniel Schneemann, even if you have trouble remembering that he has three N’s in his last name.

Anyway, here are all the Guardians position players who are currently on the active roster, have logged at least 100 plate appearances this season, and have last names other than Ramírez and Kwan.

On a per-game basis, the best player here is Hedges. I’ve tried to be careful about my tone throughout this post. I don’t want my fascinated disbelief to be mistaken for mockery or derision. But even acknowledging Hedges’ incredible defense, it is ludicrous that a team could win a competitive division with its third-best position player hitting .157/.247/.275.

I could also see an argument for Schneemann being the Guardians’ third-best position player, given his versatility and two-way contributions. But if I had to name a third-best Guardians position player, I’d go with Manzardo. Splitting his time between first base and DH, Manzardo delivers little defensive value. But he’s the only average-or-better hitter the Guardians have, outside their two All-Stars. Out of 35 first basemen with at least 300 plate appearances this year, Manzardo is 21st in WAR and 16th in wRC+. Josh Naylor, the man he replaced, has put up more WAR for each of the Diamondbacks and Mariners this season than Manzardo has put up in total. But Manzardo’s about an average player. And the average player is king in the land of guys who hit .200 with no power.

Nobody believed in the Guardians, and to be quite blunt, they’ve earned that lack of belief. And yet, here they are, leading the division with three games to go. However implausible all of this might seem, it’s happening.