What To Do With: The Cleveland Guardians Outfield

The Guardians' 40-man roster and beyond have been a mess for a few years now. Organizations have been taking advantage of the full 40 for quite some time, having handy replacements for injured players or guys that need to work on something in the minors without impacting the big league wins and losses. However, Cleveland has been stuck in the morass of Quad A purgatory: there are too many guys the front office keeps hoping will step up and make their penny-pinching ways look brilliant. So, in an effort to cut through the crap, we will take a look over the next few weeks, before Spring Training ends, at some of the positions the Guardians have done themselves no favors in solving. Today, the outfield mix.

Much like the infield, the Guardians' outfield hasn’t seen a homegrown superstar in quite some time. Depending on how you feel about Steven Kwan, the last outfielder the organization can proudly hang its hat on is Grady Sizemore, who hung up his spikes in 2015 and hasn’t patrolled the triangle of center at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario since 2011. Failed project after Quad A outfielder after non-roster-invitee have all come and gone. But this coming crop of outfielders could be the next wave…maybe if you poke yourself in one eye and squint with the other.

Steven Kwan

As mentioned, Kwan has been amazing for the club since his arrival four years ago. He’s helped stabilize the top of a lineup that lost Franciso Lindor and others, won four Gold Gloves in left field, and is now changing his spot on defense to the more daunting centerfield. The move has been out of necessity: there simply is no other option as viable as Kwan, a centerfielder in college and coming up in the minors, and it allows for the other better bats to ease into the lineup easier.

Kwan’s bat has been full of ups and downs. He’s never been a power hitter, but if you look at his year by year OPS’s, you can see he’s had roller coaster years. Starting in 2022, he went .772, .710, .793, .705. Injuries have taken their toll on him, and the move to center won’t help that, but he’s as steady as they come. A high-floor bat with good-to-great defense in center field is more than this team can ask for. Because of his contract status, 2026 is his Arb2 season, meaning Cleveland only has two more years of control (2026 and 2027), he’s always a threat to be dealt away if the front office thinks they can extract added organizational value. Whatever happens, Kwan has done exactly what Cleveland needed him to do, been all he can be, and will continue to put up quality at bats in the outfield while vying for a fifth straight Gold Glove, albeit now possibly at a more challenging position. 

Chance of making roster: 100%

Chase DeLauter

The next great prospect to come up, DeLauter has been so good in the minors that the Guardians went against their own conventional wisdom and debuted the rookie in the playoffs last year against the Detroit Tigers. DeLauter has been battling injuries since college, but nothing over and over again, just continually new things: foot issues took some time to fix, then a core muscle issue, then a hamate bone break…you’d think he kicked a black cat that crossed his path while breaking a mirror with an umbrella he opened indoors while chanting “Macbeth!” at his local theater. 

Now that he’s arrived, there aren’t many more things excite me more than his unorthodox swing. As I’ve stated many times over on the WFNY GuardsCast, DeLauter has a swing only Charles Barkley could love: violent, sudden, and powerful. This is not the Ken Griffey Jr poetry-in-motion type; this is baseball abuse at the highest levels. With quick hands and wrists, DeLauter already knows how to punish the inside fastball, as seen here, a 98mph fastball he almost looks to be getting out of the way of, but instead deposits it in the right field bleachers with an exit velocity of 105.

Because of the injury concerns with DeLauter, he likely will not play every day. The move of Kwan to center allows CDL to rest his legs in right a little bit more, and you can likely expect him to be amongst the first to get a day off to protect the team’s investment in him. But no matter if he’s in the lineup 6-for-6 days a week or only 4, DeLauter has arrived to punish opposing pitchers. 

Chance of making roster: 95%

George Valera

I recently was on the WFNY GuardsCast with one of the more bold predictions I’ve ever made: I predicted George Valera would make the Top 5 of the AL Rookie of the Year awards. Valera is another Guardians’ prospect who has produced at the plate in between trips to the hospital. Every year since 2023, Valera has had to spend time in extended spring training once camp broke, and every year since, upon his return to the minors, he’s given average-to-above-average production at the plate. In 2025, he finally broke through for a September call up and continued working his arsenal: a good walk rate (14.6%), good batted ball data (91.1 avg EV, which if he had carried that over a full season would have put him tied for 57th in MLB), and decent defense in the corner outfield. He’s kept to those numbers o far in spring, if not improved: a 50.0% HardHit%, 92.3 EV, .500 slg, and more. 

Valera would profile as a great No. 2 behind Kwan and in front of Jose Ramirez in the every day lineup. His penchant for taking a lot of pitches is helpful, his ability to take a walk would put even more pressure on pitchers not wanting to surrender to JRam. He’s not only helping his own cause this summer but helped by the lack of production from the other batted-ball darling, Nolan Jones. Valera making good on years of prospect promise would be exciting for fans that waited too long for him to be ready. I think he’s got a good mix of skills that will insulate him from falling too far behind pitchers when they get a book on him. 

