How the Guardians grew up to become baseball’s most surprising division winner
The Cleveland Guardians weren’t supposed to be here — not yet. They entered the season with the youngest roster in MLB, at least a season or two behind a Chicago White Sox team that many pundits believed would run away with the American League Central race.
And yet, here they are, after taking the division with 92 wins and sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL Wild Card Series, now facing off against the New York Yankees in the division series.
Their unexpected success can be attributed to a number of things: smart promotions from the front office and successful debuts from many of the franchise’s 25-and-under crowd. But, most importantly, the presence of a bona fide superstar in veteran Jose Ramirez — the heart and soul of the team and a man who, in early April, was hours away from being traded.
On the final day of spring training, the Guardians’ front office had hit its deadline — if it couldn’t get a contract extension done with its All-Star third baseman that day, he was going to be traded before Opening Day. The San Diego Padres, among other contenders, were waiting for a call.
Team interpreter Agustin Rivero, who was coaching first base in a split-squad game that afternoon, was pulled away for one last conversation between the player and his front office, and to help Ramirez share his take: He wanted to stay in Cleveland.
“I’m so grateful Jose wanted to be here, and he made that a priority,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said during wild-card weekend. “He got personally involved. … We wouldn’t be standing here without that.”
After a few hectic hours, Ramirez went from the trade block to a long-term commitment from the only franchise he has known. And six months after Ramirez signed a seven-year, $141 million deal, he and his squad celebrated their first playoff series win since the 2016 AL Championship Series.
“I’m really happy, especially for the commitment the organization made,” Ramirez said through Rivero recently. “It’s very really special. The most important part is family. The city has given me the opportunity to take care of my family. Cleveland is my family.”
As one of the only veterans in a clubhouse full of youngsters, Ramirez has led his squad to an unlikely extension of its season — first with an MVP-caliber season that got the Guardians to October, then with a go-ahead home run in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
But how far Ramirez could lead this team came down to how quickly a roster that debuted 17 rookies this season was ready to follow.
A lot of the Guardians’ success as a young team is a credit to the franchise’s culture, according to Antonetti. The current rookies watched as previous Cleveland teams made the playoffs while they were doing the same in the minors. Winning begets winning, in his estimation.
“Our Double-A team won a championship in the Eastern League in 2021,” Antonetti said. “And there’s like seven to nine of those guys up here now that are AL Central champions.”
The rookies got their first taste of a pennant race during that minor league season, but there is a level of pressure in the major leagues that is impossible to replicate anywhere else. And perhaps the number of intense showdowns they needed to put away two division competitors to clinch this season gave the kids a little extra edge when their October moment arrived.
And arrive it did, when Oscar Gonzalez — a rookie with fewer than 100 games under his belt — provided the only run in a 1-0 Game 2 win by depositing a 15th-inning pitch into the right-center-field bleachers — and sending Progressive Field into a frenzy.
“I could never imagine anything like this,” another rookie, Steve Kwan, said on the field after the wild-card series win. “And how it’s happened as well. Tito [manager Terry Francona] expressed at the beginning of the year that we’re going to play the game right because we can’t live and die by the home run.”
It wasn’t lost on anyone that the Guardians’ two wins against Tampa Bay came via the long ball, as did their only run in Tuesday’s 4-1 ALDS-opening loss at Yankee Stadium. But no one, including the Guardians, thinks that’s how Cleveland is going to win a championship — at least not this year.
Their 127 home runs in the regular season ranked second to last in the majors, and while three runs might have been enough to get past the Rays, the Guardians are going to need to score some runs to take down the Yankees in the division series. Part of what helped spur a 16-2 run in September that vaulted Cleveland into the playoffs was putting the ball in play and working the basepaths: That month, the Guardians posted the second-highest batting average in the majors (.264), fourth-best OBP (.331), fifth-fewest strikeouts (195) and most stolen bases (31).
Cleveland is known for that scrappy, high-energy style of baseball — not for mashing balls into the stands. But what might matter more to the Guardians, who were as many as five games below .500 twice this season, is their resolve.
“There’s a quiet confidence in our group of guys,” 26-year-old reliever Sam Hentges said. “We come to the ballpark every day and we don’t really back down from challenges. That’s preached from Tito … and that’s how we attack each day.”
Hentges, in his first full year in the big leagues, compiled a 2.32 ERA in 57 games then followed that up with three pressure-packed scoreless innings Saturday to earn the clinching win over the Rays.
But now after grinding out that wild-card series over a fellow small-market team, Cleveland is being put to the ultimate test against the big-market, big-money 99-win Yankees, who won five of the six regular-season meetings between the teams before grabbing a 1-0 ALDS lead Tuesday night in New York.
“I was kind of wide eyed the first time,” Kwan said of playing in New York back in late April. “Hopefully, we can play baseball like we always do.”
While the Guardians’ front office would never use the payroll discrepancy as an excuse for whatever happens on the field this week, it’s hard to overlook the David vs. Goliath nature of this matchup as Cleveland brings an $82 million payroll that ranks 28th in all of baseball against New York’s $265 million roster.
“We operate in very different markets, but we have the same goal,” Antonetti noted with a smile.
