Who Will The Guardians Draft No. 1? Explaining Their Potential Strategy

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Who will the Guardians take with the first overall pick in the 2024 draft?

That’s an answer that the baseball world has been dying to know for weeks and (for the truly draft addicted) months. Even the teams picking right behind the Guardians are unsure who they’ll call first on draft night.

Back in late May we first seriously mentioned West Virginia shortstop JJ Wetherholt with the Guardians, and he’s been our pick for them since June 17 and our fourth mock of the season, though Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana and Georgia outfielder/third baseman Charlie Condon seem like real options. Up top, it’s all quiet about who is actually preferred.

MLB Mock Draft for every team in the first round

The secretive approach at the top has become common practice for teams picking 1-1.

Last year, the Pirates had to choose from three elite college players—Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews, and Wyatt Langford—and no one knew who they would pick until they made their selection. In 2022, people associated Baltimore with a wide group of players, much like Cleveland this year, before they chose Jackson Holliday. The 2021 draft featured a muddled group of five players. Rumors suggested the Pirates wanted an underslot deal with the first pick, but no one confidently predicted that Henry Davis would be the player they called.

Only the Tigers in recent years have seemingly made it known who their preferred No. 1 target was beforehand, with both Spencer Torkelson in 2020 and Casey Mize in 2018 being the heavy favorites. Even in a year like 2019, which featured the most no-doubt, clearcut No. 1 prospect we’ve seen in years (Adley Rutschman) the Orioles made efforts to show that they weren’t locked in as late as draft day—though in this case most of the industry assumed he’d be the pick for weeks or months beforehand.

So a team picking in the top spot remaining tight-lipped about their decision is nothing new. It’s common practice, and makes sense if you’re trying to hold as much leverage as possible—particularly in a draft class with no far and away top prospect that is separate from the pack.

Cleveland Guardians Draft History

While this is the first time Cleveland has picked first overall in the draft, it’s worth knowing how they’ve operated in the past. Because of baseball’s soft-slotting bonus pool system, teams are able to get creative with how they navigate draft boards and target their picks.

Here’s how Cleveland has handed out signing bonuses in each of the last three drafts:

2023

Round	Player	Signing Bonus	Over/Under
1	Velazquez, Ralphy	3,380,900	-880,900
2	Clemmey, Alex	1,402,600	897,400
2s	Walters, Andrew	1,273,700	-318,425
3	Kayfus, CJ	725,300	-25,300
4	Ingle, Cooper	526,200	-126,200
5	Knapczyk, Christian	371,000	14,000
6	Hawke, Tommy	295,000	0
7	Mooney, Alex	231,300	768,700
8	Advincula, Jonah	191,100	-41,100
9	Driver, Jay	174,300	-23,300
10	Wilkinson, Matt	165,300	-55,300

2022

Round	Player	Signing Bonus	Over/Under
1	DeLauter, Chase	3,937,600	-187,600
1s	Campbell, Justin	2,101,800	-401,800
2	Messick, Parker	1,407,100	-107,100
3	Lampe, Joe	670,200	129,800
4	Furman, Nate	497,900	-197,900
5	Lipscomb, Guy	371,800	-96,800
6	Delucia, Dylan	284,200	-9,200
7	Santos, Javier	222,400	-97,400
8	Humphries, Jackson	180,000	420,000
9	Peterson, Austin	161,200	-36,200
10	Zibin, Jacob	152,000	1,048,000

2021

Round	Player	Signing Bonus	Over/Under
1	Williams, Gavin	2,926,800	-676,800
2	Nikhazy, Doug	1,214,300	-14,300
2s	Mace, Tommy	929,800	170,200
3	Fox, Jake	610,800	239,200
4	Webb, Ryan	455,600	-55,600
5	Bibee, Tanner	336,600	-77,200
6	Davenport, Aaron	259,400	190,600
7	Leftwich, Jack	203,400	-36,400
8	Boone, Rodney	167,000	0
9	Dion, William	151,600	-26,600
10	Aleman, Franco	143,500	31,500

In each of the last three drafts the Guardians have signed their first player to an underslot deal and then used the savings to get more aggressive with other players further down the board. I call this the “portfolio approach” and it has become one of the most popular strategies to navigate a draft board in the bonus pool era.

Picking first overall is certainly different than picking in the middle or back of the first round though. Cleveland picked 23rd overall in 2023, 16th overall in 2022 and 23rd overall in 2021. The first overall pick provides access to the very best players in a given draft class and perhaps with that comes a different strategy.

But how many 1-1 picks in recent years have signed for slot value or more? It’s more rare than you might think, with only 2020 first overall pick Spencer Torkelson signing for No. 1 slot value or more:

Year	Player	Signing Bonus	Slot Value	Over/Under
2023	Skenes, Paul	9,200,000	9,721,000	-521,000
2022	Holliday, Jackson	8,190,000	8,846,900	-656,900
2021	Davis, Henry	6,500,000	8,415,300	-1,915,300
2020	Torkelson, Spencer	8,416,300	8,415,300	1,000
2019	Rutschman, Adley	8,100,000	8,415,300	-315,300
2018	Mize, Casey	7,500,000	8,096,300	-596,300

With slot values increased 8.7% this year, the first overall pick comes with a whopping $10,570,600 slot value. It’s difficult to see any player from the 2024 class shattering Paul Skenes’ record draft bonus by $1.3 million. It feels like a safe bet, based on that and recent draft history, to assume whoever is taken first overall will come with an underslot deal.

What Could Cleveland Do In 2024?

For Cleveland, and every team that picks atop the draft, making a decision about who to pick first is about identifying the best player in the class, yes, but it’s also a decision about how to end the third day of the draft with the most impactful and talented group of players you can.

It’s not just about Charlie Condon vs. JJ Wetherholt.

It’s Charlie Condon + the best players you can land with your next picks after taking Condon first overall vs. JJ Wetherholt + the best players you can land after selecting Wetherholt first overall.

If there’s such a clear gap in talent on draft day that the first pick is a no-brainer no matter who the next players could be (ala Adley Rutschman in 2019) then that calculus might mean less. That’s not exactly the case in the 2024 class. Both Condon and Bazzana are, by most teams, the top two players in the class, but the gap between those two and Wetherholt (plus the next several players on the board) doesn’t seem particularly significant.

MLB teams in the 2020s think in probabilities. Decisions are generally not binary ones with yes or no answers. It’s tempting to think of a team being confident that Condon is the best player on the board and Bazanna ranks second and Wetherholt ranks third. It’s more realistic to think of a team viewing Condon of having a 35% chance of being the best player out of the top three, Bazzana having a 33% chance of being the best player of the trio and Wetherholt having a 31% chance. If you look at it that way, the decision is a much closer one.

And even that is simplifying it too much. The MLB draft doesn’t give certainty. From 2000-2015, only 31% of the time (5 of 16 drafts) has the No. 1 pick had any argument of being the best player picked in the first round. So if three players are viewed as being similar in talent, being able to save significant money to spend elsewhere in the draft can be a logical differentiator.

And for Cleveland the consensus opinion on the class doesn’t matter. Only their final board does. If they view the top players as largely interchangeable it makes sense to try and maximize the talent they get with later picks. It’s also entirely possible that a player they view as the best in the class is not the same as the consensus view. If that allows them to sign a player for a slightly smaller deal, it’s a win-win scenario for the team.

Whether that player is Charlie Condon, or Travis Bazzana, or JJ Wetherholt, or someone else entirely—well, we’ll just have to wait until a few minutes after 7 p.m. ET tonight to find out.