Chase DeLauter’s rookie year did more than give the Guardians another bat. It gave them a new way to line up the top of the order.
At first glance, the opening burst in Seattle looked like the start of a classic power breakout. DeLauter was driving balls out of the park in bunches, and it was easy to jump straight to the home run total.
But the bigger story turned out to be everything around that power. Cleveland didn’t just get a slugger.
It got a left-handed hitter who can do a little bit of everything.
DeLauter finished his first regular season at .287 with 16 home runs, 67 RBI, 30 doubles and 11 stolen bases. He played in 133 regular-season games and then showed up for all 11 postseason games, a strong finish to a rookie year that was interrupted repeatedly by injuries before he ever got to this point. He also picked up a Silver Slugger nomination as one of nine American League outfield finalists.
Paul Hoynes, who covers the Guardians for cleveland.com, said the overall package was better than he expected.
“He surprised me, he really did,” Hoynes said on the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. “I did not see the, his total game. He surprised me with his total offensive performance.”
What stood out was the way DeLauter handled the strike zone and the ballpark. He put together a high-contact profile from the left side, hit to all fields, ran the bases well and avoided the strikeout-heavy trap that catches so many young hitters. In 133 games, he struck out 82 times and walked 60 times.
That kind of production is not easy to find from a rookie still figuring out major league pitching.
“Kind of a high average contact hitter. Just you really consistent guy from the left side, a guy that you can hit second, they hit him third, really at the top of that lineup,” Hoynes said.
“And he hit .287. That was, that was the fifth highest average in the American League.”
That skill set changed the shape of the Guardians’ lineup. With DeLauter settled into a real No. 3 role, manager Stephen Vogt had room to move Jose Ramirez up to the two-spot, a tweak designed to get more from Cleveland’s best hitters.
“With Chase DeLauter sort of stepping forward and emerging as a good all around hitter and putting him in that number three spot, you allowed José Ramírez to move up in the order,” Noga said. “And I think once you get back a fully healthy José Ramírez next season, that’s going to make the lineup look a lot different as well.”
Hoynes said he’d rather see DeLauter keep being himself than force the power to become the headline.
“I want to see him develop as he is. If he just stays true to himself, the power is going to come,” Hoynes said. “I don’t want him to become a three true outcomes hitter.”
For Cleveland, that’s the encouraging part. After years of waiting for DeLauter to stay on the field long enough to show what he could be, the Guardians may have found something more useful than a one-dimensional power bat: a complete young hitter who changes the way the whole lineup works.
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