The Cleveland Guardians Pipeline Might Be the Best in Baseball

How the Dolans Do Business, Part II: The Machine – by Mario Crescibene In January, I wrote a piece about the Dolans and why the Guardians wouldn’t spend . The argument was simple: the Dolans aren’t trying to win championships; they’re trying to maximize systemic value. The concept is simple in theory: develop prospects, trade them at peak value, restock the system, and repeat until you have a fully stocked five-tier system.

A self-sustaining machine designed to maximize franchise value for an eventual sale. I expressed doubt whether the pipeline was truly working — with names like Jhonkensy Noel, Jonathan Rodriguez, and Nolan Jones having passed through the ranks — and argued that while the pipeline keeps growing, the prospects keep failing to deliver at the major league level. But some of those prospects are finally beginning to prove why they were so highly touted.

So now that it’s April and the season is under way, let’s analyze the machine the Guardians have built, and the state it’s in. The grid below maps the Guardians’ position players across the organization. For the purpose of this article, we will look at the outfield and infield as position groups, while separating catchers and first basemen.

We will also be looking at the pipeline before Arias was placed on the IL. Names in red highlight MLB Pipeline Top 100 Prospects, and bold names are organizational top 30 prospects. The numbers in parentheses show their organizational ranking first, and their MLB Top 100 Ranking second, where applicable.