2023 Amateur Draft - Part 2 - A Look Back At Recent Drafts to See How We Have Done

 As we approach the 2023 First Year Player Draft next month, I wanted to look back over recent Cleveland Guardians' drafts and see how they impacted the current Guardians' ML team and the strength of our farm system.

In a previous piece where I analyzed studies done by others about the draft, a team should expect to get 5-6 players from each draft who make the majors with 3 of them having significant (3+ year) major league careers.

So let's look at how many major leaguers or major prospects the Guardians were able to draft from 2015-2021 (NOTE: the status of the 2022 draft picks will be handled in a separate post).  Also included is their 1st-3rd round picks in each year.  The guys who made the majors are in bold.

2015 (40 rounds) - 6 guys who played in the majors so far, 3 who have had significant (3+ years in the majors) careers (McKenzie, Haggerty and Mathias)

Brady Aiken (1st round pick)

Triston McKenzie

Juan Hillman (2nd round pick)

Mark Mathias

Ka'ai Tom

Nathan Lukes

Justin Garza

Sam Haggerty

2016 (40 rounds)  - 7 MLers, 4 (Jones, Civale, Beiber and Plesac) with significant ML careers so far

Nolan Jones (1st round pick)

Will Benson

Logan Ice

Aaron Civale

Shane Beiber

Connor Capel

Zach Plesac

Tanner Tully 

2017 (40 rounds) - 6 MLers, 3 (Morgan, Karinchak, Nelson) with significant careers so far

Quentin Holmes (1st round)

Tyler Freeman

Jonathon Rodriguez

Ernie Clement

Kirk McCarty

Eli Morgan

James Karinchak

Kyle Nelson

2018 (40 rounds) - 6 MLers so far.  0 with significant (3+ years) ML careers so far

Bo Naylor

Ethan Hankins

Lenny Torres Jr.

Nick Sandlin

Steven Kwan

Cody Morris

Bryan Lavastida

Tim Herrin

Other significant guys still in our mnor league system: Adam Scott, Rey Delgado, Thomas Ponticelli, Kyle Marman, Korey Holland, Shane McCarthy.

2019 (40 rounds) - 4 MLers, 0 with significant ML careers so far

Daniel Espino (1st round)

Yordys Valdes

Joe Naranjo

Christian Cairo

Hunter Gaddis

Xzavion Curry

Will Brennan

Kevin Kelly

Other significant guys still in our minor league system:Valdes, Naranjo, Cairo, Jordan Brown, Will Bartlett, Zach Hart, Nick Mikolajchak, Micah Pries, Trey Benton, Nic Enright, Andrew Misiaszek.

2020 (5 rounds) - 1 MLer, 0 guys with significant ML careers so far

Carson Tucker (1st round)

Tanner Burns

Logan T. Allen

Petey Halpin

Milan Tolentino

Mason Hickman

Randy Labout (minor league free agent)

2021 (20 rounds) - 1 MLer so far

Gavin Williams (1st round)

Doug Nikhazy

Tommy Mace

Jake Fox

Ryan Webb

Tanner Bibee

Every single other player drafted is STILL in the Guardians farm system and appears to be making progress except for 20th round pick Jake Miller and Zach Pettway, who are still injured.

SUMMARY

While I might disagree with a number of these picks, the Guardians have been spot on in terms of producing ML players and producing players who are having significant ML careers, if you base that conclusion on the studies that have been done.  Looking at those drafts, however, only Beiber and McKenzie stand out as all-star caliber players (maybe Naylor down the road).  For a team like Cleveland that can't go out and sign all-star free agents, I think they need to do better.   I think the root of this failure to produce all-star talent from the draft is two-fold:  

(1) I think the Guardians have failed miserably when they pick HS talent, especially hitters, early.  By the statistics I presented before, it is certainly more difficult to get a major leaguer in the first round if you draft a HSer, with HS pitchers being the most difficult.  While our current top 30 (MLB Pipeline) contains 4 HS hitter draftees (Naylor, Fox, Tolentino and Halpin) and we have another in the majors (Freeman), none of these guys look like they will be impact players in the majors, even Naylor, who may be an impact player for a catcher but not overall, either offensively or defensively.  Given how some of them have cratered this season, guys like Fox and Tolentino may never even make the majors and other top 10 round HS draftees like (Brown, Bartlett, Valdes, Cairo, Naranjo, Tucker and Quentin Holmes) will likely never even get to the majors.