Chances of making the roster: 80%

CJ Kayfus

Kayfus has shot through the system like few others in Cleveland. In 2023, he had 17 games in low-A ball. By 2025, he was in the bigs. Kayfus is the prototypical “professional” hitter with yet another high floor: takes pitches, works walks, attacks mistakes. The issue with Kayfus has been that he’s another left-handed bat in a sea of other lefties, one who doesn’t do any one thing well enough to be better than the rest. You love what you see, but there’s nothing that stands out like the guys ahead of him on this list. He can work a pitcher but isn’t as good as Kwan. He’s got good power, but not like DeLauter. He’s not a base-running threat but is smart on the basepaths. He’s just solid, which the Guardians desperately need on this roster. 

Yes, there is some swing and miss in the bat, but he has a good eye at the plate and has been working this spring on taking things the other way while capitalizing on good pull-side power. If you look at his spray chart from last year in the bigs compared to what he’s been working on in spring, you can see a guy that has the potential to capitalize on mistakes:

37.9/32.2/29.9 was his “Pull%/Cent%/Oppo%” (meaning what he’s hit toward right field, center field, and left field for a left-handed bat). Over the spring, he’s going 43.8/12.5/43.8, abandoning the centerfield area and adding to that pull/oppo side. Yes, it’s only 29 plate appearances in spring training and these numbers are largely noise, but I maintain you’d rather a guy produce over the spring than not, good pitchers or bad pitchers, it doesn’t matter much to me. 

Chances of making the roster: 75%

Nolan Jones

As mentioned above, Jones has decent batted ball data from 2025. His avg exit velocity, the speed with which the ball comes off the bat, was in the 66th percentile. Hard-Hit%, 70th percentile, along with the launch angle sweet-spot being 66th. Along with a nice BB% of 69%, and there are all good signs of someone who can be a good or even great hitter. So why is he so far down this list? Cuz the results just aren’t there. 

Jones had a 28.0 K%, in the bottom 8% of MLB, and only five home runs, a slugging percentage that looks like a nice batting average (.309), and just not enough evidence of something that could be more. Spring has continued this narrative: one dinger in 31 plate appearances, 13 strikeouts, and only four total hits. He’s been losing playing time to Valera and Kayfus, and the fact that the team brought him back on only a $2 million one-year deal are signs enough that good analytics don’t make a good hitter. I wish for more from Jones, but that 2023 season in Colorado is proving to be the outlier exception, not the rule. 

Chances of making the roster: 35%

Petey Halpin

Johnathan Rodriguez

I’m doing these two together because they are basically intertwined: one of them feels likely to make the roster and only one. Both have vastly different profiles, with one of them (Rodriguez) at the tail end of his usability and the other (Halpin) trying to carve out more of a role. 

Halpin came up at the end of the season in 2025 and made the playoff roster as a pinch runner/defensive replacement, and was effective in the role: of the six games he played in, he scored five runs. He’s been a productive bat in the minors, with double-digit home runs and stolen bases in each of the last two seasons in AA and AAA. I’d love to see what he can do as a more-than-often centerfield option, but at this point there are more “important” guys that need a crack see if they are going to be something more. I do think Halpin could be more than just a platoon/part time bat, but let’s see him prove it first. 

Rodriguez has been trying for that spot for years, with little to no success. He can run into a mistake, sure, but when guys know you’re sitting dead red, you can be fooled. He’s the quintessential Quad A player, someone who can destroy lower-quality pitchers but can’t be used against in the bigs. The team has not moved him up against better pitching in this year’s spring and he’s struggled against those. If he makes the team, it’s by some magic cursed amulet he gave to Halpin, like the tiki necklace in The Brady Bunch and the last season of Scrubs. 

Chances Halpin makes the roster: 60%

Chances Rodriguez makes the roster: 0% ((Johnathan Rodriguez was sent down to the minors on Sunday, so he will not be making the team.))

What would I do?

We’ve hit that portion of the article where I make myself look silly with suggestions. Twere it up to me, I’d make Steven Kwan the everyday centerfielder. That, in and of itself, is a monumental move that changes the way this team operates. But by moving Kwan to the middle, that opens up spots for Kayfus and DeLauter to play almost every day. When you add in players that were already discussed like Angel Martinez and Daniel Schneemann, you have a fairly decent mix. Nolan Jones will find himself off the roster via DFA, same with Johnathan Rordriguez. Righty David Fry could also factor into some right field moments, and Kayfus is actually a first baseman by trade, but for the first time in forever ((Yes, I did sing it, like Anna in “Frozen”.)) the Guardians have an outfield with some league-average or better production. 

Left field: Kayfus
Center field: Kwan

Right field: DeLauter
Bench options: Halpin, Martinez, Schneemann, Fry