1) Congrats to the Guardians for their 4 Golden Glove awards. There was a lot that went into this but here are the keys that I think led to this. The Guardians prioritized Rosario at SS and Straw, with his contract extension, in CF. This led to them being able to put Kwan in LF and Gimenez at 2B. Kwan can play CF and Gimenez was touted as a slick-fielding SS. Thus, Kwan and Gimenez were set to become above average at their positions which have evolved in the majors to be offense-first positions. While I won't say LF and 2B are defensive black holes, the competition for Gold Gloves at those positions is less than at SS, CF, 3B and catcher. Then Kwan and Gimenez produced offensively, making them solid starting players, giving them more reps than if they were light-hitting players. Not to minimize the defense Gimenez and Kwan played, which was fantastic, but if you can have a SS play 2B and a CFer play LF, your defense is going to be pretty good. As far as Bieber, fielding awards are n the eye of the beholder. I saw him as being solid but the analytics and the naked eye of voters said he was much better than that. As far as Straw, he could be the best defensive centerfielder I have ever seen.
Being able to have defensive-minded players play offense-first positions and still produce offensively at a high level is one important way to build a solid, competitive major league roster.
2) I am not rooting for either team in the WS but the Phillies leading this series is problematic for me as it reinforces two things I don't want reinforced (a) if you get into the playoffs anything can happen and (b) bringing in high-priced players is the way to go to win the WS.
I think (a) causes teams to make bad trades at the deadline whereas (b) causes teams to overpay for free agents, both in dollars and years. Both of these are really death to small market teams like Cleveland and it is how teams in those markets end up going into long, painful rebuilds.
Hey, I am not saying that the model I want to see emulated is having the Tampa Bays of the world win the WS. I think that model is bad as it gives cheap owners the ammunition to continue to be cheap and, somehow, expect their management to build good teams from spare parts.
I am for organic growth followed by selective addition of quality people who are also good veterans. Basically, this is the model the Indians employed in the mid-90s to go from a good, young team to a WS contender. In fact, the Houston (cough! cheaters! cough!) roster is more along the lines of how I think a roster should be built.
So, as much as I hate to root for cheaters...Go Astros!
3) I will talk in depth about our minor league players later but right now the two position players we need to make huge jumps next year are George Valera and Brayan Rocchio. I think the Guardans' management team is smart enough to know that neither of these two are at their highest trade value and that selling low on them would be a mistake. I don't know if it is a good thing but Valera, Rocchio, Tena and Martinez are playing winter ball. I guess it can't hurt to get that extra experience and hopefully it translates into hot starts next year at Columbus and important contributions to the Guardians major league team next year.
4) I am a little concerned that I haven't heard anything about Nolan Jones. I hope he, along with Will Benson and Tyler Freeman are still being prioritized as important assets by the Guardians. With the wealth of riches in prospects the Guardians have it would be easy to see the warts on their games and just consider them second-rate prospects. I think Jones and Benson are still on the steep upward part of their development. Freeman was the top prospect in our postion this past winter and had most of his 2022 season lost to getting back to form from his shoulder surgery. I am for holding onto these guys this winter as I think throwing them into trades would be selling way too low.
5) Talking about Gold Gloves, Christian Walker's Gold Glove goes not impress me. In fact, I think it is more piling on for the sucker's bet that bringing him in via trade will be. He is a soon-to-be 32 year old who had a career year at 31. As I said, a sucker's bet that I don't want to be part of. Bring on Jose Abreu!
6) Sean Murphy or Bo Nayler? I still am prioritizing Murphy. The odds that Naylor could be the next Francisco Mehia or Carson Kelly is just too great for me. Hey, Bo Naylor could turn out to be great. In this case, the bird in the hand, given where we are as a franchise, is worth SOOO much more that the two in the bush.
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