Here's how the Guardians can get the most out of Kyle Manzardo

For all intents and purposes, Kyle Manzardo is having a solid season in the middle of the Cleveland Guardians' lineup.

He's got a 105 wRC+ to go along with a vastly-improved 9.3% walk rate and marginally-improved 26% strikeout rate. His .226 ISO is indicative of a guy really tapping into his impressive raw power often, and his .252 BABIP suggest he's due for some positive regression in the season's second half (for reference, his BABIP was .290 last season with worse batted ball metrics).

However, those stats are both buoyed and suppressed due to some interesting quirks in his game. While it's more sample size-induced noise than anything, it is fun to look into some of the numbers behind the numbers for Manzardo's 2025 season.

Kyle Manzardo is great when the Guardians win, and terrible when they lose

This is a stat that's often referenced in the NBA because of the importance of individual players in basketball, but I simply love Manzardo's splits in winning efforts and losing efforts.

When the Guardians win a game in 2025, the 24-year-old is slashing .277/.368/.577 with nine home runs, good for a .945 OPS. In other words, he's Pete Alonso when the Guardians come out on top.

However, when Cleveland falls short, Manzardo is slashing .146/.198/.262 with three home runs, good for a .460 OPS. In other words, he's the worst qualified hitter in baseball when the Guardians fall short.

This isn't exactly the same thing as the "you go, we go" statistical oddity the 2016 Cubs had with Dexter Fowler atop their lineup, but it's still pretty remarkable how much a winning vibe seems to affect Manzardo — or, perhaps more accurately, how much Manzardo can influence a winning vibe.

For what it's worth, the Guardians are 34-26 in games Manzardo starts this year despite the team using him in some weird ways?

Speaking of, and this is something we've already covered, but Manzardo is hitting lefties better than righties so far this season. His .867 OPS against same-sided pitcher is nearly 200 points better than his .718 mark against opposite-handed hurlers.

Also, did you know that Manzardo is a disaster when he bats third or fourth in the lineup? He's got a .494 OPS in 24 plate appearances in the three-hole and a .193 batting average (.686 OPS) in 170 plate appearances when batting cleanup.

However, when he gets the opportunity to bat second (38 PAs) or fifth (35 PAs), he's got a .856 OPS and 1.079 OPS, respectively. It's hard to pull too much from this given the small sample sizes, but perhaps there's a mental clarity when he's hitting ahead of or behind the team's best players, rather than having to serve as one of them? It also simply helps to have the lineup protection (or baserunning chaos) caused by José Ramirez's presence.

There's more interesting data worth delving into — his OPS jumps more than 150 points when he swings at a first pitch as opposed to taking it — but the point of this exercise is that different players thrive in different situations. Development is far from linear, but there's enough positive evidence to suggest that Manzardo will be a key cog of the Guardians' lineup for years to come.