2025 Team Previews - Cleveland Guardians
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the Cleveland Guardians ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
The Guardians made their way the whole way to the ALCS last season. That was an impressive feat because the roster really was not all that impressive. We have seen that a few times lately from this club. They are one to over-perform at times. Having guys like Jose Ramirez and being in that weak division helps quite a bit.
The 2025 season offers a new challenge for them. Josh Naylor and Andres Gimenez are gone, and the pitching rotation is looking sketchy, to say the least. The AL Central is pretty wide open again, but I’m not sure my money would be going toward Cleveland this year.
Roster
Cleveland has turned into a factory for a very specific player type - elite contact hitters with no power. Even with Gimenez gone, they have four of these types in the lineup once again this year (Kwan, Brennan, Birto, and Rocchio). They finished second-worst in the league in team barrel rate last year (5.8%). They were able to get to the middle of the pack in home runs hit despite that.
The home runs were heavily concentrated in Jose Ramirez (39) and Josh Naylor (31), nobody else even reached 15. Things are looking even worse in the regard now with Naylor in Arizona. But they will make a ton of contact:
There is a breakout hopeful in Manzardo and some big pop on the bench in Jhonkensy Noel, but I wouldn’t expect this offense to light the world on fire this year.
The rotation will get a boost at some point from the return of Shane Bieber, and they do have two young talents in Tanner Bibee and Gavin Williams. There’s hope, but it’s not the prettier picture in the world.
I think the Guardians are about an 80-win team. But let’s get into the player-by-player stuff for fantasy.
Hitters
Jose Ramirez
Age: 32
Pos: 3B
It was yet another elite season at the plate for J-Ram. It feels like we’re approaching ten years of drafting this guy in the first or second round. Things got really nice last year:
681 PA, .277/.333/.535, 39 HR, 41 SB, 12% K%, 7.9% BB%, 114 R, 118 RBI
He was overshadowed by what Ohtani and Judge did last year, but that was one of the best fantasy baseball seasons we’ve ever seen. Nearly a 40-40 year with 232 R+RBI. Ridiculous stuff. He’s 32 now, but there have been no signs of aging thus far.
The strikeout rate stayed ridiculously low, and he took the stolen base attempt rate to another level at 33%.
If J-Ram is going to lose anything any time soon, it could be some of that power. His barrel rates have not been very impressive in his career, and he lost a bit in exit velocity last year.
Jose Ramirez Brl% and Average EV by Year
2021: 11.1%, 90.0mph
2022: 6.6%, 87.7mph
2023: 7.0%, 90.0mph
2024: 8.6%, 89.2mph
There’s some year-to-year fluctuations there, and being under 90 wasn’t something we hadn’t seen before with him. The way Ramirez racks up his homers is by putting a ton of balls in play.
MLB Balls In Play Leaders, 2024
Luis Arraez 611
Marcus Semien 546
Jose Ramirez 544
Bobby Witt Jr. 538
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 524
And his low ground ball rate got him to the top of the list in raw fly balls hit as well:
MLB Fly Balls Hit Leaders, 2024
Jose Ramirez 169
Yordan Alvarez 167
Marcus Semien
Bobby Witt Jr. 164
Willy Adames 160
I say all of that just to say - it’s very hard to not hit 20+ homers when you’re getting this many balls in play. I do not suspect much will change on that front in 2025, so we can feel very confident about Jose Ramirez’s production. I tend to doubt he can flirt with 40 homers again, but 25-30 is safe, especially when you see that he was able to pull 75% of his barrels last year.
J-Ram is a stud. I can probably just copy and paste his player preview every year to save myself some time!
Rank
He is #5 by ADP early on. There’s a tussle between him, Elly, and Gunnar. Given the safety he offers across the board, I’m putting him above both of those names.
Projection
664 PA, 95 R, 26 HR, 102 RBI, 30 SB, .271/.353/.475, $14.15 roto value
Lane Thomas
Age: 29
Pos: OF
And just like that, we’re down to Lane Thomas. There are not many fantasy players to love on this Cleveland team. That’s been true for a few years now, and they just keep making the playoffs.
Lane Thomas was moved to Cleveland at the trade deadline and showed up and did just about as poorly as you could have imagined in his first few weeks. He hit .143/.239/.195 in August with no homers, three steals, and a 37.5% K%.
That’s more of just a funny story rather than actionable information. He got it together in September, making up for that lost August with seven bombs and a huge .560 SLG.
At the end of the season we saw this:
528 PA, .235/.307/.398, 25.9% K%, 8.3% BB%, 15 HR, 32 SB
That was a pretty significant reduction in home run output after he hit 27 homers for the Nationals in 2023. The batting average also bottomed out, but he made up for some of that with extra steals.
We have seen quite a few different versions of Lane Thomas now. He was of much use in 2022, and then he was great in 2023, and then in 2024, he turned into a bit of a steals specialist.
The only thing I can feel confident about is the K% being around 25-26%, and that’s not a very good sign for a guy who has never posted a double-digit barrel rate. I would not expect much of a batting average from the guy.
He does hit the ball decently hard, and he cleared our 105mph threshold on the EV90.
It’s probably more likely that he’s under 20 homers than over it, and the 30+ steals thing was brand new last year. Thomas is not someone you can rely on. At the same time, you’d have to say he has 20-20 upside since he’s shown that ability as recently as two seasons ago and came marginally close last year. He only played 130 games in 2024, so he very well could have gotten there with a full season’s worth of reps!
Drafting a guy in the top 200 (ADP 172 in this case) who I can’t look at and say, “I know he’ll do this for me,” is not something I love to do. But the upside is here with Thomas. I don’t have a hard yes/no stance on Thomas. He’s a tough one! I would say if you’re at that point in the draft in need of outfielders who can hit homers and steal bags, he’s a fine choice.
Rank
Projection
601 PA, 75 R, 19 HR, 73 RBI, 23 SB, .242/.305/.412, $11.06 roto value
Steven Kwan
Age: 27
Pos: OF
Kwan is one of the best contact hitters in the league. He’s a Luis Arraez-type hitter who puts a ton of balls in play but never hits them very hard. In his MLB career, he’s slashed .285/.359/.396 with 25 homers and 52 steals. The K% is really impressive at 9.8%.
He also teaches us a lesson about the finickiness of batting average. You would think the guy would be a lock to hit .280+ every year, but instead, in the 2023 season, he hit .268 on a .275 expected batting average.
Since he doesn’t hit the ball hard (he’s in the 1st percentile in bat speed and hard hit rate), he depends a ton on a high line drive rate to put up that high batting average. His ground ball rates so far have been 43%, 47%, and 37% - so you can see that the higher GB% matched up with the lower batting average, and that makes some sense.
His line drive rate has been steady (28%, 29%, 28%), and he finished fifth-highest in that category last year.
He hit his personal best in homers last year with 14, but he had just 11 barrels all year, so it’s hard to count on a repeat of that.
The question with these types of guys is about what they’re truly worth in roto. He was #93 on my player rater last year, and that matches up pretty evenly with his ADP this year, which has made him the #87 hitter off the board on average. I do think the 14 homers were a bit of an over-performance, and he is not an overly aggressive base stealer. He dropped to a 10% attempt rate and stole just 12 bases.
The bottom line is that Kwan reasonably could go out there and hit .270 with ten homers and 12 steals all year, and that would be a really bad outcome for fantasy leagues. I do not see myself taking him anywhere near what he costs this year.
Rank
Projection
695 PA, 91 R, 11 HR, 63 RBI, 17 SB, .271/.349/.387, $9.95 roto vaue
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