SHOWDOWN: Cleveland Guardians CRITICAL Series vs. Detroit Tigers | Will Rotation Shuffle Pay Off?

SHOWDOWN: Cleveland Guardians CRITICAL Series vs. Detroit Tigers | Will Rotation Shuffle Pay Off?

Justin Lada: It all comes down to this. Not quite, but it’s an important series for the Guardians this week in Detroit. And we’ll look back at who we thought were going to be the best prospects in the system this year. Tanner Bibee, the Guardians. And you’re listening to Locked On Guardians. Jeff Ellis: You are Locked On Guardians, your daily podcast on the Cleveland Guardians, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team, every day. Justin Lada: Welcome on into another episode of Locked On Guardians. The Guardians might be off today, but we are. Or on Monday. We’re never off and oh boy, do we have a lot to talk about today. A lot of exciting stuff. And this is your only podcast on the Cleveland Guardians. That’s every single day that covers the Cleveland Guardians, the majors, the minors, and the draft. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team, your Cleveland Guardians every day. I’m one of your two co-hosts, Justin Lada. Been here since October of 2022 and since 2007, I have been covering your favorite and least favorite prospects in the Guardians farm system. Jeff Ellis: And I am Jeff Ellis, one of your, as you said, one of your two co-hosts. One of the first co-hosts Locked On when we started, just wanted to expand into baseball. Before that, I was a national writer at Scout and 24/7. I was gonna do the YouTube shout out, but instead of that, yesterday we talked about game score. Shout out to every day, our Anthony. That’s where the comment was. That’s who gets the shout out for bringing up game score and James Keene for giving some game score information today to our everydays. I want to thank you for making today’s episode your first listen today and every day, wherever it is you get podcasts. Justin Lada: Appreciate you being here. Yeah. On today’s show we got a lot to cover. It’s gonna be a busy week overall. Really. It’s gonna be a busy end of the season. With the way things are wrapping up for Cleveland, we will revisit our 2025 prospect draft and look at our best picks, our worst picks, and who should have been drafted but wasn’t. We will finally take a look at Travis Bazzana’s season now that it’s over with another oblique issue. And we will start today’s show talking about the showdown with Mo in Motown with the Tigers. It’s going to be a big one. Before we jump into it all, today’s episode of Locked On Guardians is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, if you’re a new customer, you can bet just $5. If your bet wins, you’re going to get $300 in bonus bets to use across the entire FanDuel app. Download today. All right, Jeff, this is not for all the marbles, but it’s going to be a lot of marbles in this one. Cleveland has to win the series. Not, I mean it’s not just the division though. I mean the division is a very faint hope, but it’s faint. There is hope, but they just have to keep winning series from here on out if they’re going to give themselves a chance in the playoffs because they’re still dependent on other teams’ help. So it doesn’t matter who they play, they have to win series. But this Detroit one’s going to be big. It’s going to be interesting. The Tigers haven’t been as good in the second half. They’ve had some vulnerabilities. The Guardians of course right now are playing really well, at least in terms of defense and pitching, not so much offense, but maybe they’ll have a chance to do some things offensively. Let’s start off with some of the big things that we know. So the Guardians, over the last couple of weeks with this 17 games and 17-day stretch that they just finished, they had a six-man rotation for the time being. It looks like that is going to come to an end because they are going to go, it looks like, Joey Cantillo in Game 1 against Casey Vázquez, Game 2, it looks like it’s going to be Gavin Williams and Jack Flaherty, and then in Game 3, they’re going to move up Tanner Bibee to oppose Tarik Skubal on Thursday, and that will move everybody up a day. But they’re all on normal rest anyway because of the six-man rotation in the off day. That will change things, how it works in Minnesota, and that will set up things, how it works against the Tigers in the following series in Cleveland. But I think this is the best way to go because you want to have your best arms against the Tigers. You got to win every series. The Twins aren’t as formidable. You have a doubleheader there. You got to kind of set things up both short and long term. You want to put your best foot forward right now and you also want to make