Slade Cecconi 's Projected 2026 Stats with Guardians

Slade Cecconi’s first season with the Cleveland Guardians was certainly a success. After coming over to the organization in an offseason trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cecconi recorded a career-best ERA of 4.30 and a 1.19 WHIP in his first full season as a starter.

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the 26-year-old's future. There are also reasons to be concerned about whether Cecconi can repeat, such as a productive season on the mound, making his ZiPS projections particularly interesting.

The prediction model believes that Cecconi will finish the 2026 season with a 4.38 ERA and a 4,42 FIP, which would come out to an ERA+ of 97, meaning Cecconi’s ERA would be three percent worse than league average.

The encouraging part of ZiPS’ numbers is that it still sees Cecconi as a pitcher with elite command, a strength that has been one of his biggest throughout his career. ZiPS predicts Cecconi to finish with a walk rate of 5.9 percent. The right-hander had the exact same walk rate in 2025, which ranked in the 85th percentile.

The disappointing part of the projections is that ZiPS does not predict Cecconi to make an improvement with his strikeout rate, which was 20 percent a season ago

Cecconi's increasing swing-and-miss and chase rate is his key to reaching the next level as a pitcher, and ZiPS undoubtedly doesn’t see that happening in 2026. That doesn’t mean the righty will be a bad pitcher for the Guardians next season, though.

Cecconi pitched 132 innings in 2025, and ZiPS foresees a similar workload for the right-hander next year, with the model projecting him to finish with 125.3 innings. However, ZiPS does believe that four of his projected 26 appearances could come out of the bullpen.

The big question for Cecconi is whether he can continue to outperform some of the unfavorable advanced metrics. Despite the relatively solid ERA, Cecconi had a strikeout rate of just 20 percent, an average exit velocity of 91.7 mph, which aren’t necessarily metrics that point to long-term success.

That said, it worked for Cecconi a year ago and earned him a playoff start, too. 

Coming into spring training, Cecconi will be fighting for one of the final three spots in Cleveland’s rotation. If he truly does have identical stats in 2026 compared to a year ago, the Guardians would likely be content with that production, but would it be enough to make a full-time member of the rotation next season?

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