This Is Where The Guardians Land On MLB.com's Opening Day Power Rankings

The Cleveland Guardians are ranked just outside of the top 10 in MLB.com's Opening Day Power Rankings.

Author:
Tommy Wild
Mar 27, 2023 7:35 PM EDT

In this story:

Cleveland Guardians

Tampa Bay Rays

Minnesota Twins

Chicago White Sox

Detroit Tigers

Kansas City Royals

Opening Day is rapidly approaching as MLB will begin the 2023 season this Thursday. With the first games of the season just a few days away, the lists and rankings of where each team stands coming into the season are dropping as well.

MLB.com released a ranking just the other day which saw the Cleveland Guardians crack their top five bullpens in baseball. But how does the rest of the team stack up to the competition?

Their Opening Day Power Rankings shed a bit more light on this.

In their post-Spring Training, pre-Opening Day power rankings, MLB.com rates the Guardians as the 12th-best team in Major League Baseball. This also comes out to be the 5th best team in the American League.

This honestly seems a little low for the defending American League Central champs who made it all the way to the ALDS just a few months ago. The Guardians didn't lose any key players in the offseason. They even made significant upgrades to improve their offense with the signings of Josh Bell and Mike Zunino.

I wouldn't expect them to be in the top five, but they definitely deserve to be above the Tampa Bay Rays, the team they defeated in the ALWS, who is rated as the 11th-best team.

This list doesn't even have the Guardians as the clear favorite in the ALCS either. This is where the other teams in the division came in:

13. Minnesota Twins
15. Chicago White Sox
24. Detroit Tigers
25. Kansas City Royals

While they do have Cleveland as the highest-rated team in the ALC, it's not by too much as the Twins and White Sox are just behind them. I do think these three teams will end the season very close to one another, but the Guardians deserve a little more separation based on how the division standings looked at the end of the year.

At the end of the day, this list is just one author's opinion. I'm just excited for each team to get the chance to prove themselves to one another with every team playing everyone in 2023.

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