sure you’re planning through the end of the year to make sure you’re lined up as best you can be for every series. But also that final series against Texas and if it happens in the playoffs. So we’ll see they may go back to the six-man rotation. They do have a doubleheader Saturday, so if they are skipping Logan Allen in the series, it sounds like they’ll probably need him out of the bullpen this series. Although the Tigers hit lefties very well, so maybe not. But he’ll have to pitch against the Twins because they have a doubleheader on Saturday, and that could be where we see John Means too. Jeff Ellis: Yeah, you know, the Twins hit lefties pretty well as well. The interesting thing with Detroit, I’ll say, is arguably their best hitter is a guy who’s a, you know, he’s a platoon hitter. Other teams do it as well. I don’t know if you knew that. Justin Lada: Teams also have bats, Jeff. Jeff Ellis: Other teams. Kerry Carpenter is, everyone can recall from the postseason, got yanked every time. I was like, throw a lefty into the third inning. Let’s get him out. of there. So it’s like, yeah, they, when you’re looking at it, they as a team have a lot of good options on it. Like, that’s the thing. Like, why do platoons work with Detroit? Because they have guys like Wenzel Pérez, who they can put with a Kerry Carpenter. They have the pieces to make it work. India Bañez, you know, guys like that. But their best hitter is a lefty. So it’s an interesting balance. But they do crush lefties on the whole this year. Not quite as well in the second half. You know, I’m just, I’m gonna point out there, you can go back and listen to some of our earliest podcasts where we were talking about how the Guardians bat Bibee show. They were unlucky. The Tigers were maybe a bit lucky. And the second half has been a big amount of regression for the Tigers. You know, if you listen to Tom Hamilton, I think if he said it once, he said it four million times, that the White Sox have a better record than the Detroit Tigers. That was, you know, before Cleveland swept the White Sox over the weekend. So, or yeah, in the second half. I probably misspoke there, but it’s like now they’ve. They have one more win than the Chicago White Sox right now, the Tigers. So, it’s a good team. But, man, I will tell you, I’m gonna enjoy if Cleveland plays well, because the Detroit Tiger fans that jumped in our comments and acted like they had already won the World Series based on, you know, half a year or based on, like, Cleveland struggling against Boston was mildly interesting. So, I have a lot of families, Detroit fans. They’re great Detroit fans of men. The block stick came out heavy. So I’m very curious to see if Cleveland does well this weekend, which they’re, you know, you’re probably hoping for two out of three because you never expect to beat Skubal. But in this situation, if you take two out of three, you’re in a very good spot. Justin Lada: I mean, at this point, the Guardians can’t afford to lose a series. They have to take two out of three here. They have to take two out of three next week against the Tigers. They have to take probably three out of four against the Twins. Four out of four. Jeff Ellis: Twins are in free fall. Yeah. Justin Lada: Yeah. Jeff Ellis: Twins are the easiest thing on the schedule. Justin Lada: It’s just so hard to sweep double headers. Then you got the Tigers again next week. That’s going to be two out of three. Then you finish with the Rangers. You got to probably win. You might have to win, probably. You might sweep the Rangers. They’re losing right now to the Astros as we record this. So that’s what people were asking in the insiders group, too, about who to root for tonight. And I said, you want to root for the Astros, technically, because the Guardians have the tiebreaker with the Astros. So you got to pass the Rangers first. And if you finish the year tied with the Astros for the final wild card, you are in. Whereas if they finish the year tied with the Rangers, more than likely they have. They would have to sweep the Rangers in that final series. Then that’d be fine, because they hold the second tiebreaker against the Rangers, which is in interdivision records. So the Guardians have a better AL Central record than the Astros have in the West. But that also means that the Guardians have to sweep the Tigers or the Rangers the final weekend of the year. So it’s gonna. There’s gonna be a lot of moving pieces and parts over the next couple of weeks. I will say that some people also in the insiders group were saying, well, why are they messing with the rotation when it’s been working so well? Well, they did that because of the stretch they were in. Right. You had, you know, a couple of guys