FREE AGENT THOUGHTS:
Here are some truths about free agency
- If you invest in free agency you are likely to overpay but...you get talent you don't have.
- If you don't invest in free agency you have two choices
- Just go with what you have and hope or...
- Trade players (and maybe a draft choice) for players you could have had in free agency
This winter in free agency teams like Pittsburgh, Chicago White Sox and Detroit have invested in free agency. In some cases they also made trades.
But the bottom line is that they have gotten better...at least on paper. In Detroit's case, they got a lot better, even though their recent signing of Framber Valdez might just have been a precursor to them trade arbitration winner Tarik Skubal.
The Guardians, on the other hand have done the following:
- Sign free agent Austin Hedges (money well spent, and I don't care what anyone says)
- Sign free agent Shawn Armstrong (I'll reserve judgement on this one, cough, Paul Sewald, cough)
- Sign free agent AAAA RPs, Connor Brogdon and Colin Houlderman to MAJOR LEAGUE contracts and FA AAAA OFer Stuart Fairchild. Never can have too many AAAA FAs, although you don't usually sign those guys to ML deals.
- Have gone public saying that they are (1) they won't be signing any top, expensive free agents and (2) they inept at signing meh free agents so they don't plan to sign any of those, either...and publicly bet money that the media couldn't identify the mistakes they have made trying to go cheap in free agency over the last several years.
- Said they are going with their own, LHH-heavy prospect pool to fill out their roster as they have to give these guys a chance..right before the Tigers signed Valdez, given the Tigers two of the best LH SP in baseball.
To summarize, the Guardians have, in the past 7 months:
(a) Were sellers at the ML trading deadline
(b) Won the AL Central championship with a historic finish/historic Tigers collapse
(c) Said they weren't going to sign any good or meh FAs
(d) Proceeded to sign two AAAA FA RPs to major league deals
This on the heels of way underspending their 2026 international bonus budget, signing a bunch of middling prospects instead of 1-2 top FAs AND having a really, really bad draft in 2025 where they seemed to panic and make a lot of bad, overdraft decisions and the 2024 draft where their first #1 overall pick in team history is looking like a case of bad scouting, their second round pick looks like an overdraft with the upside of a quality major league backup catcher. This, of course, follows two years of overdrafting LHH college slap hitters and, for the most part, getting away from the one decision showing they MIGHT be the smartest guys in the room, that being the 2021 college pitcher draft that has netted Williams and Bibee and other potential future ML pitchers.
I remember a movie called "And Justice For All". A small part of the movie was a subplot where a judge used to eat his lunch on the ledge of his building and, if I remember the story right, would fill up the tank of his private plane and fly it a little further out over the ocean every day to see how far he could go without running out of gas and crashing on the way back. The Guardians' FO seems to want to prove that they can have success with less and less resources every year, sort of like that judge and his private plane.
My advice to the Guardians FO and ownership is stop trying to get the same result with less resources and, for the Guardians FO, stop trying to be the smartest guys in the room. This team cannot afford to make mistakes on amateur player acquistion and development and on finding cute ways to compete without spending.
I love this team and always will. But this crap has to stop.
GENIE IN THE BOTTLE
Continuing on the free agent theme I am still seeing a lot of "But wait, there are still things the Guardians can do"
I have seen free agent signing proposals, trade proposals and extension candidate proposals.
Besides the extension candidates that I already wrote about (Ramirez, Kwan, Cade Smth, Williams), I don't see anything else I would do at this point.
There is a story about a genie trapped in a bottle who sat around waiting for someone to set him free. At first, when he had hope, he thought he would give the person who set him free the three best wishes possible, no tricks. But the longer he was trapped in that bottle his hope turned to despair and, eventually, anger. After a while his only thought was to get out of that bottle and trap the person who eventually freed in in the bottle just to show someone else how bad it was.
Well, I have become the genie. Except for the extension candidates above, at this point I will be really mad if the Guardians actually sign a free agent or trade valuable minor league resources for a player of the type they could have had in free agency. Hays, Robert Jr., Ozuna and many other viable free agents went to other small market teams. It would be a slap in the face for the Guardians to turn to the bargain basement bin to pull out a remaining free agent. Yeah, maybe guys, especially starting pitching, on minor league deals in case of injuries. But the Guardians have been clear. They want the young players to play.
At this point I am resgned to that happening. Any change in course now that costs us money and/or rosters spots and/or prospects to try to upgrade a team that CA and Chernoff have purposely NOT tried to make better over the winter is bad management and a slap in the face to Cleveland fans. Hey guys, you have done nothing all wnter. Don't do anything stupid now!
OK, I'll say it. You have proven you are the smartest guys in the room. Now sit back and enjoy the ride. You wouldn't want to do anything to mess up your brilliant strategy now, right? So let's, for the rest of this season (except for the extension candidates above) just sit back and all admire your brilliance. Doing anything now might muddy the waters of how brilliant your strategy is. So, let's not!
