2026 Team Previews: Cleveland Guardians
A detailed fantasy baseball oriented team preview of the 2026 Cleveland Guardians
Full Series Links and Explanation Page Here
Podcast
I will cover the Tigers, Guardians, and Red Sox in a podcast that will come out with the Red Sox team preview, which is next.
Intro
The AL Central is an ugly place. The Guardians won 88 games and took home the division after overcoming a big deficit around the midway point. They were buried behind the Tigers for most of the year, but they got hot late and won the division. Neither team had much of a shot at the big trophy, and the Guardians didn’t last long in the postseason.
They’ve now for sure lost Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz. When the biggest story of your season is that two of your players were betting on games, that’s typically a season you’d like to forget. So the small market Guardians now have to move without one of the game’s best relief pitchers.
And they are not a team to sign free agents. You almost never hear their names in free agent talk. But they’ve proven more than competent at developing prospects and maximizing the talent they do have. So they’ll come into 2026 with legitimate hopes of winning another division crown.
And that’s probably a noble goal for you Cleveland guys out there. I don’t think anybody in this division is going to compete with the Blue Jays, Yankees, Red Sox, or Mariners this year. Those seem to be the four favorites to me.
The rotation could be worse, but there’s no true front-line starter, and things get thin pretty quickly. There are more than five guys that you think could be competent, but overall, it’s not a great picture. And the offense is a bit worse. So I don’t know, there’s not a ton to get into for fantasy purposes, but I did what needed to be done below. Enjoy it!
Hitters
Jose Ramirez
Age: 33
Pos: 3B
When is it going to end with J-Ram? Eventually, this guy won’t be a fantasy stud. But we don’t seem to be near that point yet. He’s coming off another elite five-category season, hitting 30 homers and stealing 44 bases.
What a table, man. 150+ games in each of the last five, at least 24 homers and 20 steals in every season, and the best two years are the last two! He’s gotten better after getting to 30 years old. But we have to figure out when some of this stuff is going away. So let’s hit more year-over-year data:
No problems found here. An elite 11.4% K% once again in 2025. The walk rate has come down a bit in the last two years, but we don’t really care about that for fantasy purposes. I somewhat prefer a 6-8% BB% in leagues where OBP doesn’t count.
The batted ball profile stuff:
Everything got even better last year compared to 2024. The EV90 is down from the heights of his career, but he’s never been a heavy EV guy. He gets him home runs with air pulls and a volume of balls put into play. J-Ram is one of the best in the game at just knowing what to do with the baseball bat.
I’ve been trying to save some time on these known commodities. J-Ram is a top-seven pick. He’s going 5th or 6th almost every time, and he’s yet to get past pick seven.
After Ohtani/Judge/Witt, you have a decision to make. It’s close between Soto, JRam, and Carroll to me. But you certainly can’t blame anybody for spending another premium pick on Ramirez.
Projection
604 PA, 85 R, 23 HR, 90 RBI, 29 SB, .271/.340/.464
Ranking
Steven Kwan
Age: 28
Pos: OF
And just like that, we fall about 160 picks in ADP to get to the next Guardians hitter. This hasn’t been a very good-looking roster for a while now, but the team continues to make the playoffs and win divisions.
Kwan has made his living with strong outfield defense and on-base ability.
He will never be a stud player for fantasy, but 80+ runs, a .270+ batting average, and 20+ steals get you pretty far up the list. He wasn’t far behind names like Brent Rooker and Tyler Soderstrom last year on the player rater:
As you can see above, the batting average has gone up and down. And that’s what can happen with guys who don’t hit the ball hard. Home runs and stolen bases are much more reliable categories to bet on, which is a reason I don’t pay as much attention to batting average when drafting.
Kwan hit just .268 in 2023 with a 10.4% K% and .270 last year with an even better 9% K%.
We can feel pretty good about getting a higher batting average next year since his BABIP hit a career low last year. A .300 BABIP is a reasonable expectation, and that will turn into at least a .280 batting average with upside for .300+. Not many hitters have that as a potential outcome.
The Guardians' lineup is looking pretty rough at this point, so that brings down his run-scoring projection. And if Kawn is only going to score 70 runs or something, that’s a big deal for him. He’ll hurt you in homers and not provide an overwhelming number of steals. So you’re really, really relying on the batting average being very good and the guy scoring a bunch of runs.
In a standard roto league, I have very little interest in the Kwan-type player. I’m looking for 15+ homers, and at least a dozen steals from every pick I make, and Kwan just doesn’t get me there in homers, and his steals total is replaceable.
Projection
594 PA, 76 R, 11 HR, 52 RBI, 14 SB, .268/.335/.385
My batting average projection has always been jacked with Kwan. Steamer says .278, which makes a lot more sense.
Ranking
Kyle Manzardo
Age: 25
Pos: 1B
If I made a list of hitters that I thought you might be surprised to find out cleared 25+ homers last year, Manzardo would be on it. In fact, I just went ahead and did this because I thought it was a fun idea.
The problem was that he saw just 531 PAs and hit .232 with two steals. So, outside of the 27 bombs, there wasn’t much fantasy value to be had. The fScores aren’t crazy about him, to say the least.
He ended up in a platoon for a lot of the year, seeing just 95 PAs against lefties, and he hit .274/.242/.407 with five homers. So the power wasn’t bad there, but the batting average was a disaster. He’s also not an asset defensively, so they have no reason to start him against lefties. More numbers on the guy:
He had always made a good amount of contact in the minor leagues, but that didn’t show up last year in the Majors. The 79% zone contact rate isn’t great, and the raw power didn’t show up too big either (104.2 EV90, 111.3 max).
But he gets a ton of balls into the air. A 30% GB% was in the top five in the league.
I suppose he’s likely to improve. He’s 25 and still not even 700 PAs into his Major League career. The Guardians don’t currently have someone to take much playing time away from him, so this is one of the cheap power guys we should consider in drafts. The projection is a .240/.312/.453 slash line, but I could see him going .260/.330/.475 as he grows into it.
The skills aren’t great, though. He’s very slow, and the bat speed is disappointingly low in the 25th percentile. So he is really relying on fly balls and backspin to get his dingers. But he’s good at that (19% Air Pull%), and the Guardians seem to develop those types pretty well.
Will he play against lefties? I don’t think it’s right to project him to get full-time PT in those situations, but you look at the roster and really wonder who is going to step in for him.
If we don’t get more playing time (and improved results) against lefties, and if we don’t get him improving overall as a hitter, he’s not worth much of anything in fantasy leagues. The best-case scenario is still a somewhat replaceable first baseman (decent power but nothing else). But maybe, just maybe, he can have a Michael Busch-style breakout in 2026.
Projection
445 PA, 56 R, 21 HR, 65 RBI, 2 SB, .240/.312/.453
Ranking
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