that had not gone this deep in the season. You had Cantillo and Messick and all that stuff, and you wanted to be cautious of innings. And then you just had a very long stretch. Now it’s gut check time. You need your best guys to pitch in the series, and you need to put a little bit less emphasis on the Twins series. Even though you should sweep that, but it should be a little bit easier. So I think this is the right call. I mean, win or lose, I know Tanner has had the best year on the whole, his last start was fantastic. I know it’s the White Sox, whatever, but you just said the White Sox are close to the Tigers in terms of record in the second half. So I, I mean, I want my best guys out there in this series, and I, and the only thing you don’t have going for you is you don’t have game theory going for you is, is using somebody better. But I, I, I’ll be surprised. I’m surprised to say this. I’m not surprised to say it, but I’m given how things have gone for him. But I’m really excited to see Joey Cantillo get this chance. The Guardians are going to have to play great defense, though, in Detroit because that big outfield. Jeff Ellis: Actually, I think this is game theory. I think it is because you’re, you’re taking your best starter, Williams, who would have been scheduled to go against Skubal, and you’re having him go against Clarity. And Tanner has had two really good starts, but he has been incredibly inconsistent over the overall course of the year. So by game theory rules, you want to, you know, match up your third best starter versus Skubal, which arguably that could be Tanner this year. I know there’s going to be some people in our comments who will say that that’s he’s not even that, and there’ll be people who say that he’s definitely there too. Either way, game theory is moving Williams up relative to where he would have pitched. Justin Lada: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s totally fair. I mean, I’m perfectly fine with Cantillo going game one. That was the only thing they had lined up because he was on his day at the time. They could kind of push everybody else around into the Minnesota series, and we’ll see how that sets them up for the next Tigers series. Do the Tigers hit lefties well this year? Because they have J. Jones and Andy Abaniz and, you know, Javier Wence Perez. Yeah. So it’s going to be interesting, but I think again, it’s going to come down to pitching and defense, and that’s a ballpark. You got to play really good defense. All right. Travis Bazzana will not be a part of the series this weekend. His season is over. We talked about it yesterday. We’ll talk about how to evaluate his first full season in the pros coming up on the rest of today’s Locked On Guardians. Jeff Ellis: But first, you’ve probably seen a million ads for hair growth products and that. Sure. Like that actually works. There’s so many products out there; it’s hard to know which ones are actually going to do anything. 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That’s neutrophil.com, promo code Locked On MLB Baseball Live. Justin Lada: There is nothing like it. And it’s going to be a tight playoff race right now. So there’s a lot of reasons to get to the ballpark, wherever you are. The energy, the crowd, the chance to see your team in person. Getting tickets, though, that can be the tough part. So you don’t want to be on login screens, and you don’t want surprise fees either. You want to just get the tickets and go. The hardest part should be what do you want to eat at the ballpark, right? Or where do you want to try to buy some merch? That’s why I use the Game Time app. I’ve used it multiple times this year because it gives the advantage back to fans like you and me. It’s fast and easy. They have the Game Time guarantee. You’re getting 100% authentic tickets, they’re delivered on time, and you’re getting a great price too. It shows you exactly what you’re going to pay at checkout with no surprise fees, and you get the best price closer to first pitch. So the price you see is the price you’re paying, and you’re gonna like the price as you wait ’til first pitch. If you want to go, decide to match if you like, see if you can be there. You gotta look at the weather this time of year. Although it’s been beautiful in Cleveland, I’m not sure I’ll be in Detroit, and they give you the best deals. They show you exactly where the best deals are for each ticket. So download the Game Time app today. Create an account, use code LOCKEDMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, that’s promo code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off. Swipe, tap, ticket. Go download Game Time today. Hey, you know that whole thing about the Guardians pitching