José Ramírez’s best effort to will a team towards a division title has paid off for the Guardians.
Wait a minute. What do you mean the Detroit Tigers didn’t win the AL Central? Many baseball fans had that locked in for the longest time, only for Detroit to collapse down the stretch and allow the Guardians to take over and win the Central in back-to-back seasons. This division didn’t have a repeat winner since Cleveland won it three-straight times between 2016 and 2018.
In a rare season with no American League team achieving 95 wins or better, Cleveland didn’t need that great of an overall campaign to take the Central’s top spot with an 88-74 record. Probably a good thing, seeing as though this team had to deal with more than its fair share of setbacks.
2025 record: 88-74
Manager: Stephen Vogt
Top hitter by fWAR: José Ramírez (6.2)
Top pitcher by fWAR: Cade Smith (2.7)
Have you ever heard of a bullpen-led playoff team? Well, if there wasn’t one as an example, the Guardians have just become it, a fact made even stranger when you account for Emmanuel Clase’s suspension. At first glance, this Guardians team appears a master of extracting the most out of its single star while doing its best to hide the weaknesses of its roster.
After managing to be a league-average offense back in 2024, with Steven Kwan and Josh Naylor proving to be admirable complementary stars to one of the game’s most reliable superstar in José Ramirez, Cleveland’s offense took several steps back this season. The bottom of the team wRC+ leaderboard reads as follows: Rockies, Pirates, Guardians, and White Sox. Coming in with a team wRC+ of 87, Cleveland’s offense was, in a nutshell, whatever Ramírez could muster up. The dropoff from Naylor to Carlos Santana and Kwan’s worst season as a big leaguer left this offensive attack without any any semblance of depth.
Surely, if their lineup was so bad, this had to have been one of the best pitching staffs in the big leagues? Yes and no. It is true that, as a collective, Cleveland’s pitching staff performed well, but it did so with a shortage of standout performers and with many of its key figures from before the year taking a backseat. Beyond Clase’s suspension, but Tanner Bibee couldn’t quite carry on from what was an exciting 2024 campaign, instead finishing this year with a 98 ERA+. Other rotation-mates like Slade Cecconi and L.T. Allen could only produce back-end caliber results. Only Gavin Williams really flourished in the Guardians’ rotation, which put great stress on a shorthanded bullpen to succeed.
Cleveland’s bullpen took that challenge head-on and performed well above what even the most optimistic of fans could’ve expected. Cade Smith took on the challenges of becoming the closer during the season and pitched incredibly well. The likes of Kolby Allard, Hunter Gaddis, and Jakob Junis stepped up to form an imposing relief core. It added up to a group that led the league in adjusted FIP and finished top-five in adjusted ERA.
For as much as the Guardians themselves may want to point to a sort of plucky, opportunistic style of play that propels their success, the fact that this team won a division title speaks more about the quality, or lack thereof, in that division than anything else. Even in a season missing those dominant teams we’ve grown accustomed to seeing, the AL Central still represents a particularly weak spot in the AL, one that makes one long for some sort of reseeding in baseball. Although Boston had a similar record, the Yankees would’ve been better off playing an American League Central club, such as the Guardians, than the Red Sox. Meanwhile, Detroit will have a quick shot at avenging that late collapse, as the Guardians and Tigers will meet up in the Wild Card round.
Category: General Sports
