Zeroes Across The Board!

 Bet some of you were thinking this was going to be a post about last night's game.  While it could have been as this is the type of game that a contender needs to win and, in the short term last night I was elated about not losing ground to the Twins who were walked off by KC, this morning I was hit by the fact that we could have gained a game on the Twins AND increased our chances of making the playoffs by beating a rebuilding team while the Twins lost to another one.

But, no, this post is not about winning or losing a game in July.

It's about how we got to this point.  

I looked back over all the transactions, big and small, that the Guardians have been involved in since the end of the 2020 season and, lo and behold, basically we have had ZERO transactions that were more than slightly positive for this franchise with many being negative and some really negative.  Here's the list I constructed.  I apologize in advance if I forgot any significant transaction.

Winners

• David Fry for JC Mejia
• Michael Kelly - free agent
• Daniel Norris - free agent
• Enyel De Los Santos - free agent
• Bryan Shaw - free agent
• 2021 draft

Neutral or Undecided

• Myles Straw for Phil Maton and Yainer Diaz
• Cesar Hernandez for Konnor Pilkington
• Peyton Battenfield for Jordan Luplow and DJ Johnson
• Carlos Vargas for Ross Carver 
• Anthony Gose - free agent
• Alex Call waived
• Franmil Reyes waived
• Bobby Bradley waived
• Yu Chang waived
• Bradley Zimmer for Anthony Castro
• Daniel Johnson waived
• 2020 draft

Losers

• Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco for Amed Rosario, Andres Gimenez, Josh Wolf and Isaiah Greene
• Jumior Caminiero for Tobias Myers
• Eddie Rosario for Pablo Sandoval
• Amed Rosario for Noah Syndergaard
• Josh Bell signing
• Mike Zunnino signing
• Cam Gallagher signing
• Owen Miller for cash trade
• Will Benson for Justin Boyd and Steve Hajjar 
• Nolan Jones for Juan Brito
• Ben Gamel waived
• Jose Fermin for cash
• Kyle Nelson waived
• Every other minor league free agent signed from Jan 2021 to the present
• 2022 and 2023 drafts

Teams like the Guardians cannot spend their way out of mistakes by signing expensive free agents.  They must draft, sign international free agents, trade and sign minor league free agents effectively.  This team has been pathetic at this over the last 2+ years and is surviving on the 2020 Clevinger trade, what they got out of the 2021 Lindor trade and existing draftees and international signings from 2018 and before.  But look at the list above. The Guardians front office has let us down and, without Francona holding it all together, their ineptness would have been even more exposed.  I mean, the shining trade over the past 2+ years was getting 26th man David Fry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even looking at the most recent Amed Rosario trade, the Dodgers got significant present value while the Guardians got headcase Noah Syndergaard who likely won't even make it to September before he is released.  Now I understand that trading Rosario was necessary but, as I suspected, the FO was, once again, convinced that THEIR players sucked and were worth nothing and were only worth leftovers.  So, while I commend the Guardians for their gamble on Syndergaard who represents someone who might be able to eat innings for a month or two, it is clear that the Guardians stand only a small chance of winning this trade and a large chance of losing it.

You can say what you want about our player evaluation process but it is an undisputable fact that, no matter how good that process appears to be on paper, it sucks in practice and that failure will impact the Guardians for years after those who perpetrated it on Guardians fans have moved on to other jobs.

So, for those of you thinking that we should make any deadline deals this year or, for that matter, ANY deals in the next year or so, hope against hope that we don't because, from the above list, you can see that iti is very likely to HURT this franchise as opposed to helping it.

So, good luck to the 2023 Guardans on the rest of the season.  I think they still have a good chance of winning this year and maybe even for the next couple of years after that, given the state of our division.  However, this bad FO management WILL come back to hurt this franchise and, without a lot of luck in the development of our current prospects, for MANY years to come.