The 2024 Assessment Season Has Begun

 Some teams rebuild...for a long time.

Some teams re-tool

Some teams desperately do whatever they can, within their resources, to compete

Few, if any teams, have the resources internally that they need to sort through before they can compete.

The Guardians shocked their fans and much of the baseball world yesterday when they DFA'd Cal Quantrill.  While fans were searching for answers as to why the best case scenario was they had a trade in place that they just couldn't complete and the DFA bought them time beyond the approaching non-tender date to complete a trade.  

Then reality struck and that reality was the worst case scenario.  Chris Antonetti, in his press conference today, said that they would not pay Quantrill's expected arbitration salary as they didn't feel it was worth what their projected performance for him in 2024.  Pretty much that means that the Guardians made the determination that Quantrill was not expected to provide even 1.0 WAR value this year.   Given his 2022 season being great but much maligned by analytics people as not being sustainable and the last 6 starts when he came back from injuries in 2023 being better, these are not the words of a baseball guy thinking he is going all in on winning in 2024, especially when a look at the Guardians' farm system shows anyone that there isn't a single pitcher who will likely have a positive impact on the ML team until at least the all-star break.  Simply, they all have issues with their pitching that need to be sorted out or, minimally, refined to get them to be able to consistently get big league hitters out.

So, where does that leave us?

My opinion is that, knowing what we know now, we make the determination that we will NOT go for it in 2024.  

We should use that year as an assessment year.  We have too many prospect who have been blocked and so we don't know what we have in them, especially our MIFers and OF prospects.  They all need extended play to see what we have in them.  We need to determine who we keep and who we trade as, right now, the way they have been used, not used or misused has made them all worth MUCH less than I think they be.

Not a rebuild.  Not, for gosh sakes, a re-tool.  An asssessment year where we look at our internal options.  And here is how I would do it:

• Sign Josh Naylor to a long extension.  Very few times have I said that this is a good idea but look at the fire in his eyes, look at the improvements he made on both sides of the ball and you see a guy you want in Cleveland for the entire time that Jose Ramirez is here, and maybe one year beyond.    As this is a long-term play that can be backloaded, it should not impact our financial situation.  This extension is CRUCIAL and I repeat CRUCIAL to the long-term health of this team.
• Non-tender Ramon Laureano.  He has an expected $4.3 million arbitration salary.  No way should we keep him if we dumped Quantrill.  While his WAR might theoretically justify this salary, this team's current state cannot.  We have too many OF prospects we have to sort through this year.
• The only FAs we sign are starting pitchers who make $1.5 million or less.  We want guys who are emergency options in case our current, internal emergency options fall through.
• Set up the season so we play Rocchio, Freeman, Tena, JRod, Gonzo and even, after the all-star break, Noel and, if he is ready, DeLauter.
• Start the season with Manzardo as our DH.  Look, I was against this until yesterday but since we went for assessment instead of competing, it is worth a look at him in light of him being a possible ROY player, even though I think that is a long shot, at best.
• Keep James Karinchak.  Most of the impetus to get rid of him is frustration that he can't take that next step and, to an extent, is even regressing somewhat.  Still, 165 IP, 98 H, 253 Ks look above average to me and that is corroborated by hie ERA+ numbers each season.  At $1.9 million estimated arbitration salary he is a bargain and worth another year to see if he finally puts ALL of it together, or if he will just continue to regress.
• Remove Alfonso Rivas from the roster.  As I have said on Twitter, if Rivas is on this roster next spring this FO has their heads up their butts and will seal the deal that they have no idea what they are doing and this franchise is screwed.  You have so many internal options to sort through you don't need ultimate AAAA players like Rivas, Oller and other minor league signees (like Ben Gamel) taking playing time from these guys.  
• Develop Cody Morris, Xzavion Curry and Hunter Gaddis as starting pitchers only.  In a normal season you want to give the team flexibilty to use these guys as relievers and I truly believe their future is better in the bullpen than as starters.  But, right now, in an assessment year, we have to determine is they are truly never going to be starters in the majors.
• Start the season with Myles Straw as our CFer.  I know everyone hates on Straw right now but you have to give him at least 2 months to see if what they told him at the end of the season has lit a fire under him or if he is just not good enough to play CF in the majors, offesnively that is.  I mean, his bunting went from non-existent to passable this year.  Maybe he now has the message that his hitting needs to get way better, too.  

A rebuild means you get rid of most of your veterans.  Besides Laureano, we don't have any veterans besides Beiber and Bethancourt, both of whom are needed now.  So we aren't rebuilding.

A re-tool means that you are going to spend financial or trade capital to bring in veterans to shore up areas you are weak in.  However, you have to have all your other pieces in place and be solid.  Right now we are missing CF, RF and are unsure about SS, DH and in the bullpen. Both of the above paths are not minimalistic and both require having a solid foundation to build upon.  You can't go cheap, signing lifer AAAA players like Gamel, Rivas and Oller who you hope will suddenly, in their late 20s or 30s, become above-average starters.  You have to spend big bucks to sign FAs (something that the DFA of Quantrill SHOULD signal is not happening) or trade lots of prospect capital to find really good veterans to make the re-tool happen.  Given that we have screwed the pooch by not using, misusing or improperly using our ML-ready prospects, they won't have enough value to trade and, even if we had enough capital, we do not have a complete infrastructure that would allow us to assume that re-tooling additions will make us good enough to compete.

So we are left with an assessment year.  We have oodles of prospects to sort out and positions to lock down.  We need to limit our holes to as few as possible so we can apply resources next winter to filling those FEW holes.   We are not there yet.  We need to assess this year.

Let the assessment year begin.  We should know what the first steps are.  That is, the first two bullet points above.  Let's get those done and go from there.  

The future can be bright if we just follow this plan and don't try to be cute and think we know more than the rest of baseball on how to build a champion on a small budget.  

Let the assessment year begin.