rotation heading into this Detroit series? Well, our insiders had that first. I sent that message out to our insiders about 5 o’clock or so on, maybe it was 3 o’clock or so on Monday. If you want to be part of that group, join subtext.com/lockedonguardians. We give you some info like that. We chat during the game. Jeff Ellis: I got it before I did content. Justin Lada: That’s true. Yeah, you got that info before Jeff did. So, hey, Jeff’s not an insider. So, you know, you gotta sign up, Jeff, if you want that kind of info. But yeah, you can hang out over there and chat with us, get some bonus content, send us questions for mailbag episodes, and then get some interesting insider info like Travis Bazzana being shut down for the season. So we teased it yesterday. We wanted to talk about it on Monday’s episode, but we had so much to talk about, we didn’t get a chance to dive in. If you missed Monday’s episode, we had a lot of content to get through because the Guardians had a very fun weekend, and we had to kind of cover it all. So now we’ll talk about the unfun thing: Bazzana is out for the year, and I’ve just seen a lot of people, Jeff, talking about, oh, well, he didn’t make the major leagues, or oh, I wish he was moving faster and the numbers weren’t good. Did I expect more from… Jeff Ellis: I mean, they weren’t. Were they spectacular? No, but like, yeah, he still had an above league average WRC+. I think, you know, I talked about before, like his double-A WRC+ would have been top 10 in the league if he had had enough at-bats to qualify, which means if he hadn’t been hurt. Justin Lada: Yeah, I mean, did I expect a little bit better in terms of the counting stats and maybe the batting average? Yeah, I wanted to see him dominate a little more a t Double-A and then see what happens to Triple-A. I’ll say this. So he got off to a good start in Double-A, right? It was a really good start. Then he cooled off and was trying to get his bearings. Then he got hurt, and then he came back and played pretty well. If he got hurt, then he took off like a rocket after he kind of got his bearings back after the oblique injury. And then they performed at Triple-A, and he had obviously a cold start at Triple-A. It took a little bit. And then right before the injury, you know, he had that he had had four home runs in the span of a couple of days. So he was starting to settle in at Triple-A a little bit. And as I’ve been saying all year, if you’ve been reading the newsletter next year in Cleveland, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, if you listen to my other podcast too, every time you get at Bazzana has gotten to a new level, and the Guardians have said this themselves, that he kind of gets his bearings. He tries to, you know, see how pitchers are going to attack him. He wants to get an idea of the batter’s eye in the strike zone. He’s got a very good idea of the strike zone. The only thing I think you can complain about right now, outside of defense, which I think we know is obvious, is Travis Bazzana is passive. He is a passive hitter. He’s got a 38% swing rate, which I think I looked up yesterday in preparation for the show, would be one of the lowest in all of Major League Baseball. I think, you know, Juan Soto is like a guy that’s down in that area. And I, you know, you don’t want to compare anybody to Juan Soto because he’s going to be a Hall of Famer probably. But Juan Soto has a 35% swing rate, so he’s very passive. That’s not always a good thing, you know. You know, I’ve complained about hitters like that in the past, but he’s not chasing out of the zone. The chase rate is incredibly, incredibly minuscule. I mean, it’s in the team. It’s crazy. His Triple-A data shows that the exit velocities were okay. Like, they were good. They were solid. They could be better, but they’re solid. But he barrels the ball, he walks, he doesn’t chase, he doesn’t swing and miss. He didn’t quite start to get to pulling the ball in the air until the end there. So outside of defense and I think just maybe making adjustments and being a little more swing ready, that’s something I could complain about so far. And it’s his first full year, and it was broken up by two injuries too. Like, he had the oblique issue. And then, you know, obliques are just one of the worst injuries for any baseball player, no matter what position you play. So I. Are there things to improve? Sure. But each time he got settled into the level, which he did at Lake County in 2024, he got better. So I have no concerns at all. Would I have liked it to have been better? Sure, you would have liked him to be better. But he, you know, bottom line, he was okay this year. He was solid. There’s definitely some room for improvement