CLEVELAND — The Guardians' flame-throwing top prospect has been extinguished for the time being.
Daniel Espino , the club's No. 1 prospect and the No. 14 prospect in baseball according to MLB Pipeline , has been shut down from throwing after again experiencing soreness and inflammation in his throwing shoulder.
Espino hasn't pitched in a game in nearly a calendar year. In 2021, he posted a combined 3.73 ERA with 152 strikeouts in 91⅔ innings as he worked his way up the Guardians minor league system. He then threw only 18⅓ innings last year, though in that time he struck out 35 batters. Espino was then shut down and sidelined in May with patellar tendinitis.
As Espino rehabbed this spring, he never made it back onto a mound and experienced a recurrence of symptoms while playing catch.
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The Guardians have been through this specific rehab process before as it relates to Espino's right shoulder. Rather than re-do the same rehab timeline, the team will have Espino evaluated on May 1 and determine the next steps after that meeting.
"He goes to [plyometric exercises] and he starts to play catch and then we start to add intensity," said James Harris, Guardians assistant general manager. "As we did that, some of the pains and the inflammation came back. So then you can either start all over and you can shut him down and then he can go to plyos and play catch, or you can have him see a doctor. We chose to have him see a doctor to make sure that we're on the right track."
Espino is one of three Guardians pitching prospects ranked in the top 60 overall prospects in baseball, along with Gavin Williams (No. 37) and Tanner Bibee (No. 59). Espino likely has the highest ceiling of the three as a pitcher who hits triple digits with his fastball along with a slider that can reach the low 90s and a changeup that clocks in as fast as some hurler's fastballs. But he's also the one with an extensive, and growing, medical history as it relates to his throwing shoulder.
The Guardians promoted left-handed pitcher Logan Allen to make his MLB debut in Sunday's win over the Miami Marlins . Allen and Peyton Battenfield are, as the Guardians hope, the beginning of the "next wave" of prospects to make their mark on the major league roster. The club had 17 debuts in 2022, which tied a franchise record. Allen and Battenfield will surely have company as prospects make their way from Triple-A Columbus and up I-71 to Cleveland .
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Espino's prospects of hitting the majors in 2023, though, are murky at best, particularly with any timeline that involves his promotion to the majors before September.
Williams and Bibee could be closer to their own debuts.
Williams don't seem to have much left to prove at the Double-A level. After being promoted to the RubberDucks, he posted a 2.31 ERA with 82 strikeouts in 70 innings. He's off to a red-hot start in 2023, allowing one run and striking out 20 hitters in 14⅓ innings thus far.
Bibee's numbers have been similar. He posted a combined 2.17 ERA with 167 strikeouts in 132⅔ innings in 2022. This year, he has a 1.76 ERA with 19 strikeouts in 15⅓ innings in Triple-A Columbus.
Williams hasn't yet pitched at the Triple-A level and Bibee has only limited time there, but the Guardians have shown a willingness to promote pitchers quickly at times, and it'll be difficult to deny both of them if they continue pitching at such a dominant pace. Those two have pitched well enough that it's actually left them without the added bonus of facing a certain level of adversity before getting to the majors.
"It's kind of hard because you don't want to wish adversity on those players," Harris said. "But you just know when you get up here [to the majors] and there's advanced hitters and there's a crowd, there's a third deck, you want them to face some of that [in the minors]. Unfortunately and fortunately, those guys are dealing right now, they're getting guys out at the Double-A and Triple-A levels, and we hope they can do that here at the major league level soon."
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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 top prospect Daniel Espino shut down with shoulder soreness
