Cleveland Guardians Dynasty Sleepers, Breakouts, and Busts

Discover sleepers and breakouts from the Clevaland Guardians for dynasty fantasy baseball both on the MLB and prospect side.

With dynasty season ramping up, it is time to talk about some sleepers, breakouts, and busts for each team. You can find our rankings and reports to see how we at the Dynasty Dugout value players for your dynasty leagues, but I also feel like it’s helpful to truly identify whether I believe a player can be a breakout or not. Here is where we call our shots on players, I think, require a call to action in dynasty, whether it be to buy or sell that player.

Let’s discuss some sleepers, breakouts, and busts for dynasty from the Cleveland Guardians.

Cleveland Guardians Dynasty Sleepers, Breakouts, Busts

MLB Sleeper: Steven Kwan, OF

No pomp and circumstance here, Kwan just keeps chugging along. He finished as the #64 player in Fantrax standard points leagues in 2022 and followed up that campaign by finishing #57 overall in 2023. He maintained his ppg from the year prior despite a near-uniform 30 point haircut across his slash line.

The recipe is rather simple. Accumulators are difference-makers and Kwan is among the very best. He’s projected to rack up over 600 plate appearances at the top of Cleveland’s lineup, and there isn’t much of a credible threat to his playing time. The Guardians acquired Estevan Florial and will ostensibly debut Chase DeLauter, but that likely impedes Ramon Laureano and Myles Straw.

Kwan plays up even further in K-penalty formats (Fantrax standard does not penalize batters for strikeouts). He finished with the fourth-lowest K% in MLB behind just Luis Arraez, Jeff McNeil, and Keibert Ruiz, all of which also play up in K-penalty leagues. It’s a historically overlooked archetype, perhaps because their style of play is so prosaic, and presents a huge opportunity to profit. You can likely acquire Kwan via trade in a 1:1 exchange for a player outside of the consensus top 100.

MLB Breakout: Bo Naylor, C

It was an abbreviated campaign for Naylor in 2023 as he spent roughly half the year with the Columbus Clippers trying to force his way up to Cleveland. His first go-around in 2022 was, in a word, brief. It constituted just eight plate appearances that saw him fail to register any counting stat beyond the PAs themselves. During his time with the Guardians in 2023, Naylor managed a .237/.339/.470 slash with 11 home runs and five stolen bases in 230 plate appearances. Not bad for a 24-year-old rookie backstop!

What’s more, Naylor did it while exhibiting pretty solid plate skills – not necessarily surprising given his minor league K/BB, but very encouraging nonetheless. His chase rate and whiff rate were both above average (read: lower than the MLB average; verbiage is hard), and he did a nice job getting the ball in the air in the form of both fly balls and line drives. He hit fastballs and breaking balls quite well but struggled a bit on off-speed (in a very small sample) and could stand to hit the ball a bit harder, but his ADP since the calendar turned to the new year has him as the 14th catcher off the board implies the belief that he won’t make a jump offensively in his sophomore campaign. I think he could.

MLB Bust: Shane Bieber, SP

Watching the 2020 version of Shane Bieber brought joy I wasn’t sure was possible at the time. We are regrettably talking about the 2024 season in this column, and as such, there aren’t a lot of positive indicators. There comes a time when you can only rely on track record for so long, and for most pitchers that cliff comes some time in their 30’s, but in Bieber’s case it would appear that time has come early.

Bieber has never been a power pitcher. The highest average four-seam fastball velocity he’s had in a single season was 94.1 mph in 2020, a figure that has atrophied to 91.3 mph in 2023 and registered a 62% hard-hit rate against. That’s not the only problem, though – all of his offerings sans the slider had average EVs that outpaced the MLB average: fastball (94.8 mph), cutter (90.3 mph), curveball (90.4 mph), and changeup (96.2 mph).

His peripherals weren’t buying it, either. He may have finished with a respectable 3.80 ERA that masks how precipitous his drop-off really was, but his xERA was a full run higher. He allowed a bottom three percent hard-hit rate and a bottom two percent hard-hit rate. Sure, he dealt with elbow inflammation that surely impacted his performance, but before leaning on that as a defense I’d caution you to question the ground beneath that argument.

Prospect Sleeper: Alex Clemmey, LHP

Cleveland nabbed Clemmey with the 58th pick in last summer’s draft and promptly inked him to a $2.3M bonus – roughly $900K over slot value for the selection – in order to lure him away from a commitment to Vanderbilt. He was just 17 at the time of the draft, already standing six-foot-six, 205 pounds, and was pumping mid-90s on his fastball. His curveball is his primary secondary offering and flashes plus traits, and he throws a changeup occasionally.

The Guardians have earned a reputation for refining college starters without big stuff into high octane arms. The dynamic is a little different with respect to Clemmey. He’s an attractive hunk of clay, folks, we’re talking about something you can mold who will require a little TLC as he matures. His mechanics need refinement – his delivery is full of effort, and command is not his fortè – and he’ll likely need to develop a strong third pitch.

Prospect Breakout: Welbyn Francisca, SS

One of my favorite demographics to target is the DSL standout primed to begin the year in stateside competition. Francisca is one of my favorites in this year’s crop. He’s a five-foot-ten, 175 lb switch-hitting teenager and is coming off a 178 plate appearance DSL campaign that saw him compile a .316/.419/.500 line with three home runs, six triples, seven doubles, and 11 stolen bases.

Francisca is presently hit-over-power with an up-the-middle defensive profile, which happens to be an archetype in which Cleveland is heavily invested. He’s coordinated from both sides of the plate with strong bat-to-ball ability. He has plenty of bat speed, and there’s a chance he will eventually get to average game power. This profile figures to play up in points formats even in the absence of true game-changing power or speed, though you’d like both of those tools to develop as he matures.

Francisca should start in the complex and could be an early mover to Low-A. Most DSL players fly relatively under the radar until they come to the states, and Francisca’s price could rise considerably once more evaluators get eyes on him.