4 Guardians who are playing their way out of the team's 2024 plans

It has been another frustrating season for fans of the Cleveland Guardians. The offense has been pretty pitiful all season and despite seemingly being in the thick of the race for the AL Central title, the team decided to sell their best pitcher this season, Aaron Civale, at the trade deadline and division has been slowly slipping away from them ever since.

In fairness to the Cleveland front office, one can understand their skepticism about the Guardians' chances in the playoffs even if many of the problems are, in fact, the front office's fault. The Guardians have one of the worst offenses in the league and while they did have a shot at a playoff spot, it was because no team in the division has played well this season and the likelihood of a quick first round exit was quite high even if they kept Civale and managed to chase down the Twins.

Instead of dwelling on that missed opportunity, one just has to look to the future and see what changes need to happen for Cleveland to be successful in 2024. The first step is identifying the players that the Guardians just need to move on from after this season.

Here are 4 Guardians players that are playing their way out of the team's 2024 plans

There are a lot of viable candidates for a Guardians' roster culling, so don't consider this the definitive and final list of players that could be gone after this season. With the issues on the offensive side of the ball, there are only a handful of guys that should be considered safe bets to return next season and even that could be pushing it. One can only hope that the front office actually makes some changes for the better or, well, it could be another long, frustrating season in 2024.

Let's take a look at 4 Guardians players that could be playing their way out of town.

Myles Straw

The Guardians have exactly one outfielder who has been an above average hitter in 2023 and Steven Kwan only just barely makes that cut with a wRC+ of 102. Will Brennan certainly has his own warts as a player and could easily make this list, but another name that probably needs to find a new organization for a change of scenery is Myles Straw.

It certainly isn't great to identify a guy that signed a lengthy contract before the 2022 season as a player that needs to be headed out of town, but Straw's production just isn't there. His 70 wRC+ at the plate this season (which is really bad) is only marginally better than what he put up last season (64 wRC+) and his usually very decent defense has left him in 2023 with just 1 Outs Above Average this year. The nice thing with Straw is that all of that cheap team control he is under should have some value on the trade market even if it is for a guy with no power to speak off and declining defense.

Cam Gallagher

Even with his own issues at the plate, Bo Naylor seems to be the guy that is going to be getting the bulk of the playing time at catcher for the foreseeable future. Naylor hasn't hit this year, but he actually possesses real upside at the plate, so hanging on to him makes sense. However, it is hard to ignore the lack of production the Guardians are getting from the catcher spot and that is exactly why they need to move on from their other catcher on the roster, Cam Gallagher.

Harping too much on the backup catcher spot on a roster isn't a great use of time usually, but Gallagher has been shockingly bad this season. In 126 plate appearances for the Guardians, Gallagher has slashed .133/.167/.175 and has been worth -0.9 fWAR this season. The defensive metrics do, at least, seem to like him a bit, but there are going to be better catchers available in free agency or trade after the season that could also hit their way out of a wet paper bag if they needed to.