Spring Training Is Here!

 I love spring training.  I have been there a number of times, the last with a media pass so I could see all the minor leaguers play and do their drills.  It was really eye opening and was reinforcing to what I had seen on TV and read in bios and statistics. 

ML spring training under Vogt may turn out to be different under Vogt than it was under Francona.  Under Tito, you kinda knew who was going to make the team from the get go.  Under Vogt, I think it is/will be more of a true competition.  I think guys will get a chance to play their way on (or off) the roster.

So what should we look for this spring training?

• Assuming there are no injuries, the opening day lineup could be telling as I think the guys that start would have to play their way out of the starting lineup.
• The first guys off the bench in the first game will likely be guys who are either competing for platoon spots or are competing for bench spots.
• After the first two waves it will be minor leaguers and NRIs.  Never can tell much from that and garbage/scrub time (what they used to call it when I actually got into a HS basketball game) stats are totally meaningless.
• As far as the pitchers, you can tell absolutely nothing for the first two weeks of so in spring training games.  You are really looking for whether guys look healthy.  I remember 2 years ago McKenzie was getting lit up in a game against Milwaukee and you could see something was not right with him.  The rest is history.  Who starts doesn't matter.  They are just trying to get guys innings and I imagine they might even use their prime relievers in garbage innings becuase they were so overused last year and they might want those guys eased into tougher situations.
• Garbage time guys have a chance to make a good impression.  In most cases these are minor league guys who have done something to get a chance to dress with the Guardians.  Some of this could be need (e.g., bullpen help) or simply a rotation basis to have enough guys to cover all positions in all innings.  In any case it is a reward as those guys will get paid extra because they dress with the big league team as compared to the per diem they get for minor league camp.
• You probably don't but if you DO have access to the daily schedules for the minor leaguers you'll be able to tell both WHO the minor leaguers who will dress with the Guardians in that game in addition to information about which minor league players are injured and only doing rehab or conditioning.

In terms of injuries for players on the ML ST roster (40-man plus non-roster invitees), you are sort of at the mercy of the media unless you have access to the daily ML team reports, if one exists.

It's early, things can change.  But that does not mean that what happens early isn't important, if you know what to believe and that everything else is just circumstance/expedience.

Do We Need New Ownership?

"Dolan Is Cheap".  "Dolan needs to sell the team".  "You had a great team that made you money on in 2024.  You need to invest that money to make your team better in 2025."

We have read and heard some variation of these quotes for, literally, years in Cleveland.  

First it was the Yankees who we HAD to spend money to keep up with.

Then it was us trading our free agents-to-be because we knew we couldn't sign them.

Then it was the Dodgers.

And, most recently, comparisons are starting to come up regarding what Cleveland is doing compared to its competitors in the AL Central and that we are not even keeping up, talent-wise, with them.

So do we need new ownership int Cleveland?

My short answer is NO and here are the reasons why:

• Owning a baseball team in Cleveland is an acquired taste.  You have to be able to understand that opening day is a sellout and the second game in that opening series could have 10,000 people at it.  
• You have to understand that the Browns can go 3-14 but there will likely still be more conversation in the media and on social media about them than about the Guardians.
• You have to understand that the 455 is a thing in the past and that it will take a lot to get fans that excited about their baseball team...and it may never happen.
• You have to know that winning the Yankee way is impossible in Cleveland and that, like it or not, you have to play around the edges and hope your stars align...every year!
• You have to know that your best stars are likely going to want to play in bigger markets and that it's OK, just like it's OK if you trade those stars before they walk as free agents, even if the fans hate you for it.
• You have to know that investing in the best free agents is beyond your means, based on what revenue you are making in this small market.
• Finally, you have to understand that getting your subordinates to work under these conditions AND be successful is nearly impossible so any amount of money you have to invest to keep them here, you invest.

To be the owner of the Cleveland Guardians is to live with the idea that putting a good product on the field every year is the victory, not winning the World Series.  It's to excel when mediocrity is the annual likely outcome and it is that you have to give your team resources to do what they need to do without giving resources to do what the fans want them to do.  It's about trusting your people, staying out of their way, especially in public, and being the wallet that feeds the engine of this organization.  It is about never skimping where it really matters: amateur talent acquistion, trade acquitisiton and, especially, player development.

