Thoughts For A Monday Morning - A Great Afternoon For Baseball - If You Are A Frog!

 Rainy weather may put a damper on some of our teams today but let's talk baseball anyway.

GUARDIANS

This is such a long season but we have a good clubhouse, a good manager, a generally good FO. Still some red flags, though

• Clase doing it with guile more than with dominating stuff.  His FB velocity is down and he looks more hittable.  I hope we won't be seeing many more outings like yesterday, though.  This would have been a big game to win including taking the series and picking up a game on the Twins.  
• Zunino's defense is improving but not fast enough.  I wonder if his left shoulder is still bothering him.  
• Rosario has hit into 4 DPs already, Bell has hit into none.  Naylor has also hit into 4.   Looking at those stats I think the lineup should be:

1. Kwan

2. Straw

3. Ramirez

4. Bell

5. Gimenez

6. Rosario

7. Brennan

8. Zunino

9. Naylor

• It is so hard for a rookie to get his feet on the ground with only sporadic playing time.  But Gabriel Arias has struck out 18 times in 36 ABs.  Maybe it is time to bring up Freeman and send down Arias, or give switchhitter Brayan Rocchio a try.  He could slot into the #9 slot at DH with Bell playing 1B.  I think our offense needs a spark and Arias needs a break.
• Compare Josh Bell to Jose Abreu.  Right now it looks like we signed the better free agent first baseman and for less money.  Hopefully Bell continues to heat it up so that he is more likely to exercise his opt-out.  I like the flexibility this roster and this payroll would have without Bell in 2024.   I don't like our lack of financial flexibility if he doesn't produce the rest of 2023 and we are stuck with a .230 hitter at $17 million in 2024.
• This offense needs an infusion of SOMETHING.  We need to stay close to Minnesota as our injury situation is getting better, I hope, and theirs is getting a tad worse.   If we give them too much of a cushion a hot streak by us on a cold streak, fueled by injury issues, fo rthem may not give us the ability to catch up to them.
• Yeah for David Fry.  He appears to me to be a true professional with skills.  His impact will NOT, in any sense of the word, be as much as that of Logan T. Allen or Tanner Bibee so I doubt if he can shake us out of our offensive doldrums.  However, I think he would be an important part of this roster and of our playoff roster, if we get that far.

MINOR LEAGUES

• I hope Ross Carver is OK.  He was removed from the game the other night with a side injury.  It looked like his left side near his hip so, who knows.  No word yet.  The encouraging thing was that he was hitting 94.  He came with the reputation as being more breaking ball heavy but his fastball velocity is as advertised based on recent scouting reports.
• Lenny Torres Jr. and Josh Wolf have turned themselves into interesting prospects by their moves to the bullpen.  Still, though, the clock is running on these guys due to injuries early in their career and the pandemic.  Right now their ability to miss bats is hurting them from exploding up the minors.
• Ryan Webb is starting to worry me.  Fastball sitting at 90-92, touching 93.  Highly dependent on breaking balls and, so far, his results have been mixed.  When his breaking ball is sharp he is competitive at high A.  When it isn't, his fastball is not competitive at high A.  That's the point of my concern: his fastball is not competitive even in A ball.   Time will tell but yesterday he, once again, did not look good.
• Speaking of looking good, Will Dion is pitching with less fastball (88-91, touches 92) than Webb, with both at Lake County.  The difference is that Dion's command is just impeccable.  He looks so good when you watch him as he keeps these high A hitters totally off-balance.  He was fun to watch in spring training and he is fun to watch now.  How much his stuff can translate to the upper minors is to be seen but if he keeps pitching like this he may trade places with Nikhazy as the latter's mechanics look, to me, to be totally screwed up.
• I hate, absolutely hate, positively hate that MLB did not grant minor leaguers a pass on the 2020 season.  Granting players a year of service towards Rule 5 and minor league free agency for a year they didn't play is just ridiculous.  It highlights the issue with international free agent signings.  Our 40-man roster is littered with Noel, Tena and Brito, all guys who aren't ready in their development path to help the ML team but are taking up roster spots.  It looks like Tena and Brito may run out of minor league options before they are ready to help us and other guys in the minors are coming up against their first Rule 5 season.  The latest that comes to mind is Maick Collado.  He looks to be dominating low A ball but he was actually signed in July, 2019,  Even if you don't count that year he will be eligible for the Rule 5 after 2024, at which time he likely will not have cleared high A ball yet.  He simply will not be ready to roster at that time.  Juan Benjamin and Wuilfredo Antunez, both of whom, like Collado, are only 20 years old, are in the same boat.  All 3 look like good prospect and, playing in the Carolina League at 20 makes their stats look more real as they are not really overage for that league.  Still, it sucks as we will approach a Juan Brito-like situation.  I think it is time to gamble that these guys won't be able to stick  if they are drafted in the Rule 5.  We just can't keep rosterng these guys.
• Looking at the other minor leaguers this past week, here are my thoughts:
• Parker Messick is a mess.  He should be dominating the way Dion did last year and he is not.  He doesn't look athletic to me and he is not throwing that hard as he doesn't even seem to be able to beat younger hitters with his stuff...in low A.
• The AAA hitters all continue to rake.  The ABs that Freeman and Rocchio are putting up tell me it is time to give them an extended look in the majors.  The problem is that all the ABs in Cleveland are being soaked up by Rosario and Arias.  We may need a band-aid ripping off trade for Rosario to clear some roster space.  Having Gavin Williams in with the pitchers along with Gaddis makes at least a couple of games interesting every series.
• Lynchburg really has no pitching prospects that I see.  The quality of their hitters is still undetermined as many of them (e.g. Furman, Zarate, Lipscomb, Turner, Cavanaugh) are too old for the league and the more age appropriate prospects appear to be slap hitters, legging out infield hits, stealing bases and taking walks.  They have 7 HRs in 18 games and are slugging .350 with a team BA of .258.  There is not much to really comment on there until the younger guys actually start to add some power.  
• Lake County has a number of interesting pitching prospects but their pitching roster is filled with guys who are too old for their league.  Still, most of them are producing so we will know by the end of the year which ones will be called up to Akron and whether they can be productive after that promotion and what that means going forward.  Remember, the 2021 draftees do not have to be rostered until after 2024.
• On hitters for Lake County they have very little power.  Lampe looks like a good hitter although I am worried that he is a hot-head after getting ejected already this year and what I read about him before the draft.  They do have guys like Brito, Frias, Tolentino, Fox, Greene, Cairo and Valdes, all of whom are on the border of becoming true elite prospects or maybe falling off the prospect radar entirely because none of them appear to have even one truly elite skill, just a whole bunch of good skills.  given that the team has 12 HRs in 20 games, the power is what is truly lacking.  
• Akron's pitching is questionable at this time with only Joey Cantillo as a true prospect. There are a number of guys on the periphery (Burns, Smith, Leftwich, Nikhazy, Carver) who are in the same boat as most of the hitters at Lake County: their season will determine whether they are true elite prospecdts or whether they slide back to being suspects.  
• Akron's hitting is really bad.  The guys you expect to be raking, Martinez and Tena, can't even see the Mendoza line from where they are.  Halpin is the prospect leader right now and he is only hitting .240 with 2 stolen bases.  No one else is hitter more than .217.  Truly, we may not have a top 20 prospect on Akron with the exception of Cantillo, based on performance, now that Williams has been promoted.  Disappointing when you consider where these guys were rated before the season.