Death, taxes and Cleveland's outfield as a group being statistically below league average offensively. The 2022 Guardians are again trying to reverse a trend.
Cleveland hasn't had an above-average offensive outfield since the 2016 season, when that group finished with a 102 wRC+ , meaning it was two percent above leave average. In every year since, Cleveland's outfield has been below 100 wRC+, with the low point coming in the shortened 2020 season, when it plummeted to 57, meaning it was 43 percent below the league norm.
That shortened season having fewer games to sample from can mess with the numbers a little, but that group didn't offer the lineup much help.
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The 2022 outfield isn't on pace to change that streak. Even with Steven Kwan's blistering hot beginning to his major league career in April. Even with Oscar Gonzalez bursting onto the scene for the last month until he went down with an injury, the Guardians outfield has posted an 86 wRC+ this season, which ranks 27th in baseball, ahead of only three rebuilding teams: the Detroit Tigers , the Cincinnati Reds and the Oakland Athletics .
Yes, the Guardians have finally found at least the prospects of some answers in the outfield since last July, when they acquired center fielder Myles Straw and then signed him to a long-term contract extension earlier this year.
Straw has provided the Guardians with some defensive stability in center field and plenty of speed on the base paths, but he has struggled at the plate, to the tune of a .199 average and .540 OPS, which has taken him from the top of the lineup to the bottom.
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Kwan had a historic beginning to his career , etching his name in the MLB history books (.354 average, .459 OBP, .959 OPS), but slowed down in May as the league began to adjust (.173, .524 OPS). He recovered to have a torrid June, hitting .341 with a .412 OBP, but has again turned cold in July, hitting .200 with a .250 OBP.
Gonzalez also quickly made his case for an everyday role in the lineup but hit the injured list on July 2 (retroactive to June 30) with an intercostal strain.
That led to the return of Oscar Mercado , who was designated for assignment on June 21. He was claimed by the Philadelphia Phillies and then had exactly one at-bat before being DFA'd again and re-claimed by the Guardians.
Mercado has done little to secure his spot in the Guardians outfield long term, hitting .210 with a .624 OPS this season. Mercado could again be designated for assignment when Gonzalez can return.
Franmil Reyes has begun to show signs of life (.960 OPS the last week), but he is most often in the designated hitter spot, thus unhelpful to lifting the outfield's numbers. It's a similar story with Josh Naylor , who has had a terrific 2022 season, but much of that production has come at first base.
And so, after years of his development seemingly stalling or at least being slowed compared to where it once was headed, Nolan Jones has finally earned his shot. And his first taste of the big leagues couldn't have been much sweeter.
Jones was, at one time, ranked as the club's clear top prospect. But since 2019 he has dealt with thumb surgery, a canceled minor league season in 2020 due to COVID-19, an ankle surgery and back issues that delayed him this spring. In that time, he has dropped from being ranked as the team's No. 1 prospect to No. 7, according to MLB Pipeline.
Jones seemed primed to make his debut in the 2021 season, but he never really got things rolling enough to force the Guardians to call him up. He hit .238, and although he provided some power (13 home runs, 25 doubles in 99 games), he also racked up strikeouts (122) at a high rate. For two years, Jones seemed to be on the major league's doorstep, but he couldn't knock hard enough for anyone to hear.
That changed this season. He hit .311 with a .417 OBP and .917 OPS in Triple-A. The strikeouts were still there (29 in 108 PA), but so too was the production and power potential. It has been so far, so good for Jones.
His first at-bat in the majors resulted in a double Friday night in Kansas City. He ended his MLB debut 2-for-3 with an RBI. He followed that up on Saturday with a 2-for-4 performance that included a 457-foot home run to the second level of fountains at Kauffman Stadium.
According to MLB.com's Sarah Langs, it tied Bobby Bradley for the fifth-longest first career home run tracked by Statcast (since 2015). The only players with longer first career home runs during that time: Chris Shaw (468 feet), Jon Gray (467), Austin Slater (461) and Lewis Brinson (461).
Jones has remained a central, potential part of the Guardians' long-term future, even as he struggled to find his footing and the team moved him around the diamond in the minors to give him as many paths to the majors as they could.
With Kwan, Straw and Gonzalez, the Guardians finally have some increased optimism in the outfield (along with George Valera and Will Brennan in the minors) with the future in mind. But all three have been somewhat streaky in 2022, leaving that group's 2022 numbers below league average.
The Guardians have some building blocks for 2023 and beyond, but the immediate postseason race this summer is also front of mind.
It remains to be seen if Jones can do enough to lift them into the top half of the league, at least offensively, in the second half of the season. But there's a water-logged baseball in Kansas City that will serve as a reminder of why the team has remained so high on his potential through the past few years.
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Guardians at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/cleveland-guardians. Follow him on Twitter at @ByRyanLewis.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Guardians outfield again struggling: Can Nolan Jones provide a lift?