(2) It appears to me that the Guardians are drafting a lot of low ceiling/high floor guys knowing they will likely get SOMETHING out of a lot of them and hoping they can raise the ceiling on some of these guys (e.g., Beiber and Bibee with their increased FB velo).  So far this has not produced the type of results with the hitters it has with the pitchers.  Kwan, while being a good piece on a good team, is not an impact player and if he makes one all-star team I think that will be a roaring success.

(3) When the Guardians have gone risky by picking high upside HS kids (Espino, Aiken, Tucker, Hillman, Hankins, Torres Jr., and maybe Jonathon Rodriguez) they have produced nothing.  This has contributed to the lack of star power you get out of a draft.  Some of it is expected with confounders like injuries (Espino, especially) really doing a number on this group.  Still, you would have to imagine that we would hit on SOME of these guys and we didn't.  Especially for Aiken, Valdes, Cairo and maybe Jones and Benson who appear on these lists, you could probably chalk it up to the team just making bad decsions on who to draft when that slot came up.

So, the Guardians are by no means terrible but, at the same time, they are not like a lot of other teams.  They will have a perennially low payroll and MUST build from within.  While they have done a great job of trading for prospects and developing, to some level, international free agent signees, they need to do a better job of drafting HS players and having them be 'hits' like McKenzie and not swings-and-misses as so many of the HS guys in the drafts mentioned above are.  One of the reasons we are struggling with hitting now is that we have drafted hitters really badly and we are now paying the price for that.  So if you want to say that the draft is a crapshoot go ahead.  I don't believe it is true and I think it is an excuse for making mistakes in the draft.  When I look at the Dodgers and see Bobby Miller (drafted after Carson Tucker), Gavin Stone (drafted after Mason Hickman), Ryan Pepiot (drafted after Valdes, Cairo, Hunter Gaddis), I see guys top 100 prospects in  baseball who we could have had and who would look good in a Cleveland uniform right now.  While I will admit that I am cherry picking examples, these are draft picks I questioned at the time.  Tucker was rated 52 at draft time and drafted by us at 26.  By the study I did years ago this pick had a high percentage chance of failing whereas Miller (ranked 26th, drafted 29th) was a good, safe choice.  You can argue all you want about how the draft is a crapshoot but the truth is that we need to be better than almost any team in choosing our draft choices and have less misses and just as many, if not more, stud picks than any other team competing for a playoff spot.  That is just the way it is when you are a low market team with high expectations.

A Look At Our Most Recent Flash-In-the-Pan Prospects

 Ok, we are two months into the minor league season and statistical patterns are startng to emerge. 

• guys who started the season in deep slumps (e.g. Angel Martinez) are startng to emerge from them.  Whether the first month and a half is real or whether this latest hot streak is real is still TBD.
• Ditto for guys who had been suspects (e.g., Aaron Bracho) and started hot but now have tailed off.  The next month or two will determine whether they are officially suspects/organizational players or whether they get hot again.  

However, there is a handful of guys who have not had this hot-cold or cold-hot start.  They are guys who were not on any prospect lists I saw but have simply been 'hot' so far.  Prospect geeks like me always like the guys who come out of the woodwork to suddenly become interesting prospects.  Here is a handful of minor leaguers who are delivering so far this year that you might never have suspected, based on their performances in previous seasons.

Daniel Schneeman 

The CLASSIC organizational player, Schneeman was a 33rd round draft pick in 2018.  He was a slick fielding guy who could play the infield and, as with most organizational players, fill up a roster to allow the real prospects to have a team to play for.  In 2018 hit .196 with the only offensive category that showed any promise was his walk rate (22 in 136 ABs).  In 2019 he repeated low A  and hit much better (.287) albeit seeing his walk rate drop (25 in 236 ABs) while being old for his league.  Like most minor leaguers he lost 2020 to the pandemic but came back in 2021, reprising his utility infielder, organizational player position at high A and AA where he put up a decent OPS of .722.   In 2022 he spent almost all the year at AA and got into 112 games but hit .202 while being old for AA.  

Then, in his 26th year on Earth, something clicked.  He has played at Columbus all year and maybe it is the mojo that is created when you play in an extreme hitter's park like Columbus but dang it, the guy is starting to become an offensive juggernaut...sort of.  He has still played in only 35 of the 57 Clippers games this year but he has 'exploded' for an OPS of .896, some pop in his bat (SLG .496) and a career high walk rate  (22 BB in 111 ABs) without any increase in K rate.  

