Here is an analysis of the prospects in the Cleveland Guardian Farm System. The scout report compiles information provided by industry sources and my own observations. This is the fifth year we divide between two expected relief characters, the abbreviation we see in the “Position” column below: MIRP for multi-set relief pitchers and SIRP for single-set relief pitchers. Listed ETAs are usually associated with years that must be added to the 40-player lineup to avoid being eligible for Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments were made where it looked right, but we took it as experience.
A quick overview of what FV (future value) can be found here. A more in-depth overview can be found here.
All ranking prospects below also appear on the board, and the website provides each organization with a resource for sortable reconnaissance information. It has more detailed information than this article (as well as track and field data from various sources) and integrates a list of each team so readers can compare potential customers across farm systems. Can be found here.
Other prospects to note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference for each category.
National Defense Assistance Overview
Kody Huff, c
Alex Mooney
Dayan Frias, Inf
All three guys can play to their advantage and at least do a good job. Huff is a Phoenix man who goes to Stanford, a regular defender who is harder to play than ever before, but has too many strikeouts. He may be the excellent third catcher for the 40s. Mooney is an athlete with a strong top and a curved lower body. He has a rough edge on defense, but he may have associated strong peaks due to his swing. Frias is the defender. He used to look like a future plus a third base glove, but he was just average. He still has good left-handed bat speed, switch hit utility and defensive versatility.
Daniel Espino
Daniel Espino, RHP
Now we are in the Espino who once was the best pitching prospect in the sport and he needs to show that he is healthy before he can project a realistic major league future for him. He used to touch at 102 mph and bent with a huge secondary thing, but he's been for a few years due to multiple serious injuries.
Soft deep starter
Ryan Webb, LHP
Rodney Boone, LHP
Aaron Davenport, RHP
Webb is a 26-year-old left-handed from Georgia. He entered 2025 and performed well in the middle and upper stage statistics for two consecutive years. He had a cricket bowler's arm movement and dived from a low 80s slider. Once upon a time, Boone's sneaky fastball, above average and plus commanded sneaky fastballs were once part of a large college rotation at UC Santa Barbara, making the 25-year-old perform well with Double-A. Davenport is super durable (he threw 100 innings or more in each of the last four seasons) and runs well behind his invisible 89 mph fastball. He didn't add any second level.
Electric sleeper
Jorge Burgos, 1B/
Jonathan Martinez
Luis Merejo, 1b/rf
Burgos has the speed of a left-handed bat, and his swing is designed to master all his powers. Last year, he hit 18 bombs but beat them nearly 30% of the time, which is too much for the poor 1B/back. Martinez is another of many interesting guardians in their complex group. His bats are very fast, but the feeling of contact is below average. Merejo is an 18-year-old Righty Slugger who has worked so far in 2025 to connect on the ball, but he has exceeded the speed of the bat and has a hard hit rate of 50% on the list publication.
Bat to ball type
Christian Knapczyk, 2b
Yeiferth Castillo, lf
Maick Collado, 1B
Bennett Thompson, c
Knapczyk is the only one baseback guard with no strength to play there every day. He was excellent in A-ball, which is expected because he is a 23-year-old who came out of the ACC. Castillo is a short, 18-year-old Venezuelan outfielder whose height and weight (5-foot-8, 155 pounds) constitute a ridiculous underestimation of his size. He has an excellent rookie ball contact record, but he is the largest 1B/LF type athlete and needs to keep his strikeout in the unit numbers to continue climbing. Collado is a first baseman with a switch with a good contact feel, but doesn't have enough power for the first base bat. Thompson was third in Oregon in 2024 ($150,000), and they had offensive success in Low-A in 2025. I was skeptical of his long-term viability of swing, but he had done enough to do the radar.
Additional relief
Magnus Ellerts, RHP
Bradley Hanner, RHP
Tyler Thornton, RHP
Jake Miller, RHP
Ellerts is a 6-foot-5 right-hand fastball with a distance of 92-95 mph, thanks to his nearly 7-foot extension. He would flash a good slider, but hang too many sliders. If he could polish his control, he had the relief ceiling in the middle. Usually, the low-slot pitcher will be longer, waving the arm movement, but Hanna is a low-release guy with a stroke of ultra-short shooter. It gives weird angles to his 92mph fastball and later lateral action, but Hanna's control may need improvement to take on him in a major league role. Thornton is an open right with flat corners, 94-96 mph fastball and 30th grade commands. He recently returned from the IL and pitched in Akron. Miller can only throw 89 on average, but he does have deceptive arm speed and right freeze slider. The 24-year-old started in Akron.
System Overview
This is an above-average farm system, thanks to the top 100 prospects being first listed and due to the 45 fv layer being particularly deep in this organization. Many of the high-profile players above are unable to start slowly or get injured, which prevents those who can arguably reach their 55- or 60-grade prospects to more than a month and a half throughout the season. Injured here rampant. I figured out that 13 players on the list are now injured or recovered from injuries. It generated some fluctuations in the evaluations throughout the system to study many participants affected by their health.
Are the flowering developments rising a little? While there have been enough progress for several rear wheel drafters lately to advance to that ranking, there is no obvious spin type in Tanner Bibee-ish, they have added huge Velo and are now spinning through this organization. There are a lot of previous non-enterprises who suddenly had over 35 or 40 FVs, but there are fewer ways we are used to seeing in this system that really impact pitching. Last year’s Guardians draft class brought three high-profile high school pitchers into the fold (Braylon Doughty, Joey Oakie, Chase Mobley), and it looked like a intentional attempt to change that, but two of the three guys drove by the door.
Instead, the core of the system is now positioned participants, often contact-oriented prospects, who will become stronger and start swinging more aggressively once they turn to professionals. Cleveland’s amateur reconnaissance method is unique. Like many teams, they rely heavily on data and modeling, especially with large conference college players. They rarely send Scouts to college games this season until late in the season, so Scouts can spend more time flipping rocks in places with less data, such as high and middle schools. That's how you ended up in the same draft class with Matt Wilkinson and Cooper Ingle. Cleveland also has a record of youngest players in a given draft course and college players who outperformed their junior season output in sophomore and Cape Cod (indications indicating the use of the model).
Their behavior is similar internationally as the Guardian Scouts are in the early stages of tracking amateur swing decisions and contact rates in that market. In the past, they have attracted short leverage, compact athletes internationally. Although this remains to some extent, there have been more, larger, height athletes rolling at lower levels of the system over the past few years, rather than the prospect of being 6-foot-2, rather than the 5-foot-9-foot-9. A small market organization like this should at least do some small market organizations, which Cleveland has adjusted, which is a small market organization.
