2025 Guardians Amateur Draft - Part 1 - Background

 It’s less than 2 months until Christmas in July.  

No, not Big Christmas. 

But the type of Christmas where you get presents that don't fly over the fence.

The 2025 Major League Baseball First Year Player Draft (or whatever it is called now).

For a low-spending team like the Guardians who also like to avoid the high cost prospects in the January international signing period, the 1st year player draft is one area where they seem to spend all available funds to sign all their draft picks every year.  That is what makes this time Christmas in July for Guardian prospect geeks like me.

This year Cleveland has 22 picks, including the Competitive Balance Part B pick they got from Arizona in the Josh Naylor trade debacle...sorry, the Josh Naylor trade.

Here are the selectons that the Guardians will have in the 2025 draft:

1st round - 27

2nd - 64

Comp B - 66

Comp B (ARI) - 70

3rd - 101

4th - 132

5th - 162

6th - 192

7th - 222

8th - 252

9th - 282

10th - 312

11th - 342

12th - 372

13th - 402

14th - 432

15th - 462

16th - 492

17th - 522

18th - 552

19th - 582

20th - 612

Every draft has its own strategy depending on the strength of the draft, what players are available at a particular spot in the draft and, although teams say it isn't true, what weaknesses exist in their minor league system (all teams SAY that they draft the best player available every time their draft slot comes up, regardless of what position they play).  

Looking at recent drafts here is, in general, what the Guardians did:

2021 Draft - In what still might turn out to be the best draft in Guardians history, they drafted 18 college pitchers, 1 high school pitcher, 1 high school infielder and 1 college outfielder.  As of this moment this draft has produced major leaguers Gavin Williams and Tanner Bibee.  It also has top prospects Doug Nikhazy (AAA), Franco Aleman (AAA), Ryan Webb (AAA) and lesser prospects Will Dion (AAA), Aaron Davenport (AAA), Trenton Denholm (AA), Alaska Abney (AA), Jake Miller (AA), Rodney Boone (AA), Jack Leftwich (injured), Hunter Stanley (injured), Zach Pettway (retired), Tyler Thornton (injured), Reid Johnston (injured).  In addition they drafted current top 30 prospect Jake Fox (A) and Connor Kokx (retired).  The Guardians will likely have 5 players (Bibee, Williams, Nikhazy, Aleman, Webb) have decent major league careers and another 5 (Dion, Davenport, Denholm, Abney, Boone) at least get cups of coffee in the majors.  Abney, Miller and all of the currently injured pitchers having a small chance to appear in the majors.

It is amazing that, 5 seasons after this draft, only 2 players are not in the Guardians system any longer.  

2022 draft - In this draft the Guardians took Chase DeLauter, Justin Campbell (inured his entire career) and Parker Messick at the top of their draft. They followed this by drafting slap hitters (Joe Lampe, Nate Furman (since traded), Guy Lipscomb, Pres Cavanaugh, Angel Zarate), expensive HS pitchers (Humphries, Zibin, Santos), soft-tossing college senior pitchers (DeLucia, Peterson) and college relievers (Ellerts, Jasiak, Tulloch, Jacobs, Rivera Jr. and Rapp) and a couple of intriguing position players HS C Logun Clark and college utility man Tyrese Turner. OF this group only DeLauter and Messick have made it to AAA.  

In this draft they continued drafting pitchability college pitchers but also started to sprinkle in college, low-power contact hitters in early rounds.  They also started to spend money on HS pitchers who dropped due to signability concerns (Humphries, Zibin).  

2023 draft - It the 2021 draft could be labeled the college pitcher draft for the Guardians then the 2023 draft could easily be labeled as the slap hitter draft.  

After missing out by one pick on MLB top 100 prospect Colt Emerson, the Guardians started by drafting a HS catcher, Ralphy Velazquez, followed by HS P Alex Clemmey (since traded) and college reliever Andrew Walters.  After that they drafted, in the first 10 rounds, FIVE college positions players with below average power potential (Kayfus, Ingle, Knapczyk, Hawke, Advincula). They also continued the trend from 2022 of drafting HS pitchers (Bresnahan, Zinn and unsigned Heuer and Marohn) and a college hitter (Mooney), all of whom dropped in the draft due to large bonus demands.  As usual, they also drafted a bunch of college relievers and one intiguing JUCO pitching prospect (Matt Wilkinson).

So far the slap hitter draft has yielded Kayfus and Ingle with ML potential and Velazquez, Clemmey and Wilkinson with intriguing prospect potential but as guys currently struggling in A ball. Most of the slap hitters, Lampe, Furman, Hawke, Advincula and Riebock are clearly organizational players and college senior Knapczyk, who had the worst power grade possible (20) is successfully slapping the ball at Lake County.

2024 draft - In this draft the Guardians went for high risk, high reward picks, focusing on HS pitchers (Doughty, Oakie, Sullivan, Mobley, Remily), college catchers (Cozart and Thompson), and a bunch of college relief pitchers.  Of course, there is also top pick Travis Bazzana who has struggled but has a very high floor.

The trends to note here is that they drafted college catchers (Cozart, Thompson) early in the draft in addition to all those HS pitchers.  The former addressed an organizational need at catcher and the latter addressed filling in the lower ends of the minors with quality HS pitching prospects, partially to offset the loss (through trades) of Clemmey and Bresnahan from the 2023 draft.

Summary of last 4 drafts, organizational needs and what it means for the 2025 draft.

The Guardians injected a lot of college pitching in the 2021 and 2022 drafts and a lot of that is about to reach the major league team.  They have, mostly unsuccessfully, tried to inject a lot of slap hitters into their system, most of whom have already failed.  In the last 2 drafts they have spent a lot of money on HS pitching, really stocking the low end of the farm system with high quality HS arms.  

The Guardians have also done Guardians things by injecting a lot of  college relievers into their farm system, some of who, knowng the Guardians, will eventually pitch in the majors.  They have also drafted and are developing pitchability pitchers like Peterson and Wilkinson. 

However, except for DeLauter and Bazzana, they have not, in the last 4 drafts drafted ANY prospects with above average power potential, unless you count Velazquez, whose power is still in question, especially as a 1B/DH type of player.

I see, looking at these trends, for the Guardians to get back to drafting college pitching and also spend some of their 2025 draft capital on college power hitters as well as the usual HS P flyers and college pitchability guys and relief guys.  

But more about that in Part II.