While his SLG may be an aberration created by park factors, the rest of his offensive game looks solid.  If he can sustain this he might be an interesting trade chip later this season.

Korey Holland

Low round (14th, 2018) HS OF draft picks who sign are, by definition, interesting.  Did the drafting team catch lightning in a bottle or was this just another case of a HS kid not wanting to go to college and gambling on what he thinks are his abilities to take the shortcut directly to pro ball and develop there? 

In Holland's case it appeared more and more like it way the latter.  Holland hit 1 HR and stole 12 bases in his first 260 minor league ABs  He did have 49 walks which was interesting but when you SLG under .300 in your first 2 years in the minors it looks like maybe pro ball is not for you.  

In 2021 he became a little more interesting as his OPS went up to .723 as a part-time player at low A.  However, even as a HS draftee being a part-time player  at low A in your 3rd year in pro ball screams 'suspect' instead of prospect.   This label was cemented to Holland's resume in 2022 when playing in high A he only walked 11 times in 254 ABs with 6 SBs and an OPS of .655.  

So here we are at 2023 and Holland is not assigned to a full-season team.  I thought he might have been released or that it could be due to injury but I really didn't know.  

Then I see that he is being assigned to Akron in May, about 45 days into the season.   Sometimes teams do this, throwing a guy onto a team because they need a player at the position he plays.  Most times this is just a temporary thing although sometimes the guy comes out blazing, maybe due to him being fresher than the guys who have been playing at that level and are starting to get ground down by the 6-day a week schedule.  But, generally, they fall back to earth pretty quickly, especially if they are initially signed in that case to a level they haven't player or mastered previously.

Indeed, Holland has come out guns blazing with a .959 OPS  and all the great things that add up to that number (.339 BA, .451 OBP and .509 SLG) in his first 71 PA on the year.  However, having seen him take most of those 71 PA, it looks like there may be something there that wasn't there before, paraphrasing Ms. Potts in the Beauty and the Beast.  

Tyler Thornton

OK, you might ask, how can a guy who posted an ERA of 3.63 at low A last year with 58 Ks in 34 IP with a WHIP of 1.0 last year be considered a flash-in-the-pan candidate for putting up an ERA of 3.12 with 36 Ks in 17.3 IP with a WHIP of 1.2 this year?  

Well...last year he was facing a lot of young hitters in Lynchburg and this year in Lake County he is facing older hitters with him being 1.2 years younger than average for the Midwest League.   He has gotten younger for his league but has gotten better.   The Guardians have, in the last couple of years, started some of their lower draft picks (Thornton, 17th round in 2021) and even some of their higher draft picks (Furman, Messick, Lipscomb from the 2022 draft) at low A in their first full season.  This leads to bloated stats in their first year, which is why the jury was out on Carolina League 2022 pitcher of the year Will Dion until he repeated his great pitching this year.  

Thornton, being a minor league reliever, doesn't even get the acclaim that a guy like DIon gets, which is very little as Dion is on the short side and does it with a below ML average fastball, using his command and guile to get hitters out, something that likely won't play at higher levels unless he ups that FB velocity (see Eli Morgan).  

So when a guy like Thornton puts up eye-popping K numbers in a league he is young for you have to ask yourself is it real or is it Memorex?  

SUMMARY

The rest of the season will give us more information in what we have in guys like Schneeman, Holland, Thornton, Dion and Bracho but unexpectedly good performances does add a little spice to a prospect geek's season...especially in a farm system that is struggling so mightily right now to even put up a legitimate top 10 prospects (I don't think Curry, Gaddis, Allen or Bibee count any more), let alone a top 30.  

2023 Amateur Draft - Part 1: Is The Draft A Crapshoot and How It Looks to Me Like the Guardians Mitigate Limitations of the Draft

 Wow, that was the longest title for a blog post in the history of my blog.

Let's talk today about the statement "The baseball draft is just a crapshoot".  How much of that is fact, how much of it is falsehood or is it somewhere in between?

There are 3 basic questions about every player drafted:

(a) How well will an amateur player's skills project into his success in professional baseball?

(b) How well will an organization be able to develop and enhance those skills to make the player successful?

(c) Can a player be signed for a reasonable bonus, based on his skills and projectability?

The answers to those three questions, as well as the luck of who is available when a team drafts, is what shapes a team's draft and, generally (not considering confounders like injuries), leads to the success or failure of that draft.

