Cleveland Indians: Analyzing the top five prospects for the Tribe

No. 5 George Valera

The top rated outfield prospect in the Cleveland Indians’ organization, George Valera is the youngest player of this bunch at 20-years old and has a major league “ETA” of 2023 according to the MLB’s prospect list for Cleveland. From what we saw from Valera this spring, 2023 seems about right, giving him a couple years to continue to grow in the majors.

At Spring Training, Valera appeared in eight games for Cleveland and logged eight plate appearances. In those eight times at the plate, Valera walked twice and struck out twice with just one hit. Now, he did score three times, being each time he reached the base paths, but he still only slashed .167/.375/.167.

A sample size that small from Goodyear isn’t going to be enough to project Valera, but it does show that there’s still work to do for him. Unfortunately, his minor league numbers as a whole aren’t all that better in terms of his slash line. In 2019, he played with both Low-A Mahoning Valley and Single-A Lake County where he combined for a .217/.336/.411 line. When he made contact it turned into seven doubles, two triples and eight home runs.

There’s definitely upside to Valera’s game, there’s really no question about that. As of now, he still has a lot of growth to do before making it to the majors, but the flashes are there and should be exciting to see for Indians fans.