next year. But I, by no means am I sitting here saying, oh, God, he’s a bust, and oh, God, he chased the water 2.0 and they got a wrong pick. No, not at all. Jeff Ellis: So would you. Justin Lada: Astros win. By the way, outside of the Rangers, move a game closer back to Cleveland. Sorry. Jeff Ellis: Well, now they’re tied. If the Astros won, Cleveland and Texas are tied. Same record. Two out. Outside of all being in the big leagues this year, what do Chase Burns, Christian Moore, and Jack Caglion all have in common? Justin Lada: They were bad in the big leagues. Jeff Ellis: Negative WARs. Justin Lada: Yeah. Jeff Ellis: They were net hurt to their team. The worst being Jack Caglion. What? Justin Lada: No. Jeff Ellis: Nick Kurtz has been great. I will also say the other side of Nick Kurtz is he’s rocking a .370 BABIP. A year ago, everyone told me how, yeah, Brent Rooker can continue to rock a .360 BABIP because he hits the ball hard. Brent Rooker is having a good year, not a great year. Same with Lawrence Butler. .370 for Nick Kurtz means there’s probably some regression coming. I think he’s going to be a very good player, though. He could still be the best player in this class. And he is the one that, you know, you hold up as like, okay, yeah, like, if they had taken him right now, things might look a little brighter because he’s more of a, you know, what he has. But at the same time, there’s a reason why first basemen never won overall, and that’s because college first basemen do not have a good track record transitioning to the big leagues. It’s been pretty terrible. A, and B, it’s just a low value. But again, you know, I can’t argue if someone’s like, well, Nick Kurtz, it’s like, yeah, he’s having a great year, but everyone else has been kind of uniformly meh to not great. You know, there’s been, you know, and people bring up Connor Griffin, my general rule is I got to see a guy in Double-A. There’s no doubt. And I, you know, I know he’s… Did he get called up there yet? I just don’t remember if he got. Justin Lada: Yeah, he isn’t. He isn’t here or… I’m sorry, he’s in Altoona. Jeff Ellis: Yeah, I got to see kind of that extended look with him there and you know, he could end up being the best one. I’m not sitting here saying I know who the bestplayer in this class is. One thing I know is you can’t say anyone is terrible. Right? Like you and I looked at last year, and if there’s ever a guy who had a bad year, it was Charlie Condon, and he’s rebounded to a small degree. Like, you know, it’s not been great, but you always have to be patient. Travis Bazzana has not been continuously healthy. This year has just been one of those things. He gets healthy, he gets on a hot stretch, he hasn’t settled in. And he’s a guy who had no health issues. But, I mean, this team is health cursed, so what do we expect? But I can’t judge him. I can’t. Joey Oki looked terrible until he got a full season of starts and had those three, four fantastic ones at the end. You need that long rope, that long time to really judge someone. So at this point, it’s a pass. Like he’s had hot points where he has played really well and even when he’s down, he’s finding ways to be productive. Now, I do get worried with walk rates, but because of his passivity, he might be that guy whose walk rates will be a little bit predictive for. But yeah, you were hoping that he’d be healthy, and you would have seen more. But at the same time, I’m not willing to call it a bad pick. I’m not willing to throw my hat away and say, “Oh, bust.” Justin Lada: Yeah. Well, a little bit more to say about Travis Bazzana’s season and his development overall among other prospects. Who did Jeff and I take in this year’s prospect draft? Maybe you remember, maybe you don’t. We’re going to revisit that. We’ll talk about our best picks. We’ll talk about the best picks that should have been made that weren’t. So tune in for the rest of that on today’s Locked On Guardians football season. Oh, it is doing some things right now. Fandom wants to make sure you’re ready for kickoff at the can’t-miss offer right now. If Justin Lada: you are a new customer, you can bet just $5. If your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. And I’ve said multiple times we’ve seen 150, we’ve seen 200, I’ve seen 250, I’ve never seen 300. So if you can responsibly play on FanDuel, have a little bit of fun, and you haven’t done it yet, you can throw $5 on a bet that doesn’t have, you know, it’s very short in terms of odds, and you just want to get that bonus. You can get $300. You can have a little bit more fun. As for the Guardians and Tigers on Tuesday, the over/under is 8. Justin Lada: The Guardians are favored by a run. The Tigers are favored by a run and a half. I can’t decide on picking who is going to win the game, but I can say this: I feel like it’s going to be the under on eight runs. I just do, the way that the Guardians have been pitching and playing defense, the way the Guardians don’t hit but just enough, and the Tigers offense does hit lefties well, as we said. But they haven’t been that great in the second half. So I’m still taking the under on a lot of their games right now. So if you’re ready to play responsibly, download the FanDuel Justin Lada: app right now by visiting FanDuel.com to get started. That’s FanDuel.com to place your first five-dollar bet. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing here, Locked On Guardians, we’re here every single day talking Cleveland Guardians baseball. And if you’re not an everydayer, shout out to our everydayers who are part. We are part of the routine. We do love that. But if you’re not, you can hit the bell on YouTube to make sure you never miss an episode on YouTube, as well as reaction videos, any sort of news videos. The MLB Justin Lada: Squad show, which comes back this week on Friday, and on audio is the best way also to help the podcast out by making sure you’re auto-downloading right into your podcast feeds. Wherever you get podcasts, we’d love to be part of your morning routines. A couple more thoughts on Travis Bazzana as we get into our prospect draft from earlier this season. You were saying about you need to give these guys a little bit of rope. I think I do understand the frustration that we, along with other people, not that we said, “Oh, he’s going to be an All-Star in 2025.” We Justin Lada: didn’t say that, but we did pitch the pick. And everybody’s idea of the pick at number one was that Bazzana was an advanced player, that he wouldn’t need a ton of time in the minors. Like, it was a guy who you kind of thought was close to big-league ready. And that wasn’t the case in 2025. So I do understand people’s panic or frustration, but I understand the tepid nature of the response to his season based off of that context. But yeah, that being said, like, I mean, it just didn’t Justin Lada: happen that way. It’s unfortunate. I wish it had. I would have loved for him to be pushing for a June or September call-up now. We’re gonna be waiting till June 2026, more than likely. You just want to be healthy. And I’m not worried about the injuries. Obliques stink. But he’s going to have the whole offseason to recover from the oblique issue. And I can’t listen to the Chase Lauder comparisons either because again, we talked about this yesterday. Lauder had multiple injuries. He’s missed multiple seasons. Travis Bazzana has already played more games this year in a single season Justin Lada: than Chase Lauder has played in a single season his entire career. Jeff Ellis: A lottery hasn’t been healthy since preschool. He missed. He missed games every single year of college. His healthiest stretch was the Cape Cod League. That is his healthiest stretch in the history of his career is Cape Cod. So it’s very different. They drafted a guy who was hurt at the time, who they knew was hurt. It’s a silly comparison. Justin Lada: Travis Bazzana played 84 games this season, Chase LaViolette in his minor league career, has never played more than 40, 57 games in a season, and that was 2023. He only played 42 this year. Jeff Ellis: I believe he played more games in the Cape than he played at James Madison the three years he was there. Justin Lada: I would not be surprised by that. Yeah, not at all. So, yeah, I’m not entertaining those comparisons. I’m sorry. The only thing I worry about with Bazzana is defense because we’ve seen how good second-base defense, how important that’s been over the last couple of years. And on Sunday, of course, that’s a conversation for another day. The conversation we want to have now is which of Jeff or I had the worst prospect draft. Jeff Ellis: I don’t think watching it, I’m allowed to draft Chase LaViolette anymore. Right? Justin Lada: Like, is that not? Because, let’s see, I have the data, our insiders have the content in their folder on the Google Drive. Jeff Ellis: Because I was team injury originally, so I think if I had him three years. Justin Lada: I had Chase LaViolette last year actually, and in 2023, you had Chase LaViolette. So you’ve had Chase LaViolette two out of the last three years. But historically, Jeff, you’ve been team injury. You have taken Chase LaViolette, you’ve taken Daniel Espino, you’ve taken Cody Morris. See, you’ve taken… It wasn’t Juan Brito this year. You’ve taken George Valera. So you left which. Who’s always been hurt. You have historically been team injury. If you’re watching on YouTube, we have the graphic up. And