That goal — to win in October — might have seemed far-fetched in March, but it became a bit more obtainable once Ramirez signed. Then as each youngster began to contribute and the team kept racking up wins, the concept of the postseason emerged as a reality. Cleveland went from a complete unknown, with just a 7.5% chance to win the division at the start of the season, to an ALCS contender. Now, facing their first series deficit of the playoffs, it’s time to see if the Guardians can quiet their doubters once again.
“They didn’t let anyone else write their season story for them,” Antonetti said. “They took the reins and wrote their own story.”
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Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
For years, teammates have asked Devin Williams to teach them his changeup, a pitch so unusual and dominant it has its own nickname. Williams always helps. They just never get “The Airbender” right.
“I haven’t seen anyone replicate it,” Williams said.
Powered by The Airbender, Williams has established himself as one of the premier relievers in baseball since breaking into the majors in 2019. He has been so good that the Milwaukee Brewers, keeping with their frugal roster-building tactics, traded Williams to the New York Yankees last month for left-hander Nestor Cortes and prospect Caleb Durbin before he inevitably would become too expensive in free agency next winter.
So, for one season, at least, Williams will follow in the footsteps of another Yankees closer who perplexed hitters with one pitch: Mariano Rivera.
“Those are big shoes to fill,” Williams said of Rivera, whose signature cutter helped him become the first player voted unanimously to the Hall of Fame. “I feel he kind of ruined it for everybody else. I mean, after him, it’s hard to live up to those expectations. But at the end of the day, I can only be me.”
Being himself has been more than good enough for the 30-year-old Williams. The right-hander won the 2020 National League Rookie of the Year Award with a 0.33 ERA in 22 games as the Brewers’ primary setup man during the COVID-shortened campaign. He was an All-Star in 2022 and 2023, his first full season as a closer.
Last season, after missing the first four months with stress fractures in his back, he posted a 1.25 ERA with 14 saves in 15 opportunities across 22 appearances. His 40.8% strikeout rate since 2020 ranks second in the majors among relievers. His 1.70 ERA is also second. His .144 batting average against ranks first.
“Obviously, he’s one of the best in the league, if not the best,” Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake said.
For Williams, it all starts with The Airbender. Williams grips it like a changeup and its 84-mph average velocity plays off his fastball like a changeup. But it’s a changeup with an exceptionally high spin rate that breaks to his arm side — opposite from the typical changeup — making it resemble a screwball or a left-hander’s sweeping slider. It is without precedent.
“It’s not anything to do with the grip,” Williams said. “The grip is nothing special. That’s why I think it’s funny when people are like, ‘Oh, don’t give it away.’ This is the most basic changeup grip they teach you when you’re 8 years old.”
Williams said his changeup is so different for two reasons: His elite extension, which ranked in the 98th percentile in 2024, and a singular ability to pronate his wrist.
“It’s the way my wrist works, the way I’m able to manipulate the ball is something unique, uniquely me,” Williams said. “It allows me to throw my changeup the way I throw it. I’m a really good pronator, not supinator. That’s why my slider sucked. You need to get on the other side of the ball. I’m not good at that. I’m good at turning it over.”
Williams did, however, modify his changeup grip to unearth the weapon. Entering 2019, Williams was a struggling minor league starter with a solid changeup, two years removed from Tommy John surgery. He was one year from reaching free agency, from perhaps seeing his career come to an end and going to college to play soccer.
That spring, seeking more movement, he altered his changeup grip from a two-seam to a four-seam, circle change grip. He first threw it during a live batting practice session to Trent Grisham, then a Brewers prospect. Grisham, now with the Yankees, told Williams the spin difference was noticeable. Williams stuck with it.
A starter through spring training, Williams was sent to Double-A as a reliever to begin the season. The demotion sparked desperation, and Williams decided to throw harder than ever, reaching back to lift his fastball into the high 90s. He was in the majors by August. But it wasn’t until the COVID shutdown in 2020 — when he realized spinning the ball more and dropping the velocity from high-80s to mid-80s created more movement — that his changeup reached another level.
“I took that into the season and at summer camp I’m facing my own teammates,” Williams said. “And Jedd Gyorko, I threw him one, and he swung and missed and he was just like, What is that? I’ve never seen [anything] like that. That gave me confidence and we just ran with it. And I literally started throwing it all the time.”
Coincidentally, Williams said the closest changeup he’s seen to his belongs to Luke Weaver, whose emergence as a shutdown reliever in 2024 was crucial in the Yankees reaching the World Series. Williams happened to be in New York when the Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers played in the Fall Classic. He was on his annual autumn vacation after the Brewers were eliminated from the postseason. Past trips have taken him all over Europe: London, Paris, Dublin, Amsterdam, Munich, Dortmund, with a soccer game invariably on his itinerary.
This time, he was in New York. He explored the city for 10 days. Instead of soccer, he watched the World Series from a bar. He shopped. He ate good food. He absorbed the city’s energy.
“I’m a city guy,” Williams said. “I love to explore cities. I like to immerse myself in the culture. I want to be like a normal, everyday person. You guys like bacon, egg and cheese? All right, I’m getting a bacon, egg and cheese.”
Less than two months later, as part of a series of moves executed in their pivot from Juan Soto‘s decision to sign with the crosstown Mets, the Yankees added Williams. On Thursday, Williams settled for $8.6 million to avoid arbitration.
He’ll partner with Weaver to create one of the best bullpen back ends in baseball — in hopes of helping the Yankees win their first championship since Rivera was dominating hitters with his cutter.
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