The Cleveland Guardians Are So Back
Alongside the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland turned back the clock to 1995 in a potential World Series preview over the weekend.
The 1995 World Series between the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians was a true Fall Classic. A battle of the two best teams in baseball by record, it featured a 1-run margin in five of the series’ six games — only the 1972 World Series between Cincinnati and Oakland featured more 1-run games (six) — and the razor-thin margin between the teams was typified by Atlanta’s 1-0 victory in the Game 6 clincher.
Both Atlanta and Cleveland would return to the World Series later in the decade, but 1995 might have represented the peak for each franchise during that era.
Flash forward nearly 30 years, and the team now known as the Guardians staged another dramatic series against the Braves this past weekend. It was another battle of baseball’s two best teams by record, with Cleveland outlasting Atlanta in 11 innings on Saturday while the Braves walked off the Guardians in the 10th on Sunday to take 2 of 3 in the series.
If this was the preview of a 1995 World Series rematch, it could foreshadow another classic this fall. And we would have expected the Braves to be there, barring another postseason letdown against the Philadelphia Phillies. But the Guardians are probably MLB’s most fascinating new contender of 2024 — a team that both is and isn’t supposed to be in that conversation right now.
The Indians of the mid-to-late 2010s were a powerhouse that came so, so close to ending the franchise’s long championship drought against the Chicago Cubs in 2016, but they never fully achieved their potential with that core. (3B Jose Ramirez is the only player still on the roster from that era.) The team then tried to retool on the fly and dipped in performance — falling below .500 in 2021 — while also managing a rebrand to the Guardians.1
But in 2022, Cleveland was one of the surprise breakout teams of the season, armed with MLB’s youngest roster. The Guardians were still led by prime-aged stars Ramirez — who was still arguably the most underrated superstar in baseball — and SP Shane Bieber, but they also got big contributions from 24-year-old LF Steven Kwan, SP Triston McKenzie and RP Emmanuel Clase and 23-year-old 2B Andres Gimenez, each of whom had joined the team since 2020. With 92 wins, Cleveland won the AL Central by 11 games and swept the Rays in the wild-card round before blowing a 2-1 lead in the ALDS against the Yankees.2
Despite the underwhelming end to the postseason, the Guardians seemed to be primed for continued success heading into 2023. Specifically, since its breakout effort was powered by speed and defense — attributes that MLB was making a concerted effort to emphasize with their big rule changes — Cleveland looked like a team that might resist the usual regression that comes after a big breakout year.
That didn’t happen. The Guardians dropped from 92 to 76 wins, which instead made them one of MLB’s most disappointing ballclubs last season. Practically every player Cleveland was counting on to replicate their prior success fell off: After collectively producing 37.2 Wins Above Replacement3 in 2022, the combination of Ramirez, Gimenez, Bieber, Kwan, McKenzie, Clase, Cal Quantrill, Amed Rosario (who was traded at the deadline) and Myles Straw had just 16.9 total WAR for the Guardians in 2023.
And yet, after that detour on their road back to contention, the Guardians are now good again. Their 19-9 start is their strongest since going 20-8 at the beginning of 2011. (The last time they went exactly 19-9 to begin a season came in 2001, the same Indians squad that would mount the greatest comeback in MLB history — against the winningest team in history — when they overcame a 12-run deficit to beat the Seattle Mariners in August.)
That Cleveland team was sort of the last gasp for the ‘90s-era Indians who had narrowly missed winning multiple World Series. (After making the playoffs six times in seven years from 1995-2001, they would only return twice in the next 14 years.) But although there’s a lot of season between these Guardians at the end of April and a return to glory in October, they’re back on the right track again — back where we thought they’d be by now a few years ago.
And given the thrilling games they produced against their old rivals in Atlanta this past weekend, baseball fans should want to see more of Kwan, Ramirez, Gimenez, Josh Naylor, Tanner Bibee and company in big moments this year.
Filed under: Baseball
I always thought that was one of the very best examples of this type of rebrand — the color scheme and jersey wordmarks looked like a modernization of the original, and “Guardians” sounds a lot like “Indians” anyway.
Some things never change.
Using my JEFFBAGWELL version of WAR — aka the Joint Estimate Featuring FanGraphs and B-R Aggregated to Generate WAR, Equally Leveling Lists.
Love the story of the vastly underrated Guardians. I remember watching the MLB Network when Cleveland shipped Lindor to New York and the crew acted as if the Cleveland front office should be charged with fraud and incarcerated. I wasn't so sure.
Lindor seemed to be declining a touch and wanted a king's ransom. His defense was slipping too - a worrisome sign. It felt like they made a solid business decision. A business decision - too often, sports media ignores the business side of transactions as if they don't exist. Economics is a large part of destiny and understanding the power of transactions and future valuations is critical.
It felt like an overreaction from a collection of ex-players.
While that trade has been analyzed and debated, what is not discussed enough is Cleveland's courage to do it and avoid what Bill James called the Whirlpool Principle - where teams are drawn to a common level of mediocrity. Good teams are paralyzed by their success and wait too long to make changes. Bad teams make tons of changes - some of which work - and are lifted upward.
A mediocre middle.
For the Guardians (and the Braves too), it's hard to make changes in the face of success. Yet, that's what they both have done with Lindor, Bauer, Freeman, Swanson and others. Their relatively long run of sustained success this century is admirable and reflects in large part their elite business acumen.