again, if you’re an insider, you also have this in the Google Drive. You can access as well. I think we both did pretty good, to be honest with you. Looking at this like catcher, I think obviously I had the edge at catcher. Like I had Cooper Ingle, you had Kozar, but Kozar came on strong at the end of the year, in my opinion, you had the best pick of the entire season at Ralphie Velasquez. I think he was the best player in the system the entire season, at least in terms of the position player side, pitching-wise. I definitely had. Jeff Ellis: Yeah, I would argue it’s Kayfus. I would argue. I mean, we forget because he got called up. I think Kayfus was the minor for them. Justin Lada: I’m just… I’m just so high on Ralphie right now. Jeff Ellis: I mean, really, if Kayfus is still a prospect, like, I would have Ralphie ranked ahead of him. But just in terms of minor, I would… I think I would have Ralphie ahead of Kayfus right now. But I think that Kayfus had been better overall. Yeah, but they would probably be like this, like, just because I… Oh, I. Justin Lada: Don’t know that I would put Kayfus above Ralphie. That’s… Jeff Ellis: No, that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying I would have Ralphie ahead of Kayfus. Justin Lada: Oh, yeah. Jeff Ellis: But in terms of performance this year, I think Kayfus has had the better year than Ralphie. Justin Lada: Ralphie. Jeff Ellis: But they would be very close. Like, it’s… Justin Lada: Yeah, I’m not looking at… I’m not looking at performance. I’m looking at who raised their stock the most in terms of their future. And to me, that’s Ralphie. I mean, you got… You grabbed J.J. Bleday, who I think is starting to blossom. I know we’re being a little skeptical in terms of what he’s done over a short period of time recently. But I don’t know. I just… We’ve always liked him, so I like where he’s at there. I like the pitching I grabbed, though. I got Dowdy and I got Messick, who had a great year, and this is the majors this year. And I got Joey Oki, who I know didn’t have a great Arizona Complex League run, but he has had a fantastic end of the season. You know, he was one of my favorite prospects in the draft last year, and I like where he’s going too. And I got Alfonsin Rosario, who struggled in Double-A, but you know, had a pretty breakout year. Jeff Ellis: We both had three really good pitchers at the top of ours. We both had three solid performers at the top of our rotations. You know, first base was great. Catcher was… I ended up having a nice rebound because the outfield was a little sketchy. You know, again, just the injury showed up throughout both of these. Justin Lada: Cleveland outfield sketchy. No, I don’t think that’s ever true. Jeff Ellis: And I think kind of one of the hilarious things in retrospect is neither of us took Franco Alaman for our bullpen. Like, what did we see that made us even then be like, yeah, we… And we were going well off-board. Like, I decided to go with Magnus Ellert, who did not have a great year. Justin Lada: No. Jeff Ellis: But I decided to go with him over Alaman. Like, I had my concerns, you had your concerns. And this year we’ve seen those concerns come to life. But I think that was one of those things that stood out that we both… Because I was looking at specifically, like, who were my five highest rated prospects who did not get taken by anyone. And it’s… It’s Espino, it’s Cody Huff, it’s… Justin Lada: I mean, Cody Huff. Come on, let’s get real. You had Engel and Kozar. That was pretty obvious. Jeff Ellis: You had Alaman and you had Dougn and Casey. Those are my five highest guys. Justin Lada: Yeah. Jeff Ellis: Six would have been D eLucia for me. So at least there’s that. Justin Lada: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I took Rafe Schlesinger as a reliever and I still stand by that. Jeff Ellis: Probably the biggest name that right now who isn’t on one of these lists? Justin Lada: Yeah. Cleo Watson. Not on. Didn’t get drafted by either of us. Now, if you’re listening on audio, so at the beginning of the year, if you’re not, if you’re new, we’ve been doing this since 2023. We do a prospect draft at the beginning of each year, and we select an entire starting lineup, including a DH. We take five starting pitchers and we each take two relievers. So neither one of us took out of six outfielders drafted and including the DH spot, neither one of us took Cleo Watson and then neither one of us took Jace LaViolette, who, you know, not really a surprise because he was a big name coming into the year, but if you look, if you look at his numbers in 2024, they were kind of interesting. And he took another step forward this year. So he’s a guy. Alfonsin Rosario was a guy that was on