Kuma portrayal is quite above Cracker one
You won’t find Kuma greatness in his feats. He barely has real ones. (Yet some of his feats are already crazy : taking huge amount of pain daily, protecting the sunny for 2 years non stop, punching Saturn etc)
But his portrayal is off the charts and only matched by other YC1 (at worst).
- Kuma plot relevance is quite important (Pacifista project, Vegapunk, Bonney, RA etc)
- Kuma is the only guy who beat the whole SH gang, not once, but twice
- Kuma is the one responsible for the time skip
- Kuma is the one who create the « nothing happened » moment
- Kuma is a shishibukai
- Kuma trained Sabo the MC bro
- Kuma was the only one knowing about Dragon son and seems really close to him
- Bucanners race and WG / Gorosei enemy
- a Uber strong DF that was paralleled with Kaido DF for the God Valley race
etc etc and I likely miss some
I don’t see a single commander bar YC1 who have the same degree of portrayal and I have Kuma at the higher end of that tier
Man, I'm sorry, but I can't see how these accomplishments could imply a valuation on him that could claim him to be 1YC.
In One Piece we have some narrative anomalies, yes, such as Jack being presented in the narrative as superior to Doflamingo, although in practice he did not demonstrate superior feats. But even Kuma's narrative does not establish a hierarchy in his strength. His feats of strength are "obsolete", beating all the mugiwaras in the pretimeskip even Caribou was capable of doing.
All shishibukais are receiving morale buffs now, I understand that Oda may value him, but even so he hasn't demonstrated any feat that can put him alongside King, Katakuri, Zoro, nor Queen, Sanji, etc. and Oda so far has not established its position in a hierarchy, has not established any parameters.
Therefore, until nothing tells me otherwise, I think it's safe to keep him at 3YC because his achievements have nothing to compare with Queen and Sanji.