First, congratulations to Terry Francona on being named the AL Manager of the Year. Well deserved honor. No one does more with less than Tito does. I have truly lived through the greatest age in Cleveland baseball between the teams of the 1990s and the last decade with Terry Francona as our manager. So, I consider myself lucky to be a Guardians' fan and I NEVER, EVER take that for granted because my heart is chasing that brass ring of a WS championship.
Regarding the Nolan Jones trade I still have questions:
1. Why did that trade have to go down yesterday? It looked like one of two things: (a) they valued Juan Brito more than the rest of baseball does and knew it was their best time to pounce on him or (b) they valued Jones so little that they felt they were getting a great deal by trading him for Brito, a one tool player at low A who will likely run out of minor league options before he reaches the majors.
2. If we had enough left-handed hitting outfielders (I am assuming Antonetti is talking about Kwan, Brennan, Benson and Valera) why in the world did the Guardians draft 3 left-handed hitting outfielders in the first 5 rounds of the recent amateur draft? It makes no sense. You could have drafted excellent catchers and RH hitting outfielders and corner infielders and yet you spent all that draft capital drafting players that Antonetti said will have no chance because, like Jones, they are redundant. And don't give me the "best player available" crap. At every selection the Guardians have there are guys of close to equal value of who they actually drafted, especially in early rounds.
4. If Brito is so good, why did he not get a mid-season promotion this year? Given that they had to make a decision on him this winter you guess they would have pushed him to higher level(s) during the season to see if he was worth protecting. But they didn't do that. For comparison sake, Noel, Freeman, Valera, Arias and Rocchio all played at high A levels at a younger age than Brito did as part of their normal development and received mid-season promotions the year they played at low A. .
5. Do they really think Brito will make it the majors for good before he runs out of minor league options. A normal development path would have Brito playing at Lake County in 2023, Akron in 2024 and Columbus in 2025, with a possible callup to Cleveland that year. In 2026 he has to stay on the major league roster all year or be DFA'd.
Everything that I read that Antonetti said today were good reasons for trading Nolan Jones. But nothing that I read tells me why Jones had to be traded yesterday or why it had to be Brito and not someone who didn't have to be rostered right now. Nor did he explain the contradictions of what he said about our glut of LH hitting outfielders we have now and why we drafted 3 more in the first 5 rounds of the draft this year.
As I have said before, losing Nolan Jones was not a problem. It was losing him for Brito. However, the most nagging question is if this is how they value their own prospects, how can we trust Antonetti and Chernoff to make good trades in the future?
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