The brief and glorious Juan Brito experience has come to an end for now, much to the rejoicing of Guardians’ fans. As for me, I feel like I bit into a pizza roll too early.
I come to you as a Juan Brito believer, a Britruther, if you will. I ranked him as my sixth-best Guardians’ prospect entering the season. That ranking may cause you to not take seriously any further prospect rankings I provide, and that’s fine. I will continue to learn and grow and adjust my thinking about baseball. What I liked
about Brito was, first, his plate discipline, a walk rate around 13% in the minors, a strikeout rate around 20%, a swinging strike rate down around 10-12%) and, prior to an injury-plagued 2025, a chase rate between 20-24%. Second, Brito when hitting well, is a bit of a pulled-fly ball savant, with mostly even splits for his minor-league career against LHP and RHP as a switch-hitter. I foresaw a switch-hitting Isaac Parades who would likely end up in left field or potentially right field, but could potentially hold down second base or third base for a little bit as needed.
It’s somewhat impressive that in only 123 innings, Brito accumualated -3 DRS and -2 OAA. A brief glance at the fielding “leaderboards” from last year puts that at around a Kristian Campbell rate, and he was worth -6.6 in Defensive War in 471 innings. Brandon Lowe was the only qualified defender to be near that kind of defensive ineptitude (though not quite as bad) while playing a middle infield position in 2025, and he managed to survive as a second baseman because he put up a 114 wRC+. Bottom line – the stats say that you can’t play Juan Brito at second base. And, yes, I’m sure you didn’t need FanGraphs to know that’s the case, nice work.
One thing that I should have paid a little more attention to was how Brito’s chase rate climbed in 2025 to 29% and that it had remained there for this season in Triple-A prior to his call-up. In the majors, this rate predictably climbed, sitting at 35% today as he is set to be demoted. A 6% jump to the big leagues is to be expected, but a 6% jump from 20% to 26% would be a huge difference compared to the 6% jump from 29%. A hitter like Brito who doesn’t have elite bat speed or elite raw power cannot chase a third of the time he is at the plate and succeed. He will simply not be a major league hitter if he chases 35% of the time because he’ll strike out too much and won’t be able to earn pitches he can pull in the air.
Another thing that I should have taken more seriously was Brito’s aforementioned defensive issues. Here is where many site users and Twitter repliers will rightly tell me “I told you so.” When I watched Brito, I saw warning signs defensively, but I saw a decent arm and some solid plays that encouraged me that he could be a 45 grade defender at second base. In reality, he looked like a 30-grade defender, making at least one huge error each week. I would hazard a guess that this is why his time has been cut short and Bazzana is making an appearance a little earlier than what the team had probably originally planned. I, personally, would try to get Brito appearances at first base and left field (as well as DH) in Columbus from this point on because I simply don’t think he has the ability to be a competent infielder at second or third, having seen him put those “skills” to the test on the biggest stage. To be fair to Brito, he did barely any time at second base this season in Spring Training or Columbus before being asked to play it with Cleveland. I don’t think this changes the fact that we can basically all see he doesn’t possess the tools needed to be a major league quality second baseman. Defensive skills are hard to scout in the minors, but congratulations to everyone who was able to discern this before Brito’s promotion. You were right, I was wrong.
I wonder if you’ve ever made pizza rolls. You pop them in the microwave or the air fryer or oven if you’re really old, and when the timer goes off, you have a delicious and helpful snack to fullfil your needs. Just bite into them, it’s fine. ONLY IT’S NOT FINE. They need time to cool, time to settle into an edible temperature to do the job they are supposed to do. They LOOK ready, they SEEM like exactly what you need, but you will only pop one immediately in your mouth from your chosen baking receptacle ONE time before you vow never to do that again as your mouth turns into Anakin Skywalker from the lava scene in Revenge of the Sith. It turns out the heating element had the high ground, here, young padawan.
Juan Brito was a pizza roll prospect for me. I imagined Isaac Parades and it looked for about three games that Brito could be that. I saw his plate discipline pop up a few times after that… but Brito is not an “edible” temperature for a major leaguer yet. Maybe more time will change that. Or, maybe he’s been revealed to be burnt to a crisp by the fires of big league pitching. All I know is that I have learned a valuable lesson about more signs to look for before making the regrettable decision to gobble up another prospect’s stats. Brito does not have the exit velocity, speed or glove tools to make up for any loss in plate discipline and pulled fly-ball ability, and so I should have recognized that his risk of just being bad was much higher than I projected.
Now, I want to be clear to Juan Brito and his mom – I still have hope for Mr. Brito. He has shown, in the past, the ability to chase and whiff less. Should he do so, he can become a solid hitting prospect again. There are very few switch hitters with even splits, so that’s a potentially big asset as well. He now should know that his ticket back to the big leagues is doing what he does well at the plate consistently; the glove is going to prevent rather than enable another promotion in the future.
For now, farewell, Juan. We will watch you in Columbus. Maybe we’ll even throw in a tray of Pizza Rolls as we flip on the game. And, you’ll be a helpful reminder to not trust the appearance of those little rolls of pizza goodness without being sure the contents are actually ready for the big time.
