Trying To Make Sense of Yesterday's Non-Tender Day Activity

 SUMMARY OF MY IMPRESSIONS OF THE OFF-SEASON MOVES SO FAR

• Trade of Cal Quantrill to Colorado for C Kody Huff - This was the worst possible scenario.  The Guardians gave way Quantrill to save his salary and got nothing in return as Huff is organizational filler of about the same ability as Joe Donovan, a current organizational filler catcher in our system.  We might as well have non-tendered Quantrill.  The only thing that DFAing Quantrill ended up doing was to allow the Guardians to have some control over where he ended up.  Although not generally a conspiracy theorist, it is hard to believe that this is the best/only return they could get for Quantrill. To 'place' Quantrill in Colorado, a place where he has the statistically worst chance of success, given their ballpark and his stuff DID minimize the FO's chances of being embarrassed if Quantrill put together a good season, something I think was highly likely.  You can ask yourself why Colorado would make this deal and the answer is simple: they need veteran starters and see that they might be able to flip Quantrill at the trade deadline for a good return, given that he has 2 years of control, meaning they would be trading dollars for prospects.  In addition, the trade of Quantrill leaves Cleveland with no clear #6 or #7 starters as all of the other starting pitchers in our system have either failed as ML starters (Curry, Gaddis), been injured (Morris, Espino) or simply are not ready to be ML starters (Cantillo, Dion, Webb, Nikhazy, Mace, Mesick, Campbell, Carver, Burns and others).

• Signing of Ramon Laureano to a 1 yr $5.1 million contract - As Laureano was supposed to get about $4.7 million in arbitration, this contract was surprising, especially since it was the only one of their arbitration cases settled yesterday.  This contract is a clear signal how much the Guardians think of Laureano and that the almost 30 year old who has been a part-time player for 4 years now, is an important part of their future.  Since the contract is way too expensive for him to be just a 4th outfielder and since RH hitting platoon OFers only play about 1/3 of the time as most SP in baseball are right-handed, this contract signals that Laureano is going to be a full-tine starter, either in CF or RF.    The issues with this is that it means
• we have a CFer  (Straw) who we would then have to find a way to jettison if Laureano is the starting CFer or
• if he starts in RF we still need to get a power-hitting centerfielder and, once again, we need to dump Straw.

        Both these scenarios likely involve Cleveland trading for or signing a FA outfielder as well as 

        finding a way to dump Straw's salary.  As the FA OF market is really thin, it is consensus that we 

        will be making a trade.  Our FO has devalued almost every prospect in the system except for 

        Manzardo,DeLauter and Brito by the way they misused them this last year, meaning that guys like 

        Freeman, Rocchio, Gonzalez, Jonathon Rodriguez, Jhonkensy Noel and others are probably worth 

        pennies on the dollar for what their actual value is.  This means we will likely pay dearly for our 

        OF acquisition if we go the trade route.  

• Trading Enyel De Los Santos for Scott Barlow - In the absolutely most puzzling move of the day for the Guardians, they traded 3 years of cheap control of a quality middle reliever (De Los Santos) for 1 year of control at an expensive price ($7.1 million estimate) of a quality, high leverage 8th inning reliever who can close in a pinch.  This trade might make sense if Cleveland had all the other pieces and was looking for that one piece to put their bullpen over the top and to provide protection if Clase struggles out of the gate as he did at the end of 2023.   But we are far from having a finished team as they still need to get a power-hitting outfielder, a DH, determine if we can get enough offense out of SS and who that SS will be.  In that light, this move was the most puzzling to me as it wasted both player (De Los Santos) and financial ($7 million for Barlow and $1.2 million for De Los Santos) resources.  Add to this that De Los Santos looked like a quality guy and clubhouse presence and this move is both puzzling and possibly disruptive to the clubhouse.  
• Leaving Alfonso Rivas on the roster and signing of Adam Oller - While this is old news it does read on part of the problem here.  No one understands claiming Rivas.  He brings nothing visible to the table and his age and even a deep dive into his stats make him look like any more than a AAAA player on a team that has two guys (Naylor and Manzardo) with the same profile and almost infinitely better skills.  As i have said before, if Rivas is on the 26 man opening day roster this franchise is cooked (moreso if Oller makes that roster, too).  Not just the team for 2024 but the franchise overall as it signals to me that they aren't going to give prospects a chance and reaffirms what I have been saying for a while now; this FO thinks they are smarter than everyone else in baseball and strives to prove that every day with questionable moves that, if they hit, make the FO look like geniuses as every one else would question such a move.  This impression first came to me with the amateur drafts over the last couple of years which used a startegy (draft in early rounds left-handed slap hitters with good plate discipline but little or no power w/o excellent speed) that was so counter to what was going on in baseball that it appeared that these guys were trying to prove all of baseball wrong and show how brilliant and ahead of their time they are.  

In summary, the moves yesterday reinforce my belief about the hubris of this FO and how that trait has a good chance to take this franchise to the dart ages.  We will be entering our first season with a rookie manager who is light years in experience behind Francona.  We have set up for a confluence of circumstances that might leave us in last place in the AL Central or in all of baseball by end of 2024.  I have not felt that way in the last 30 years of watching Cleveland baseball but I feel that way now.  All due to our FO and their waste of resources (Caminero, Jones, Benson and even Miller, Palacios, Fermin and others) with little or no return gained and their inability to see the need to change up their hitter development so that guys like JRod, Gonzalez and Noel can be developed.  In addition, the moves on Friday and this off-season have shown me that these guys still don't acknowledge that their player evaluation system is broken and needs an overhaul, either in methodology or personnel.