a lot of prospect lists coming into the year, but you and I are just very skeptical about complex league stats. But he got promoted at age 17 to Low A and held his own there, so that’s pretty good. And yeah, Cleo Watson, probably the other one. And you are once again, Jeff, team injury. You attacked. You took Andrew Walters, you had the Lada. CJ Kayfus was hurt this year. Welbin finished the year on the IL, I think. I mean, I had Brito, I had Hanau and Valera. Those guys were hurt a lot this year, but outside of that, my team was much healthier, I would say. Jeff Ellis: Yeah, it’s always interesting. I did have the two second-half guys. I had Nick Mitchell and Ralphie Velasquez. Yeah, my team got better as the year went on. Justin Lada: That was a heck of a premonition not to take Franco. Alan, I don’t know if you and I were just trying to get cute and go off board or we were really concerned. Jeff Ellis: We were concerned because we talked about like, I hadn’t pitched multiple days and like the lack of development and like the stuff was not. Justin Lada: How about we both missed on third base? I took. You took Alex Mooney, who had a very tough year in Double A. I took Luis Morejo, who you and I were very high on coming into the year, and a lot of swing and miss issues there. And yeah, your Nick Mitchell pick, I think looks fun. Peterson solid. Jeff Ellis: Yeah. There’s not great third basemen in the system. Like, let’s be honest, I wonder why. Justin Lada: It’s because that position’s locked up. All right. You don’t have to worry about it. Yeah, I can’t think of anybody in the minor leagues, so I’m like, this guy is going to be a good third baseman. Maybe it’ll be Dean Curly. Yeah, it definitely shouldn’t be shortstop. Not after the way he played the other night at shortstop in the Chan the first game. Jeff Ellis: I’m sorry that that was one of the reasons I knocked him to the second round. Like I believe in the bat overall, but like he was, he, I viewed him as like unless the team fixes him, he’s a DH, but like he’s got the arm. Like I think he’s probably the number one third base prospect, but that’s something we’ll handle in the offseason. We do our position review, we’ll be able to dive into that. Justin Lada: Lots to dive in there. We got a lot to cover still all week and of course starting, of course, tomorrow with the Tigers and Guardians series starting. So we’ll be back with you on Wednesday talking Guardians, Tigers game one. We’ll talk about some scoreboard watching. We mentioned the Tigers or the Rangers and Astros game tonight. So the Guardians and Astros or the Rangers are tied for that four spot, one out of the wild card, at least one spot out. I don’t know how many games, but we’ll do that and we’ll do some playoff scenarios in math. We’ll look at the Twin series ahead too. We’ll just, and we’ll maybe dive into some more minor league stuff as well. So there’s just so much to cover right now. It’s a lot of fun. I gotta be honest with you. I know, I know last year was a lot of fun. The Guardians basically went wire to wire as the division champs and the playoffs were a lot of fun. But this, the September man has been a lot of fun. There’s been some interesting minor league developments. The team is in contention when they have no business being in contention. And it’s going to be, it’s going to be nice just to watch this team fight for a playoff spot down the stretch. I just hope it’s 2013 and not 2005. Jeff Ellis: Yes. And I want to thank you all for joining us. Reading, reviewing, downloading. It helps make sure you do all the little things, you know. Comment below. Big shout-outs to top five commenters. John Fagan, Cheeks Malone, the K Left Hart, Lawrence Charles, Eric Burns. And what I have to say to all of you is send them to Detroit. Go Eric. Justin Lada: Kurt Smith.

Cleveland Guardians face crucial series against Detroit Tigers. Can they keep playoff hopes alive?
Justin Lada and Jeff Ellis break down the Guardians’ must-win matchup with the Tigers, discussing how the Guardians will lineup their rotation this week. The guys dissect prospect Travis Bazzana’s season, highlighting his potential despite injuries. They revisit their prospect draft picks, offering insights into the Guardians’ farm system and player development. The show also covers playoff scenarios, potential tiebreakers, and notable minor league performances.

0:00 Intro: Guardians’ crucial series against Tigers
5:02 Analyzing Tigers’ hitting and Guardians’ pitching matchups
15:56 Travis Bazzana’s season review and development
25:52 Reviewing prospect draft picks and performances
30:43 Discussing third base prospects in Guardians system

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