Talking Cleveland Guardians Player Development in 2024 with Assistant GM James Harris

Back in November, I had the opportunity to have a 15 minute phone call with Cleveland Guardians Assistant General Manager James Harris. In the past, I’ve spoken with Harris about player development in his role as the organization’s farm director and then more recently, I had spoken with Rob Cerfolio before he left for a promotion with the St. Louis Cardinals this offseason.

Harris has also been good about shedding light on player development behind the scenes from injuries, on field and off-field changes, as well as other insights that go into player development.

Questions and some answers have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Justin Lada: What has the process been like partnering with Travis Bazzana so far, as someone who wants to play, work and develop at a rapid pace and played a very heavy college workload and then wanted to play a lot once he got into the system? Have you had to reign him in a little on workload?

James Harris: He’s his own best coach. He knows exactly where he wants to get better and drives himself to get better every day. He's partnering with our defensive coaches as well as our offensive coaches. And he has an idea of what he wants to work on. It's not a coach-player relationship. It's a partner relationship between the two and it's been great. We love it.

JL: How is Daniel Espino’s rehab going and what does his status look like going in 2025 as far as getting back to pitching at an affiliate?

JH: If you know Daniel, you know, he's going to come every single day and give his best effort towards getting healthy. We want him to be healthy and he wants to be as healthy as he possibly can. He's starting a throwing program now. As far as projection for 2025, we won't know until earlier in the year but he's starting that throwing program now, and so far so good.

JL: What adjustments did Jhonkensy Noel have to make to get a better handle on Triple-A and then impact the big league club the way he did? And will he be getting a fourth option year?

JH: We're thinking this is going to be his last year of options and we'll get that information here shortly. But we're optimistic in that regard. He’s finding better pitches to hit. So he’s reduced his chase rate and identified pitches that he can drive extremely hard and he's been able to do that at the major league level along with the pressure.

JL: Another guy who really jumped on the radar this year with a lot of people. It was Austin Peterson. You know, I really liked him in college and Um, Maybe thought we'd see more from him. Maybe results wise, I know you guys always stress results, don't mean progress, but the results were much better for Austin Peterson this year. What do you think changed for him?

JH: He’s an elite strike thrower, and he also has the curveball, slider and the changeup to complement the fastball. He throws them all in the zone for strikes. I think the mentality is different this year where he's challenging hitters in the zone and he's having great results…Mostly a fastball slider, but he's thrown his curveball more, and he's getting a lot of people taking it for called strikes. So he got a lot of results with it along with the changeup and fastball throwing it about 15% of the time.

JL: What went into the changes to mechanics and delivery for Doug Nikhazy and how did the organization and Doug feel about how they worked out?

JH: It started off with increasing his velo. He was able to increase a mile or two coming into the season and he was able to hold that. Then it was adjusting to the ball at Triple-A. If you know Doug, he takes the ball and competes. He’s trying to compete in the zone. And with an extra two miles an hour, it was pretty successful for him.

Initially, we thought (adjusting the Triple-A ball) was mental. It's a different ball because it's the major league ball and they don't use that in any other level except for Triple-A and the major leagues. But we saw pitcher after pitcher going back to guys like Logan Allen and Triston McKenzie. With the transition to the Triple-A level with the Triple-A ball, it takes almost like a quarter of a season to get used to it, but once they do it's pretty good.

JL: Regarding guys like Peterson/Messick/Wilkinson/Webb, when it comes to promotions, you always say that the player dictates when he’s ready for a promotion and new challenge. How much do you have to factor in when a player might need a promotion and new challenge, but there may not be meaningful playing time for them at the next level and if you also have someone to backfill that playing time as well?

JH: It's less about backfilling because we have a lot of pitchers in the system and some guys can adjust their role to take more innings. It's more about the promotion and opportunities. So if a guy is starting at one level and he’s got the ability to continue to start at the next level, it's a lot easier to move that player if he's dominated the level that he’s currently at. We like to align to give him the full opportunity and if that opportunity is not ready, we might hold them a little bit but then that will allow us to create a new opportunity at a higher level…(Backfilling) is not zero but a lot of times we have guys in the pen and have length at the current level. So you only have five sometimes six starters but the guys who are in the pen, in some cases used to be starters. So some of those guys, if you don't have a starter who's coming from a level below, you can kind of extend some of the people in the pen at the current level. There's a lot of strategies that we can do to do that, but we tend not to push guys who aren't ready for the next level.

