Chase DeLauter’s sixth-place finish in AL Rookie of the Year voting tells only part of the story for Cleveland. The bigger headline is what the Guardians built around him: a rookie class that put three players on the ballot in the same season.
On the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast this week, Paul Hoynes and Joe Noga kept coming back to that number. DeLauter landed sixth.
Travis Bazzana got a fourth-place vote. Parker Messick finished as the runner-up.
That kind of spread across one organization doesn’t happen by accident.
“This is a good rookie class,” Hoynes said. “They kind of bought in at the start of the season.
The Guardians did. It was an experiment.
It was a roll of the dice to go with their young guys. See how it worked.
And for a large part of it, it did.”
Messick’s second-place finish drew plenty of attention, especially because of the gap between him and the winner. Still, Noga argued the broader takeaway was Cleveland’s depth.
“DeLauter probably deserved a little bit more respect in the voting, but the bigger story here is that Cleveland had three rookies recognized in that in the same season,” Noga said. “Messick looks like a rotation fixture.
DeLauter established himself as a legitimate middle of the order bat. Bazzana really, I think, has the most upside of any young infielder we’ve seen in a while.”
DeLauter’s numbers make a strong case for a better finish. He played 133 games and hit .287, with 142 hits and 226 total bases.
That total was second most by a Cleveland rookie since 1982. He also drew 60 walks, struck out only 82 times and posted an .820 OPS while producing steady offense from April through September.
The two players who finished ahead of him brought more obvious power. Carter Jensen of Kansas City hit 27 home runs, and Munetaka Murakami of Chicago hit 35. Hoynes said that’s where DeLauter likely lost ground, but he still believed the Cleveland outfielder’s season deserved more attention.
“I do think he deserved a little more love than he got,” Hoynes said. And in the same conversation, he added that DeLauter “just kind of got lost in the shuffle of a really good rookie class” - which fits the way the voting shook out.
It’s a familiar tug-of-war for voters: contact and consistency versus home-run totals and ceiling. Murakami’s 35 homers are impossible to ignore, but so are his 196 strikeouts. DeLauter gave Cleveland a different kind of value, grinding through the season and producing all the way through.
Bazzana’s mention matters for another reason. Noga sees him as the player in the group with the most upside, a young infielder whose ceiling is still hard to pin down after his first full major league season.
The Guardians took a real risk by leaning into youth. Not every part of it worked.
Kyle Manzardo struggled and was eventually sent down without returning. But the rookies who did hold their ground gave the club real production and national recognition.
Three rookies receiving Rookie of the Year consideration in the same season says a lot about Cleveland’s ability to identify, develop and trust young talent at the major league level. And with 2027 still ahead, that may be the most encouraging part of all.
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