While I would love to have the deep pocket ownership groups in NY and LA, it has been well-documented that those teams bring in revenue at a pace that will never happen in Cleveland.  

Would I like to have an owner who will throw money around like it is nothing?  Sure.  But that isn't going to happen.

While he is far from perfect, Paul Dolan is an owner who gets the realities, is not frustrated by then,  that can survive in Cleveland and, in fact, under his leadership and that of his executives, thrive in their professional league.   That's something that the 3-14 Browns can't currently say, is it?

I Was Thinking About Our Roster...

 ...and I have some concerns.

In the past I have posted about dead space on the roster.  This includes two types of players:

• Players who are injured and won't be able to play on opening day
• Players who have zero chance of impacting the major league team this year.

You need 26 players on your opening day roster.  If the total of the above two categories is even close to 26 AND your 40-man roster is full, then any player you add to the 40 man roster requires removing a player from your 40-man unless:

• A player is taken off the 40 man roster and placed on the 60-day IL.
• A player is traded for the player you are adding to the 40 man roster

If you have an open spot on your 40 man roster (the Guardians roster is now full) you can add an additional player to your roster.  

In the recent past the Guardians have used this spot as a revolving door.  That is, they add a guy who they don't care if they lose to the 40-man to fill a role at the end of the 26-man roster.  Then, when they need a roster space (e.g., when they have used a RP/SP who won't be available for a few games) they can just DFA the player they added to fill the hole, populating that spot by another player who would be useful to the team at that time.  

So why is this important? Not counting their top 9 players, top 5 SP and top 8 relievers, the Guardians used 12 other position players and 15 other pitchers.  So, yes, having open spots on your roster to do this revolving door is crucial as injuries happen.

...and, why do dead spots on your roster hurt?  Because the more dead spots you have on your roster the fewer players you have to choose from without dipping into the AAAA player pool like the Guardians tend to do to fill these gaps.

So let's talk about the dead spots on the roster.  These guys are on the 40 but will not make the 26-man roster on opening day due to injury or just not being ready

• Shane Bieber (injury, out 1/2 the season, 60 day DL candidate)
• Daniel Espino (injury, out half the season and likely not ready for the ML yet, anyway, NOT 60 day DL candidate as it would start his service time clock)
• Sam Hentges (injury, likely out for the entire season, 60 day DL candidate)
• Trevor Stephan (injury, likely out for opening day, likely not 60 day DL candidate)
• David Fry (injury, likely 60 day DL candidate)
• Petey Halpin (not ready for big leagues in 2025)

This means that there are 34 'live' spots on the 40 man roster (4 60-day DL, 2 not ready for ML).  

In addition, the following players on the 40 man cannot be sent to the minors without passing through waivers as they are out of minor league options:

• Gabriel Arias
• Triston McKenzie
• Ben Lively
• Sam Hentges (already out for the season)

So, right now we have more than enough position players, except for catcher, where we have only the 2 who will be on the opening roster (Naylor, Hedges).

As far as pitchers the following guys who are available for the 26 man roster:

8 man relief staff - 10 guys (Aleman, Cecconi, Clase, Enright, Gaddis, Herrin, Sabrowski, Sewald, Smith, Walters)

5 man starting staff - 8 (Allen, Bibee, Cantillo, Lively, McKenzie, Nikhazy, Ortiz, Williams)

As I understand it, players can be placed on the 60 day DL once pitchers and catchers report for spring training in a little over a week.  

Thus we should be able to add guys on major league deals by just placing the above guys on the DL, meaning there still is a chance we could add quality players on major league deals. 

Again, if we do this we should just do this in free agency.  Looking at it that way, here is what I see:

Outfielders: There are ZERO free agent outfielders worth signing.  I would rather go with the kids than any of these guys.

