Making Sense of the Deyvison De Los Santos on the Guardians
The Big Kid is Here. Is he here to Stay?
By Quincy Wheeler Feb 24, 2024, 5:00pm EST
Since the Guardians chose Deyvison De Los Santos in MLB's Rule 5 Draft in December, I've been puzzling over his fit on Cleveland’s roster in the 2024 season and what his addition means for the franchise.
De Los Santos will turn 21 years old on June 21st. As a 20 year old, after making some swing adjustments in a developmental league, he put up a 131 wRC+ with a .274 ISO for the Arizona Diamondbacks' Double-A team. As Covering the Corner’s Brian Hemminger recently pointed out, De Los Santos also put up a 1.120 OPS in the postseason for the Sod Poodles, helping lead them to a Double-A championship. All of these numbers are impressive, especially given De Los Santos’s age. So, if Cleveland can snag a guy like that, they have to do it, right?
Alas, the news is not all great with De Los Santos’s minor league numbers. He’s consistently had a swinging strike percentage of 17-19% and a groundball rate consistently around 50%. His minor league BB rate of 6.6% isn’t great and has declined as he’s advanced, while his minor league K rate of 26%, overall, isn’t exactly what you want. But, again, he is only 20 years old. Some of these issues aren’t particularly surprising and he has time to change and grow as a hitter... but he’ll be asked to do so on a major league roster this year, as things currently stand.
Cleveland’s current situation is also a factor in the De Los Santos enigma. The Guardians have a chance to make the playoffs in 2024, given a 32.7% chance to do so by FanGraphs, as well as a 21.3% chance to win the AL Central division. With superstar José Ramírez likely only set, at best, for another year or two of his peak performance and with a young rotation and bullpen primed to make a run, Cleveland would not seem to be the ideal place to be running developmental projects on their major league roster.
“Well, it's only the 26th man,” you say. “Rosters used to be only 25 guys, and the Guardians carried the worst qualified hitter in baseball AND Austin Hedges on their roster in 2022 and won the division.” Funny that you'd mention Myles Straw and Austin Hedges as they are actually both on the 2024 Guardians, meaning that, assuming De Los Santos isn't being slotted in as a full-time starter, three of the Guardians' four bench spots will be occupied by hitters who will be projected for wRC+'s under 80. If you average out the four main projection systems provided by FanGraphs, De Los Santos is set to have a 77 wRC+. And for a 21 year old hitter who would be skipping Triple-A, a 77 wRC+ isn't bad. But, when you accompany it with a 70 wRC+ for Straw and a 45 wRC+ for Hedges, it makes for a bench seriously lacking in thump on a team that was notably thumpless, overall, in 2023.
“Well, we can send Myles Straw to Columbus or DFA him.” I agree with you, there. I'd be fine doing either one of those things. However, with around $20 million still due to Straw, I cannot feasibly imagine the Guardians not trying to see if he can be that pinch runner/defensive specialist that at one point he seemed born to be. At least, it's hard not to believe they'll try it for another half a season before admitting their mistake and moving on.
So, De Los Santos is hard to justify burying on the bench in Cleveland if the Guardians think they can make the playoffs. They've likely, then, just brought him to camp to give an extended look to a young kid and give him a chance to impress them, surprise them and force them to find a way to best utilize him. If not, as is most likely the case, they'll expose him to waivers and he'll likely find his way back to Arizona by Opening Day, or by May after Kyle Manzardo has had a chance to “work on his defense” in Columbus for a month.
This scenario is the Occam's Razor option in my humble opinion. I very much doubt the team believes De Los Santos is ready to help the major league team and it strains credulity to believe they will put new manager Steven Vogt in enough a bind that his bench options are Tyler Freeman (fine and good), Straw, Hedges and a 21 year old who needs to be at Columbus... not staring down Jhoan Duran in the bottom of the ninth in Minneapolis in August. If there is a plan to either demote or trade Straw, then carrying De Los Santos makes perfect sense, but with Straw starting game one of the Spring, that remote possibility seems even more unlikely than ever.
I went back and looked at past MLB Rule 5 draft picks since 2016 and I could not find an apt parallel for Cleveland’s choice of De Los Santos. I was looking for a player who was 20-21 years old, primarily a 1B/3B option, and selected by a team that was at least on the fringes of the playoff conversation. Competitive teams made selections who were 1B/3B-types, some stuck, some were returned, but none were anywhere NEAR as young and inexperienced as De Los Santos is. Part of the reason may be that 20 year olds who have put up 131 wRC+’s in Double-A for an extended period of time with 70 grade power are rarely available, but it is notable that the choice by the Guardians doesn’t have a lot of past precedent (and is probably why the Diamondbacks felt safe making De Los Santos available).
The other confusing element to me is that the Guardians have a player who is a 1B/3B/OF who put up a 123 wRC+ with a .246 ISO and a 22.7/10.8 K/BB% in Double-A in Jhonkensy Noel. Noel’s raw power is also 70 grade and has the additional asset of having played more professional innings in the outfield and not requiring a major league roster spot to be in the organization. Is the addition of De Los Santos a sign the team doesn’t believe in Noel? If he is, then why does Noel still have a spot on the 40-man roster? Now, for his career, De Los Santos’ splits against RHP and LHP are fairly evenly, while Noel has hit lefties better at a pretty pronounced rate, and struggled against RHP. Additionally, the team has already seen Noel struggle, while still young for the level, at Triple-A with a 77 wRC+ and De Los Santos has yet to be tested at that level, so there is potentially more unknown and, thus, more ceiling with De Los Santos. Additionally, De Los Santos has been scouted to be viable at third base, while Noel seems now to be a 1B/RF-only player. Even though Jose Ramirez is the Guardians’ third baseman, there is obviously a lot of inherent value in having a potential power hitter who can play third base competently.
I know, I know... I have spent too much time trying to solve a conundrum that will likely be answered by De Los Santos being returned to Arizona this season. Or, maybe the solution is that Cleveland finds a way to pull off the rare trade to acquire the full rights of a Rule 5 pick (my guess is these deals are rare because leverage is messy in these situations). But, in any case, I will be watching and following De Los Santos plate appearances this Spring trying to determine what the team may be looking at in the young player. In observing the opening game, I can see already that he doesn’t appear to be as much of a free swinger as I expected, taking some borderline pitches and working a long at-bat.
As mentioned on the Bally Sports broadcast today, De Los Santos is being mentored by fellow Dominican and Guardians superstar veteran Jose Ramirez in camp. You can’t ask for a better person to help a young player understand how to make it in the big leagues when the odds are stacked against you. I also certainly can’t argue with the overall perspective of adding more power when I’ve begged the team to find some over the past two years. I’m hoping the Guardians and De Los Santos reveal the answers to this mystery to us all before the calendar turns to April and it results in an exciting, young talent being added to the organization without sacrificing the ability to compete in 2024 in any significant manner.
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