2026 Draft - Part 4 - Why We Need to Get Back To What Worked For Us in 2021

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 Let me start out by saying this: the end result of a draft, in its entirety, does not necessarily represent what the intent or strategy of that draft was, going into it.

So, when you look at a draft like Cleveland's college pitcher draft of 2021, they may not have intended to take that many (18 of 21 picks) as college pitchers.  

Still, in 2020 and 2021 the Guardians selected/signed as non-drafted free agents A LOT of college pitchers, many of whom were polished pitchers with excellent stuff.  Then, after round 2 in 2022, the trend stopped.  The Guardians started drafting position players and the college pitchers they drafted were mostly soft tossers.  As I have said from Part 1 of this series, I think it is time the Guardians get back to theire 2020-2021 strategy. Right after that strategy the pipeline was full of pitching prospects who were mrapdily making their way to the majors.  However, if you look at the Guardians' farm system now. It is almost devoid of impact pitching prospects who came from the draft, making our depth at AAA almost non-existent in terms of starting pitching. It's time to change that with another college pitcher draft.

GUARDIANS DRAFTING SUMMARY (2020-2025)

2020

In the COVID-19 draft, the Guardians focused on HS hitters and college pitchers.  As far as the HS hitters, Tucker was clearly one of the worst #1 picks in Cleveland's draft history.  The jury is still out on what we will end up with in Tolentino and Halpin but it looks like both will end up having some sort of ML career.

As far as college pitchers, the Guardians drafted Tanner Burns (CB-a), Logan Allen (2nd rd) and Mason Hickman (5th round). In addition, they signed Cade Smith as an NDFA.

Hickman, an unranked draftee, never made it past AA.  Burns is currently a very low level prospect working out of the bullpen in AAA.  Allen has had some ML success so far and may be back in Cleveland's rotation in 2026 if injuries occur in the rotation. The undrafted Cade Smith remains as the crown jewel of this draft.

2021

In the famous college pitcher draft, the Guardians, likely by choice, selected 18 college pitchers, 1 HS hitter, 1 HS pitcher and 1 college hitter.  Here is the breakdown of the progress of those 18 guys:

ML SP - Williams (1st round), Bibee 5th(

ML cups of coffee - Aleman (10th), Nikhazy (CB-B)

AAA - Webb (3rd), Davenport (6th, injured), Mace, Dion, Leftwich, Denholm, Miller (20th round)

AA -  Johnston, Thornton, Abney, Stanley, Boone (injured), Sharpe (injured)

Released/retired 0  Pettway

So, almost every college pitcher from Cleveland's 2021 draft is still in Cleveland's system 5 years later or in the major leagues with another team.  There is still a chance that some of these guys may get a cup of coffee or have a niche career in the majors.  To have this many players still in your organization almost 5 years after they are drafted is a testament to Cleveland's pitcher development program.  Four have made their major league debuts.

2022

The Guardians took a college hitter (DeLauter) with their first pick.  This was a good gamble at the time as he was a distressed asset who was in the comversation to go 1-1 until his junior season ended early in his junior season with a foot injury.

However, afte DeLauter they Guardians went back to hard to college pitching, selecting Justin Cambell (CB-A) and Parker Messick (2nd) with their next two picks.  Both seem worth it, although Campbell's debut was delayed for almost 4 years!

After Messick who was somewhat of a soft tosser, the Guardians started a disturbing 2 year trend of drafting LHH college players with questionable power who were more slap hitters than true impact bats.  Lampe, Furman, Lipscomb were drafted  in the 3rd-5th rounds followed by soft tossers Dylan DeLucia (6th) and Austin Peterson (10th), hard buy wild tosser Javier Santos, HS flyer Humphries and, later one, college hard tossing relief pitchers (Ellerts, Jasiak, Tulloch, Jacobs).

So, 2022 may get us two good SP in Messick and Campbell and maybe a little more in later round picks Peterson and Ellerts with the possibility of late blooming guys like Jasiak. But this pales in comparison to the depth of pitching prospects we got from 2021 and is not much better than what we got from the 5 round draft of 2020.  The reason for that is simple: we stopped drafting quality college pitchers after the 2nd round in 2022.

2023

If 2021 was the college pitcher draft, 2023 was the college LH slap hitter/HS pitcher flyer draft.

Literally, the only quality college pitcher we got out of that draft is a relief pitcher, Andrew Walters.  Yes, Matt Wilkinson is a prospect but he is a soft tosser.  We even got many fewer late round college flyer relief prospects than we did in 2021.

So, from the 2023 draft we didn't get ANY help to the SP depth in our farm system.

2024

The Bazzana draft, once again, was devoid of top college pitching talent. It is highly likely that NONE of the college pitchers picked in this draft will EVER make the majors. For pitchers they were essentially drafting organizational guys to fill out spots in minor league bullpens.  While they added some quality HS pitchers, those guys are still so far away from the majors that they may not impact this team for years.  

NOTE: Prospect evaluators and rankers are high on Khal Stephen who the Guardians got for Shane BIeber last July.  He is probably their top pitching prospect right now.  When you consider that we could have had him instead of drafting future ML backup catcher Jacob Cozart in the 2nd round of this draft, it shows just how messed up the Guardians thinking was relative to acquiring quality college SPs from the draft.

2025 

This draft had quality college pitching at the very top and quality college pitching in rounds 2 and 3.  Drafting at #27 the Guardians missed the top tier pitchers and a couple of the college hitters they wanted were grabbed early, meaning they were left with the HUGE gamble of strikeout-prone LaViolette in the first round.  There were so many 2nd tier college pithcers in this draft it was set up for Cleveland to grab 2-3 of the 10 college pitchers who would likely still be around when they picked at 64, 66 and 70.  Unfortunately every one of those 10 pitchers were overdrafted before our pick at 54 and all that was left in college pitchers were guys with huge question marks who slotted more in the 100+ range, talent-wise.  So Cleveland went with college hitters but did very poorly at that, ending up with a number of low ceiling, low floor guys.  As they had in 2023 and 2024, they overdrafted a bunch of fourth tier college pitchers, leaving them, one year after this draft, with what will likely be one of the worst drafts in their team history and, much worse, another draft taht will produce ZERO ML pitchers from the low level college pitchers they selected.

SUMMARY

The Guardians have screwed the ML team by not drafting quality college pitching after the top of the 2022 draft.  No resource-limited team should make this mistake, especially when their recent past has shown they can draft and develop college pitchers to quickly become impact arms in the majors.

The 2026 draft contains some qualiity college arms but if the 2025 has shown me anything, it is that you HAVE to overdraft college power SPs.  If we could somehow come up with Hunter Dietz,Tyler Rabe, Cameron Johnson, Josh McDeavitt, Matt Sauser, Shane Sdao and Ryan Marohn in that order as our first 7 picks this would restock our farm system with enough college arms to get us back to the depth a team like the Guardians needs in SP in their minor leagues.  Kind of a pipe dream but my dream, nonetheless!