Guardians Trade Target: Alec Burleson

You know the old baseball adage… when you think you have enough left-handed hitters, go get some more.

That’s about pitching? Huh. That’s weird. Well, anywho, the Guardians’ love left-handed hitters so what makes us think they’ll only target right-handed hitters at this deadline? Instead, as the St. Louis Cardinals enter today 2.5 games out of the third wildcard spot, they may try to pry another left-handed hitter off the Redbirds in the form of one Alec Burleson.

You can view our larger trade deadline

piece here as we discuss a wider pool of options the Guardians may consider. To make my position clear, I expect the Guardians to make smaller moves, like trading Bo Naylor and getting a castoff/undervalued reliever. But, in the interest of exploring potential larger moves, we are doing a series looking at some of those bigger names. So far, we have discussed Spencer Steer, Luis Arraez, Shea Langeliers, Taylor Ward, Heliot Ramos, Jo Adell, Ty France, Tyler Soderstrom, Heriberto Hernandez and Kyle Stowers. Although the Guardians’ greatest need is hitting, the market is aflush with starting pitching so it also may make sense for the Guardians to see if they can find a good value there, as we wrote here and looked at specifically with Jose Soriano.

Back to Burleson: He is a 27 year-old first baseman/outfielder/DH under team control through 2028. He has a career 110 wRC+ but over the past two seasons, he is at 124 wRC+, with a 15/7.4 K/BB%, and a .287/.343/.460 slashline. It is only fair to note that this number includes a 145 wRC+ against RHP and only a 65 wRC+ against LHP. Burleson is primarily a strong-side platoon hitter… but he is a particularly excellent one. He is not a good defender at first base or left field but can stand in either spot and not embarrass himself; I’d prefer to see him made a full-time DH at which spot he has a 145 wRC+ over the past two seasons. The absence of the usual “DH penalty” there should be attractive to the Guardians, and he can happily fill in at first or left field on the occasional Jose or DeLauter DH days, as needed (or those DH days can be scheduled against LHP when possible while Burleson gets a day off). Burleson’s career home run total would look almost exactly the same at Progressive Field (actually +1) as it does at Busch Stadium, according to Baseball Savant, so that’s another point in his favor.

I would hope the Guardians would still target one of the Jo Adell/Taylor Ward/Heriberto Hernandez/Ty France Mount Rushmore of available Lefty Mashers if they acquired Burleson, but I would think the Cardinals could be made to see reason for the return here, given the uncertainty surrounding the existence of a 2027 season. I wouldn’t trade Ralphy Velazquez, Juneiker Caceres and PROBABLY not Angel Genao for Burleson, but everyone else can be part of the discussion. Additionlly, if the Cardinals think they can fix Kyle Manzardo, I’d be willing to entertain that conversation along with a very good prospect.

Against right-handed pitching, the following lineup (should Manzardo be retained) looks pretty formidable:

1. Kwan LF
2. Jose 3B
3. DeLauter RF
4. Burleson DH
5. Bazzana 2B
6. Manzardo 1B
7. Angel Martinez CF
8. Bailey C
9. Rocchio SS

Let me know your thoughts about getting another lefty-hitter in Alec Burleson in the comments below!