Catchers: Luke Maile and Andrew Kizner appeal to me on minor league deals but I don't think we have room for Jason Stallings or James McCann as I don't see us carrying 3 catchers on our 26

Left handed relief pitchers: Andrew Chapin still stands out as the only guy I would add on a ML deal.  Guys like Genesis Cabrera (and every other LH reliever available in free agency) on a minor league deal makes sense to me.

Starting pitchers: Here's where it gets interesting.  I could easily see us going big in this area, even signing Pivetta (costs us a draft choice), Andrew Heaney or Kyle Gibson here.  I don't see anyone else on a major league deal but pretty much any other available FA SP on a minor league deal works for me.  With McKenzie being out of options, however, I just don't see the value of adding an innings eater at the expense of losing McKenzie to a DFA.

So, while it is the Guardians and they usually shop in the bargain basement, maybe they will take some of their salary savings and bring in a quality starting pitcher.

Again, no trades allowed.  We just traded away two of our best position players.  We shouldn't then go and trade prospects for new position players.  Also, no infielders as we are stocked there and trading for guys only means that prospects don't get a chance which is stupid if you are just trying to replace the production you gave away for almost nothing.

On A Wing And A Prayer

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the functional definition of 'on a wing and prayer is:

"If you do something on a wing and a prayer, you do it hoping that you will succeed, although you are not prepared enough for it...SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases. Hoping and hopefulness"

That, in my opinion, is how the Guardians have approached this off-season, on a wing and a prayer.

While I could hypothesize why they are doing what they are doing this off-season, there is no way for me to know if it is related to some or all of:

• analytics that they trust over common sense when applied to the players they have traded away
• financial constraints that are causing them to dump large (and even, where possible, small amounts of salary and spending (Guards Fest))
• a desire to create playing time to finally allow determination whether prospects are true major leaguers or just AAAA players

The Guardians have, in recent history, been a very shrewd and successful organization.  But this year, for whatever reason, they have taken it to a new level, doing things that appear, on the surface, to make the 2025 team weaker while putting more money into the pocket of the owner.

Instead of trying to guess the reasons behind them, let's take a look at the moves from this off-season and how they fit into the above functional definition

• Trading Eli Morgan for a prospect who is 3 years away from the major leagues - The Guardians are counting on mostly or completely untested rookies to give the same or better production as Morgan, while saving probably $400,000 in salary.
• Cancelling Guards Fest 2025 - This is the biggest puzzlement of all their off-season moves.  An event that may cost them $200,000 but brings such good will with fans in the time right before tickets go on sale, this is even hard to understand using the wing-and-a-prayer concept.  I guess they are hoping that they win and so things like this will be forgotten.
• Trading Gimenez and Sandlin to Toronto for Horwitz and Mitchell - The Guardians dumped Gimenez's salary and doubled down on their thoughts about the bullpen by throwing in Sandlin.  They plan to play a rookie at 2B, proposing that Juan Brito can replace Gimenez and give you the same or better overall production even though he is a bad defender and has no speed and, as a rookie, we have no idea will hit even as well as Gimenez.  This is a wing-and-a-prayer trade X2.
• Trading Horwitz for Ortiz, Hartle and Kennedy -On paper, this is a great trade, a Guardians' type trade.  Ortiz is a ML pitcher.  Hartle and Kennedy are good pitching prospects.  The only question about this trade is why Pittsburgh would trade even just Ortiz for Horwitz, who is the classic tweener, bad defense at 2B and not enough power for 1B...and he wasn't even a starter full time in Toronto.  So, while I love this trade, the Guardians are hoping, on a wing and a prayer, that Ortiz is the guy who shut them down last year rather than just a flash in the pan.
• Trading Naylor for Cecconi and a CB B pick. - In the biggest shocker of all this off-season, the Guardians traded their cleanup hitter who, legitimately, is the only guy on their roster who offers protection for Jose Ramirez in their batting order.  They are getting back Cecconi, and his 6+ ERA and a draft pick around #70 in the 2025 draft.  Realizing that if Arizona makes Naylor a QO in the 2025 off-season he will net them a pick around #35 in the 2026 draft, they have to be counting on Naylor being so bad that he won't be made a QO AND be worse than his replacement, Santana (See below).  That still doesn't clear up who will help cleanup and protect Ramirez this year, but I guess that will take care of itself...on a wing and a prayer.  They also have to be thinking that, on a wing and a prayer, that Cecconi can be fixed for the 2025 season and offer Cleveland very good pitching value for this and future seasons.  ANother wing and a prayer trade X2, I think.
• Signing Carlos Santana to a 1 year deal - Continuing with the wing and a prayer theme, the Guardians have to be thinking that Santana can approximate his production in 2024 AND that they can find protection for Ramirez in players on their roster.  This requires a big leap of faith as Santana was 38 last year in his career year and, at that, only hit cleanup a few times without great results, meaning he can't step into the lineup and replace Naylor, even though he will be making more than Naylor did.  So this signing is clearly a wing and a prayer.
• Not signing any other significant free agents - The key here is the word 'significant'.  For example, if they sign a LFer like Hayes or Profar, they have to move Kwan, meaning they are hoping, on a wing and a prayer, that he can handle CF or RF w/o weakening the overall defense, that has been weakened by losing Gimenez.  They might choose to double down on SP which would help the rotation but not the lineup, gambling, on a wing and a prayer, that their pitching would win games that their offense can't, similar to the way it happened early in 2024.  Again, expecting that  to happen 2 years in a row is planning for your season on a wing and a prayer.
• The possibility of making a trade - If trade right now for a platoon advantage you are hoping, on a wing a prayer, that your overall team is stronger than it was last year, even though you lost Gimenez and Naylor or only gained back Santana.  If you trade at the deadline, taking on salary from the savings this winter, you are hoping that your deadline deals work out.  In either case, you are giving up prospects for incremental (now) or short term (deadline) gains.  You are hoping, on a wing and prayer, that those deals are worth the prospects you would have to give up to make those deals. 

