When the Arizona Fall League rosters were announced in late September, two names caught the eye of every Guardians fan: Chase DeLauter and Daniel Espino. Now, with DeLauter getting called up and starting
a pair of postseason games for Cleveland, he was removed from the roster, so Espino shouldered the spotlight.
For the longest time, Daniel Espino existed as an entity. Whether one of hope or foreboding doom, he was merely the name with no face that Guardians fans had spoken about like stuff of legend. Espino was drafted by the Guardians in 2019 in the first round, and almost immediately, he became the most tantalizing pitching prospect this organization had seen since the start of the MLB Pipeline rankings back in 2011. Espino was generating 80 grades on his fastball (the elite of the elite) and 60 grades on his slider (plus grade) with continually improving command over all four of his primary offerings. Early in the 2022 season, Espino’s hype was reaching a fever pitch. He was showing sustained velocity up towards 98, touching 101-102 with elite ride and good run, and his slider was finding itself in the low 90s with sharp break. Nobody in Minor League Baseball was approaching those numbers as a starter. Espino struck out 51% of hitters faced in his 18.1 innings in Akron in 2022 to a very low 5.9% walk rate. He was untouchable.
Then Espino got hurt. Dealing right patellar tendonitis, shoulder soreness surfaced during his rehab and recovery. Espino didn’t touch the field the rest of the season. Little did anyone know he wouldn’t see a mound for three years.
Entering Spring Training of 2023, Espino was noticing further shoulder soreness during his bullpens. After visits with Dr. Neal ElAttrache, it was determined that Espino needed surgery to repair the anterior capsule in his shoulder. This would shelve Espino a projected 12 months, costing him his entire 2023 season after missing essentially all of 2022. The once soon-to-be top arm in Cleveland’s future rotation was withering away before our eyes. It only got worse. Espino would go in to 2024 hopeful to just pitch in a game, but that wasn’t going to happen. Espino needed further surgery on the same anterior capsule as well as on his rotator cuff. One shoulder surgery for a pitcher is concerning, but two in consecutive years is almost unheard of.
The Guardians and Chris Antonetti had no idea what the timetable would look like. Dr. ElAttrache also did the second surgery, once again successfully, but the rehab process for Espino was as grueling as it was an unknown. Espino, just like most of 2022 and 2023, missed all of 2024. 2025 rolled around, and even just the smallest bit of news on Espino felt impossible. Then August rolled around.
“He’s throwing 100 in his bullpens,” I was told. “He looks as if he hadn’t missed a beat,” another source told me. My ears perked up. I thought to myself is this the same Daniel Espino? This isn’t a clone, right? The denial was quickly turned into optimism just a few weeks later when the Guardians announced that, for the first time in over three years, Daniel Espino would step foot on a mound in game action. Espino took the mound on September 20 for the Clippers, and the entire collective fanbase paused what they were doing to watch.
First pitch: 97, a ball. Second pitch: 98 swing and a miss. A collective sigh of relief could be heard in Ohio that day. His stuff looked nasty. Espino sat at 97.6 mph with an average induced vertical break of 16.4 inches to go with 6.9 inches of run on his heater. Three grueling years of surgeries and rehabs, and it felt as if a 38 month absence were merely five days between outings. He was still the same guy. Espino threw 21 pitches and was removed from the game. He did it. He got back on the mound. He looked great in doing so, and he still had the same fastball and slider that brought him to the dance in the first place. The only thing that wasn’t a success for the day was him trying to hold back tears as he left the field.
This would be Espino’s lone outing as the season came to a close, but the aforementioned addition to the Arizona Fall League roster showed that things were about to rev up. This was just the beginning. Espino took the mound on Tuesday for the Surprise Saguaros’ opening game in the AFL, and after fellow Guardian Wuilfredo Antunez smoked a home run in the top of the first and gave Espino a lead to work with, Espino took it from there.
Here is Espino’s pitch chart from his outing on 10/7. He went one inning, allowed one hit, and struck out a pair:
Espino was surgical. He lived at the top of the zone with his 4-seamer, utilizing its velo and heavy riding action to its fullest, generating swing and miss, including back-to-back strikeouts of Max Muncy and Brailer Guerrero. As you’ll see below, thanks to certain stadiums in the AFL having Statcast tracking data available, we were able to get the above pitching specs as well as the location on everything. The brighter red are his 4-seamers while the darker red are his sliders. The sliders appear to be mislabeled cutters, but anyone who’s watched Espino pitch in the past knows what the bread and butter combo is.
His fastball location could not have been any better or more consistent. Espino generated swings and misses on two of the three sliders out of the zone, and every slider swung at resulted in a whiff.
With Espino, the last thing anyone can afford to do is to get ahead of ourselves. That being said, between this outing and his outing in Columbus, the visions of high leverage reliever working his way back to being a starter are not wishful thinking anymore. They’re very real. Espino is renowned as a great teammate who’s an incredibly hard worker with a humble attitude. Three years away from pitching never dissuaded the 24 year-old from his dream, and health willing, he may make that dream a reality in 2026.