But how, in hindsight, do you measure whether you are doing a good job drafting players who are YEARS away from the majors.  There is so much anecdotal research that people have done on the first-year player draft in baseball that it takes a while to sift through it and, when you do, this data does not have a way to consider confounders, things unexpected at draft time that occur after the draft.    Maybe the player is hurt when they are drafted and it is more serious than first thought or gets hurt after the draft.  Maybe that player just doesn't thrive in a particular system.  Finally, maybe the organization just got it wrong when they drafted a player.  

In the last couple of years a new confounder may have emerged with the Guardians where they look for a particular type of player (college pitchers with great command, left-handed college hitters with good contact rates and plate discipline).  Those traits then shape their draft.  In my opinion, this thought process likely will deliver more low ceiling/high floor guys.  At the same time it is likely to deliver a few high draft picks who are head scratchers who will be more painful 'busts' if they fail than high ceiling, low floor guys who you KNOW can fail but if they hit...they can become franchise cornerstones like Francisco Lindor.

Forgetting these most recent confounders derived from the analytics age, lets focus for a second on confounders that have existed for years.  Guys like Matt Whitney (catastrophic injury), JD Martin (great changeup, couldn't develop his fastball), Cody Bunkelman (classic overdraft who was not scouted well enough), Shane Beiber/Tanner Bibee (fastball velocity increase projected at draft time was achieved), Francisco Lindor (skill set develops at a normal rate and projected power developed), Brady Aiken (organization just got it wrong).  These guys are great examples of players who would be confounders both positively (Beiber, Bibee and Lindor) and negatively (Whitney, Martin, Bunkelman, Aiken) to any analysis.    

On the other hand, guys like Civale and Kwan represent a different grouping.  They fall into the category of guys who were drafted with hopes that they could maximize their limited abilities, the classic high floor/low ceiling guys.  Basically, these guys were essentially what draft analyses are all about: did a team get value for a particular player pick at a particular slot, with high floor, low ceiling guys dominating in the middle rounds and guys with one dominant tool filling in the later rounds with the hope that the other tools could be brought up to a level to make that one dominant tool playable in the majors.  The first 2-3 rounds still have to be reserved for guys who have a chance to impact your team like a Francisco Lindor did IF they develop as you thought they should.

The movie Can't Hit The Curve with Clint Eastwood is a good example of how a scout's gut was entrenched in and most important in the decision making of who to draft all the way up to probably 2015.  Most of the studies I will reference here looked at data before 2015 as it isn't really known whether a player is going to make the majors or be successful there until at least 6-7 years after they are drafted.  Thus, the effectiveness of recent changes to how draft prospects are rated cannot be incorporated in what is published regarding draft trends.

Neverthesless, what have people been able to glean from older (2015 and before) draft results over the years given all these provisos?   

• Between 66-73% of players drafted in the first round eventually make the majors.  It drops off in later rounds with about 50% in round 2, 40% (round 3), 35% (round 4), 30% (round 5). 18-25% in rounds 6-10 and about 10% in rounds 11-20.
• As measured by WAR, there isn't much difference between future ML success by whether a player in drafted in slots 1-5, 6-10 or 10-15 in the first round.  In the back half of the first round, however, there is a clear difference in how successful those first round draft choices end up being.  Players with relatively high yearly WARs (2.5 or greater) represent only about 12% of first rounders and less after that.  The average WAR for guys drafted in the first round who made the majors was around 7 for round 1 and dropping down to between 1.5 and 3.3 for players who signed in rounds 2-10.  
• Players drafted from 1996 to 2011 in rounds 1-10 had a slightly smaller chance to make the majors and be successful than players drafted from 1965 to 1995, indicating that more advanced scouting techniques and the use of analytics didn't change the outcome.   Obviously, more advanced scouting tools may increase the percentage of draftees who make the majors but, for right now, it is just as likely that we have reached the best possible outcome with the players who don't make the majors simply being failures based on injury or inability to develop and there may not be a scouting tool to avoid that.  So when people talk about the draft being a crapshoot it may be this small percentage of the guys who don't make it that they are talking about.
• There are 4 types of players who are drafted: college pitchers, college hitters, high school pitchers and high school hitters.
• In round 1 college players are more likely to make it to the majors and to have a ML career (3+ season).  College hitters are slightly more likely to have success than college pitchers.  HS hitters a slightly more likely than HS pitchers to have a long ML career.  The range in groups from highest to lowest is 78 to 57% for making the majors and 55 to 32% for having a long career.
• In round 2 these same trends hold but the differences between college players compared to HS players is bigger, as is the increased chances of success of hitters (both college and HS) compared to their peer pitchers.  The range for making the majors is 67 to 46% for making the majors and 44 to 32% for having a long career.
• In round 3, less HS players are signed by teams but the percentage of them who make the majors and have a long career are almost identical to their college peer group.  the rates for making it to majors is about 40% for all groups and in the high 20s for having a long career.
• The trends seen in the 3rd round continue into the 4th round but HS pitchers and college hitters drafted in this round have a better chance to have long ML careers than HS hitters and college pitchers.  the range is 42 to 32% to make the majors and 22 to 14% for having a long career.
• I did an unpublished study years ago that showed that, using a reputable rating system (e.g., Fangraphs, MLB Pipeline, Baseball America) that if a team drafted a player in the first round who was rated 15+ spots below where they were drafted (i.e., an overdraft) they were much less likely to make the majors than if that team drafted a player who was rated near or higher than their draft slot.  In the 2nd and 3rd rounds the same thing held but it was for a player drafted 20+ spots higher than their rating.  In the 4th and 5th rounds there was less data as fewer players eventually made it to the majors but the trends were the similar to the first round, just 30+ places being the cutoff.