JL: You guys added a lot of high school pitching talent from this draft class. What are some of the different ways you might have to work on roster assignments and development plans for that size of a pitching group, vs. how you might approach that with a larger class of college pitchers that you’ve had in the past?

JH: You can’t take anything for granted about what they know about their bodies, their pitch mix, arm care and things of that nature. It's almost like the John Wooden ‘teach them how to put their shoes on and make sure that they don't get blisters.’ We brought all of our young players in (during a week in November), and we're talking about mindset, we're talking about the mental aspect to the game. We're talking about physical components. So that's part of the program that's occurring right now in November, but when we draft them early on, it’s about arm care, catch play, structure, strength and conditioning and things a high school player might not know that might help them take the next step in their development.

JL: How’s Chase DeLauter’s progress going playing in the AFL and getting back those at bats he missed this year? What went into the decision to just have him DH out there?

JH: We were looking to increase his at bats for this year. We felt like he played in the outfield enough, especially in his rehabs. We just wanted him to see some live pitching. Chase was excited about it. And in between, he's coming to the complex every day to get additional work. So that's why we wanted to DH him, because we're going to be putting so much of a workload on him here at the complex with our coaches that we didn't want to double up on it.

JL: Angel Genao really showed a lot of growth this year, what did the organization see the most growth in from him and what do you think led to that?

JH: He’s maturing before our eyes. As he’s added the dedication off the field, the onfield performance increased. It’s positive reinforcement for the work he was putting in. Other players looked at him and followed him. It had a positive snowball effect.

JL: Jaison Chourio earned quite a lot of attention this year and it was unfortunate how his season ended, is he on track to be good to go in spring of ‘25 and how do you feel about what he was able to accomplish in 2024?

JH: He’s good to go now. He’s another guy who’s matured and played well at that level.

Unfortunately, two days before we were going to move him onto the next level, he got hurt. So we felt that he was ready last year for the next level and be able to do that in High-A and he'll be ready to go right out of shoot on once spring training starts.

We were disappointed for him, but he had a great year and there’s more to build off of there and we're excited to get him back in and start working again.

JL: Juan Brito played around the diamond quite a bit this year and that didn’t seem to phase his offensive game. What did you make of his ability to continue to be who he is at the plate while doing that and his progress at different positions?

JH: We don't know where he's gonna be able to impact us at the major league level. It might be right field. We have a platinum glover in second base. We have Naylor and Manzardo at first base. We have a potential future Hall of Famer at third base. We know we like the bat and we think the bat can play at the major league level. So he has to play every position to maintain versatility. It was awesome to see that and still succeed offensively.

JL: We saw Ralphy Velazquez play some OF in 2024 and make a really great catch robbing a home run last year. And he went from playing high school ball in ‘23 to a full pro season in ‘24. What do you make of how he handled the year and does 1B/OF continue to look like his future for the time being, and not a return to catching?

JH: So Ralphy had the hand injury last year, so we backed off of catching a little bit. We wanted to make sure that he maintained versatility. So we put him in the outfield because he's an athlete and he wanted to do it. He performed out there and exceeded our expectations off the field as well, and he loves the game. So you just can't keep the guy off the field. He's coming from high school so he's learning how to take care of his body and he's learning routines. So the sky's the limit for him, I would not eliminate catching from his future. Think of the success we had with David Fry. I’m not saying he’s David Fry, but we don't want to limit his versatility. If we can keep catching alive, I think it would be the most advantageous thing to do for our organization.

JL: Cooper Ingle mentioned in an interview with me earlier this year how one of the focuses he really took to was learning to work on pulling the ball in the air more. What was it about Cooper that you guys thought that was something he could do better and is that a trait the organization values or looks at, someone who can do that or seeing qualities that makes them seem like they will be able to do that more?

JH: If you look at our org, you can see we have guys who put the ball in play. Those are the types of players we like. But if you can identify pitches that you can drive, we want to help players do that and then do that effectively. So for him, we knew that if he could pull those balls in the air, he could make more of an impact out of his profile. That doesn’t mean that he's not going to be the same guy that he's always been. It's more about identifying opportunities to take shots. Our coaches have done a good job of helping our players identify those opportunities.