The Guardians made it past the All-Star break; how should we view what happened so far?
Despite being without our future Hall of Fame third baseman, José Ramírez, and the player who was leading the team in slugging percentage and home runs prior to injury, Angel Martínez, for over a month now, the Guardians have weathered the most difficult parts of their schedule and still rest atop the AL Central division tied with the White Sox. Coming into the season, expectations were once again that this would be a team that is carried by their pitching and defense, and would have to find enough offense to chalk up wins. Today, we’re going to take a look at how this Guardians team has managed those expectations thus far in 2026.
We’re going to look at the 5 major categories of team performance – starting pitching, relief pitching, hitting, base running, and defense – and briefly discuss whether the 2026 team has met general preseason expectations for each category, or fallen below/exceeded them. First, let’s look at the starting rotation.
Starting Rotation: Exceeded Expectations
There were some inconsistencies in the rotation. Slade Cecconi got off to a bad start, and Tanner Bibee has thrown a couple clunkers here and there. But Parker Messick is a legitimate Rookie of the Year contender, and both he and Gavin Williams are both in the Cy Young conversation. Joey Cantillo has quietly been incredibly solid as well. All in all, the rotation has the 7th best ERA in MLB and has thrown the 3rd most innings in MLB (just 0.1 IP behind the Dodgers in 2nd place). I think we expected them to be fairly good given the finish they had to the 2025 season, but where I believe they have exceeded expectations is specifically in the ability to get deeper into games while also maintaining a top 10 ERA in the sport.
Bullpen: Below Expectations
In 2024, the Guardians’ bullpen was so good, it almost can’t be described. They were 1st in fWAR and ERA by a large margin. In 2025, they were 3rd in MLB in both of those categories. So far in 2026, their ERA is 8th in MLB and their fWAR is 12th. This season has had a couple of uncharacteristic bullpen collapses (such as late innings with 4+ BBs leading to blown leads), and a couple of injuries haven’t helped. Hunter Gaddis missed basically all of spring training and the beginning of the regular season, and Erik Sabrowski missed the end of May and most of June as well. This season hasn’t been without its positives though. Both Daniel Espino and Franco Aleman have had promising starts to their MLB careers in 2026, and of course 2026 AL All-Star Cade Smith has been as dominant of a closer as you can ask for. While a bullpen ERA of 3.74 that’s 8th in all of MLB is definitely a good bullpen, I do believe this aspect of team performance has fallen below expectations purely because the previous 2 seasons set the expectations so high.
Hitting: Exceeded Expectations*
This section is a bit complicated because there’s a lot of nuance here, but I’ll try to go through it quickly. The 2025 Guardians offense was bottom 3 in almost every single meaningful offensive category – the wRC+ was 87 and the OPS was .670; they ranked 28th and 29th respectively. We knew in the offseason there was going to be a lot of promising youngsters filling in some holes in the offense coming into 2026, but young hitters can be incredibly volatile. For those reasons, I think the expectations were low coming into 2026. On June 13th, three of the Guardians’ five most productive hitters (at that time) all left the game with injuries. José Ramírez – the superstar, Angel Martínez – the team’s leader in home runs and slugging percentage, and Chase DeLauter – arguably the team’s best pure hitter, all were going to be out for multiple weeks. Going into that game, the team’s wRC+ was at 95, and the team OPS was 0.688, which ranked 22nd and 27th respectively in MLB. The bottom line is that still isn’t very good, but it was a meaningful improvement over 2025. Losing those players has driven the same offensive totals down over the last 4 weeks leading up to the break (wRC+ of 92 is 25th and an OPS of 0.679 is 29th). But considering they’ve been missing multiple weeks of key offensive players, I do think overall that the offense has looked better than I expected, even though the current numbers don’t really show it.
Baserunning: Met Expectations
The 2026 Guardians team is 5th in MLB in SBs at 93 and 7th in the MLB in BsR* on FanGraphs at 5.2. There really aren’t any surprises here. The team looked as aggressive on the basepaths as I would have expected. José was stealing bases left and right. And a number of other players like Travis Bazzana, Chase Delauter, and Angel Martínez also have looked great on the bases this season.
Defense: Met Expectations
This is very similar to the previous section. In 2026, the Guardians rank 8th in MLB by FRV (9) and 9th in MLB by FanGraphs Def rating (8.6). Steven Kwan is still playing elite defense in multiple OF positions. Daniel Schneemann has put himself into the conversation for the Utility Gold Glove award in the AL. And how can we not mention the catching tandem (Austin Hedges and Patrick Bailey) for not only being good defensive catchers, but also for their pitch calling and game management, which have helped the pitching staff succeed.
Our Best Kept Secret
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably noticed one name that hasn’t been mentioned yet. You could even argue it’s the name that probably should be brought up more than all the others, and you aren’t wrong. I’ve been thinking about this section the entire time I’ve been putting this piece together, because if you want to talk about exceeding expectations, I don’t know if one single member of this roster personifies that more than Brayan Rocchio – a player who struggled badly in 2024 and was sent back to AAA after a difficult start to 2025, with almost every single fan begging to get him off the roster. He turned himself into a player who went into the All-Star Break ranked as the 9th best position player in the American League by fWAR (2.9).
He could’ve been mentioned as a key player in every single one of these position player sections. A 113 wRC+. A 9.9 Def rating on FanGraphs. Stealing 15 out of 20 bases to start the season. It’s really felt like every single time our backs have been against the wall, Brayan Rocchio has been there to save the day. Clutch hitting, walkoffs, game saving defensive plays – he has done it all. I don’t think I can say enough, but if there’s one more thing I think should be said it’s this: Brayan Rocchio, I have no earthly idea how you were not invited to the All-Star Game.
Conclusion
Most preseason projections had the Guardians in the mid-upper 70s in wins. I think a lot of fans felt that those predictions underestimated this team, and so far the Guardians have proven that belief correct. Despite injuries to some of the most important players, we’re tied for 1st place in the division because of strong pitching, defense, baserunning, and some unexpected contributions from young players.
The Guardians have the easiest strength of schedule in MLB for the second half of the season. Chase DeLauter has been on a hitting tear since returning from his injury, and José Ramírez and Angel Martínez are both expected back in a few short weeks. We aren’t all the way through these setbacks yet, but we’ve put ourselves in an excellent position heading into the second half.
Glossary:
*Base Running (BsR) is FanGraphs’ all encompassing base running statistic that turns stolen bases, caught stealings, and other base running plays (taking extra bases, being thrown out on the bases, etc) into runs above and below average. It is the combination of Weighted Stolen Base Runs (wSB), Weighted Grounded Into Double Play Runs (wGDP), and Ultimate Base Running (UBR), which are all available on the leaderboards and player pages on FanGraphs.
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