The Guardians are baseball’s most disrespected contender — a new ranking just made it official
Updated: Mar. 05, 2026, 11:19 a.m.|Published: Mar. 05, 2026, 11:18 a.m.
By Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The latest Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast just handed the Guardians the ultimate bulletin board material — and Joe Noga and Paul Hoynes are here for every word of it.
MLB.com published a fresh ranking of all 30 Major League Baseball teams sorted into World Series tiers, and the placement of the Guardians set the show’s hosts off on one of the most pointed, entertaining conversations of the spring. It’s the kind of analysis that cuts straight to the heart of what Cleveland baseball has always been about: being counted out, and then making the people who counted them out look foolish.
Here is the setup. The top tier belongs exclusively to the Los Angeles Dodgers, chasing three championships in a row. The second tier is stacked with the Blue Jays, Cubs, Mariners, Phillies, Red Sox, Tigers, and Yankees — big markets, big budgets, big expectations. The third tier holds the Braves, Mets, and Orioles, teams positioned as most likely to return to the postseason after missing it last year. And then there is the fourth tier.
The fourth tier is where it gets interesting.
“The fourth tier is occupied by two teams,” Noga said. “It’s the Milwaukee Brewers and the Guardians. According to MLB.com, these are teams that they always underrate and that always make them look bad because they always wind up overperforming.”
Read that again slowly. The official definition of the tier containing the Guardians — a team that won the AL Central last year on a historic comeback run — is: the teams analysts always underrate, and that always make those analysts look bad. That is simultaneously an insult and the most accurate thing MLB.com has ever written about this franchise.
Hoynes was not offended. He was nodding his head.
“It makes sense,” Hoynes said. “Milwaukee won an NL Central title last year with the best record in baseball. Cleveland won the AL Central last year with a historic comeback. These are two well-run teams that are playing in mid-to-small markets... they’re like kissing cousins almost when it comes to being kind of locked in.”
The comparison between Cleveland and Milwaukee is more than fair — it is genuinely insightful. Both franchises have become the modern blueprint for how to build sustainable winning baseball without a massive payroll. They draft well, develop with precision, extract maximum value from every roster dollar, and show up ready to win division titles while larger-market rivals scratch their heads and count their losses.
They are, as Hoynes put it, “kissing cousins” in the most competitive sense of the phrase.
But while the Guardians’ placement might be defensible in its own backhanded way, other parts of the ranking strain credulity. Noga zeroed in on the most glaring example.
“The one that kind of stuns me, shocks me is the Red Sox. They see Boston as an up and coming team... to have them on the second tier, I think is kind of insane to me. That’s putting a lot of faith in what they’ve done this offseason and a lot of unproven young talent there.”
It is a fair point, delivered with full conviction. The AL East is one of the most brutally competitive divisions in baseball. The Yankees, Blue Jays, Rays, and Orioles do not hand anything to anybody. Boston’s roster is built on potential and promise more than proven postseason production. Meanwhile, the Guardians — who won their division — sit a full tier below a Red Sox team that did not make the playoffs.
Hoynes offered the sharp counterpoint: the Red Sox are a big-market, big-money franchise, and MLB.com’s formula may be weighting payroll and market size alongside actual on-field merit. If true, that explains nearly everything about where Cleveland landed — and why they keep landing there, year after year, in national projections and preseason rankings.
The Guardians are 28th in offseason spending this year. They are operating at one of their lowest payroll levels in recent memory. And yet here they are, sitting alongside the Brewers as the team that will make you look foolish for doubting them.
Guardians fans have seen this movie before. They know how it ends.
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