28-man roster Post #2

The only real changes to the roster or potential roster is that both Arias and Palacios were sent down to the minors and Josh Naylor is actually playing in a major league game.  These new developments will impact the 28-man roster.  Naylor looks like he could be on the 28-man roster and the Arias demotion gives a better chance that Owen Miller will make the roster.  We are seeing Rosario in LF which meshes with players still on our roster.  Miller and Clement have looked good.  Brian Shaw looked good in his first two outings, solidifying at least one spot in the bullpen

Knock on wood, there have been no major injuries, especially to our ML pitching staff, outside of  Cody Morris.   No pitchers expected to make the major league team have been so bad their spots are in jeopardy at this point.  Borderline guys like Tobias Myers and Sam Hentges have looked very rough and Konnor Pilkington has been sent down.  Nick Sandlin might not be ready on opening day.  

In terms of players on the bubble, Zimmer did not help his cause and Mercado did not help his cause significantly, in my opinion.  

So the position player roster, likely to be 13 players, looks like this

Catcher (2): Hedges and Leon

Infielders (6): Ramirez, Bradley, Chang, Gimenez, Miller, Clement

Outfielders (5): Straw, Rosario, Kwan, Naylor, Reyes

As far as our likely-to-be 15 man pitching staff, here is how it looks right now

Starting pitchers (5): Bieber, Civale, Plesac, Quantrill, McKenzie

Relievers (6): Clase, Logan Allen (the elder), Shaw, Gose, Morgan, Stephan, 

Relievers on the bubble who are on the 40-man roster (2): Hentges, Meyers

Relievers on the bubble who are not on the 40 man roster (5): Alex Young, Enyel De Los Santos, Justin Garza, Rober Broom, Nick Mikolajchak

Now comes the difficult part.  Here are the relevant points:

• Mercado and Zimmer should be gone.   Getting rid of them creates two 40-man roster spots
• We need a backup catcher.   Maile will be on the IL.   If he is not on the the 60-day DL we will have to either use Lavastida as the backup or add Leon to the 40-man, meaning one of the 40-man spots we get by removing Zimmer and Mercado will be wasted.   As this is likely to be a short-term replacement, the only option I see is Lavastida.  We will need the two roster spots for relievers.
• Karinchak and Sandlin are unlikely to be on the roster and will likely open the season on the 10-day IL.  

 So we need 4 relievers and we have 2 40-man roster spots to play with.  So we can pick 2 relievers from the non-roster guys if we keep Hentges and Meyers in the majors.   If we want to add any more relievers from non-rostered players Meyers and/or Hentges will have to be DFA'd.   The final thing to consider if the Guardians know that Karinchak and Sandlin will be coming off the IL very soon, the relievers you want to add from the non-rostered players are guys who you aren't afraid to DFA to make room for Karinchak and Sandlin.

The key for this season, with our current 40-man roster situation, is that guys added to the 40-man roster will likely have to result in another guy beng DFA'd in a 1-for-1 basis (e.g., Karinchak comes back and Young gets DFA'd.  Sandlin comes back and maybe Meyers or de los Santos gets removed)  This crunch will be relieved if we make trades where multiple guys from our 40-man roster leave and less guys who have to be the 40-man roster come back to the Guardians.  

Time will tell.