So, there you have it.  The Guardians whole off-season is built on a wing and a prayer.  These guys are good at putting a competitive team on the field but, sometimes, it just looks like they are making it harder and harder on themselves so they look like geniuses when they do it AGAIN.  That seems like a very hard way to go...a wing and a prayer way to go.

Thoughts For A Saturday: Roki Sasaki, International Signing Day, Guardians Moves: A Full Couple of Days

 OK, it has been an eventful couple of days in baseball.  So let's unpack:

• The Dodgers signed Sasaki - Maybe their most important signing in the last five years, Sasaki doesn't just give them winning now, he gives them affordable winnings for the next 6 years.  Literally, whoever signed Sasaki knew that they had both star power and team financial flexibility without invoking any deferrals of salary.

• The Guardians signed the players they had been linked to but, so far, no additional prospects, leaving slightly over $2 million left in their bonus pool

• They then traded that $2 million to Toronto along with Myles Straw and $3.75 million.  The Guardians will either get a player to be named later or cash.

These 3 events represented the entirety of the Guardians involvement in the international FA process.  Here is what we know in addition to what I suspect about the above events:

• The Guardians underspent their international pool by $2 million.  For a small market team they should never underspend their international budget or their draft budget.  It is the cheapest way to get quality talent into the organization

• The Guardians did a salary dump with Myles Shaw,  Ths saved them over $10 million over the next 3 years.  

• The Guardians spent $0 of the money they saved on dumping the Gimenez and Straw contracts on Toronto.  This is the most significant point here.  With the trades of Gimenez, Straw, Morgan and Sandlin, we lost a lot of talent without bringing much except for Ortiz back into the organization.  Thus, it would be hard to argue that the Guardians are a better team now than they were at the end of the 2024 regular season.

While people may do a victory dance for dumping Straw's salary, realize that even this move hurt our team next year that these moves are just salary-dumping, cost-saving moves if they don't come with signing a quality FA or 2.

When you look back at this off-season, this team is richer, but weaker.  We still have a ways to get back to where we were, offensively, at the end of 2024, let alone do enough to actually improve this team for 2025.

So do your victory dance.  I won't be.     From the canceling of Guardsfest to the dumping of Straw on Toronto, moves appear to be happening to create a war chest.  But if you don't use that war chest to make your club better, you are just saving money to put in the owner's pocket.