{"id":536172,"date":"2026-01-24T14:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T14:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/536172\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T14:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T14:10:13","slug":"guardians-news-and-notes-six-guardians-prospects-in-mlb-pipelines-top-100-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/536172\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians News and Notes: Six Guardians Prospects in MLB Pipeline\u2019s Top 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, MLB Pipleline released their list of Top 100 prospects<\/a>, and the Cleveland Guardians landed six players in the list, second only to the Seattle Mariners\u2019 seven prospects:<\/p>\n

Impressive! Now, to see if any of these five hitters will actually get an opportunity to and make good on the opportunity to hit major league pitching. We know the Guardians usually get the most out of their pitching prospects, and I think an argument can be legitimately made for both Khal Stephen and Braylon Doughty making this list.<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, check out Tommy Pecoraro\u2019s quick write-up<\/a> of his experience of the Akron Rubber Ducks\u2019 banquet headlined by Guardians President of Baseball Operations\u2019 Chris Antonetti. Antonetti, again, made clear that the company line about not wanting to block young players by adding good major league hitters is going to be the Guardians\u2019 excuse for being set to cut payroll by $20M or so. I guess we will see if they pursue some extensions in the spring to increase that number; they certainly should have the flexibility to do so if they want.<\/p>\n

I will write more about this after Tommy gets a chance to write his full piece, but I simply don\u2019t buy that the Guardians wouldn\u2019t have upgraded the middle of their lineup and\/or centerfield if they weren\u2019t under some pretty severe payroll restrictions from ownership. It doesn\u2019t pass the smell test for me. Since I can\u2019t change that, and I also can\u2019t even tell you how unfair or fair those restrictions are, here is the main thing I want to see in Spring Training:<\/p>\n

-Fully open opportunities for the best Guardians\u2019 young hitters to make the roster regardless of service time considerations. We all know that even if Bazzana comes to Spring Training and looks like a prime Chase Utley clone, he\u2019s not making the roster for AT LEAST the convenient reasoning of missing spring training time with the World Baseball classic. Fine. But, let Juan Brito have a legitimate shot to play second over Gabriel Arias or Daniel Schneemann. Let Chase DeLauter, George Valera and, heck, Petey Halpin and Kahlil Watson have legitimate shots in the land of opportunity that is the Cleveland outfield. Do NOT simply hand centerfield to a Nolan Jones and Angel Martinez platoon for a two-week stretch to try to save a few million down the road on DeLauter. Do NOT attempt to convince us Logan Allen is a better fifth starter option than Parker Messick. If you\u2019re going to lean on the strength of your young core in public comments, do it in private practice also.<\/p>\n

Ok, that\u2019s all I have to say for now. I am sure Antonetti is taking notes (where\u2019s my sarcasm font when I need it?).<\/p>\n

I am making an attempt as best I can to move away from Twitter links, but I could not find the following content from WEWS reporter Mason Horodyski anywhere else, so here is a clip of Antonetti talking about blocking young players:<\/p>\n

And here is Antonetti reminding us that this organization is committed to winning a World Series at all costs (except, clearly, for the ownership group):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last night, MLB Pipleline released their list of Top 100 prospects, and the Cleveland Guardians landed six players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,38552,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-536172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-guardians","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians-news","12":"tag-clevelandguardians","13":"tag-guardians","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115950480589399753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}