Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Thoughts for a Wednesday - NBA Pre-trade Deadline Addition

LeBron James

Congrats to LeBron James.   I have been following him chasing the all-time points leader title for the past two years.  Glad to see he made it.  

Interestingly, he reportedly spends $1.5 million a year on taking care of his body.   Although it will never happen, I would like to see major leaguers have to spend 1/10th of their annual net salary up to $1.5 million for documented costs of this type.  Again, pipedream but we are paying these guys lots of money with the only incentive for them to stay in shape is for these millionaires wanting to keep making more money in their next season.   Less incentive if a guy is on a long-term contract.    Doesn't seem fair to me.

World Baseball Classic Rosters - Guardians So far

So far it looks like we have the following guys playing in the WBC:

Richie Palacios - Netherlands 

Josh Wolf - Israel

Dayan Frias (?) - Columbia

These are the exact type of guys that should be playing.  Palacios has more potential to be a AAAA player than a consistent ML performer, although the jury is still out.  Still, on this year's team he is playing a depth role at AAA.   Wolf is oft-injured and not a great performer when playing so who knows if his major league dream will ever become a reality.   Arias, if he plays in the WBC, is not even in a lot of guys' top 30 Guardians prospects and, while I see him as a sleeper prospect for the upcoming season, he is not a guy we are counting on this year or even next year.  

I think that for all these guys their participation in the WBC may be more important right now than reporting to spring training on time.

Cavaliers Trade Rumors

Zilch, zero, nada, nothing.   Would love to have Markinen back although I don't know if he would it with the lineup now that Mitchell.   Still, it would be great to have the band back together again.  And then what to do with Kevin Love?    

Off-season Videos

More good stuff coming from Guardians Prospective Twitter.   Good to see some of our young guys already in Goodyear getting ready.  Will love to hear what the chatter is from spring training.when some of the younger guys that Todd has been highlighting in their videos report for ST in March.  

Off-Season Prospect Lists

Will have much more on this later but right now there are 7 listing of our prospects that have listed a #1 prospect.  4 have Espino, 2 have Williams and 1 has Valera.  

Looking at MLB Pipelines latest rankings Cleveland is tied with the Dodgers with 7 prospects in the top 100.  Baltimore has 8 prospects in the top 100. The O's have 2 pitchers, 4 infielders and 2 outfielders.  No catchers and light on pitchers and heavy on infielders. The Dodgers have 3 pitchers, 1 catcher, 1 2B, 1 3B and one OF.  The Guardians, in contrast, have 3 pitchers, 1 catcher. 1 SS and 2 OF.  So each system not only has prospects but a good balance at the top of their prospect lists.  Atlanta has zero prospects in the top 100, Houston, KC and Toronto have 1 each.  White Sox, Angels, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle all have 2 prospects in the top 100.  The major league average should be about 3 team and the 16 other teams have 3 or more prospects in the top 100.

Most of the rest of the teams either have few prospects or an unbalanced system.  For example, the Mets have 4 prospects but two are catchers.  Milwaukee has 3 but they are all outfielders.  Washingtoh has 3 outfielders, 1 pitcher and 1 3B.  

I love the Guardians balance in their farm sykstem (except for catcher, where I think they choked during the 2022 draft).  It should serve us well going forward.

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