So, there are the raw numbers.   If you crunch just those numbers a little further here is what you have on the surface:

• Given that Cleveland gets the competitive balance pick every year, from every draft they should get 5 guys who make the majors (add the % of guys who make the majors in each round including that competitive balance pick and divide that total by 100)
• If they draft predominantly college players that number should go up 6 per draft.
• Again, if they draft predominantly college players they should expect to have 3-4 of those players have long (3+ years) careers.  If they draft a mix of college and HS players, it likely will be closer to 3 per draft.

These numbers are independent of confounders but those confounders can still skew WHERE in a draft you get these long-term major leagues from.  You would have to do a player-by-player analysis of why each did or didn't make the majors to do what people have done so far and, as far as I can tell, no one has done this deep of a dive.  For example, did Aaron Civale make the majors based on his skillset and natural development?  Likely.  Did Beiber become a star because he improved his skillset (READ: fastball velo) after the draft?  Likely.  Was he going to have peaked out where Civale did without this bump in skills?  Likely.  Did both of them end up where historical trends say these should have, everything else being equal?  Very likely.  

So, looking at the above numbers, I think the baseball draft is not a sure thing.  However, confounders really cloud whether and, if so, how much the draft is a crapshoot.  Instead of being a crapshoot, the statistics above would indicate that the lack of major leaguers coming out of each draft is related to the limited number of players in each draft that even have the talent to make the major leagues, even if everything (injury, ability to be developed) falls their way.  We all should realize that the draft in later rounds is there to fill out the rosters so the players who have a true chance to play in the majors have a team to play for as they move up the minors.    If you happen to get the occasional major leaguer from these late round draftees that's great.  But, even if they don't make the majors, they serve a good purpose.  What shouldn't happen is for people assume that the draft is a crapshoot JUST because so few players who are drafted make the majors.   

I think the truth is if you are getting 70% of your first rounders to the majors and 50% of your second rounders to the majors the draft is not a crapshoot.  Confounders, limitations in talented players to be drafted and poor choices in draft picks make the draft look more like a crapshoot than it really is.  You generally get your drafted star players from the first 2 rounds of the draft.  If you go for the brass ring and draft high ceiling/low floor guys with those picks you are bound to get burned by confounders more often, which leads to the illusion of the draft being a crapshoot.

Look, the Guardians need to be at or near the top of each draft given that they are not spending money on free agents or even on highly priced international signees.  Fail one draft and their prospect pipeline is in trouble.  Blow two drafts in a row and you are likely looking at a rebuild in the future.  Blow 3 drafts in a row and you are the Indians of the '70s.  One confounder we have not talked about is if teams go over their draft budgets.  The Guardians DO tend to do that so that is something that is in their favor IF they draft the right guys.  I do question in the last draft whether paying Jacob Zibin over $1 million as a 10th round pick was a good idea.

I think what you can glean from all the studies that I looked at is that you take the best player available, not the best player available who fits your mold for what a good player is or the player with the highest ceiling.  In early rounds there are probably at least 3-4 choices at your slot who are quality for that slot.  You pick the one that is closest to your ideal draft pick (i.e., a skillset you can develop (e.g., pitchability college pitchers who have room to increase velocity), good temperament and injury history, signable) but you don't go outside that range just because you feel that a particular group (left handed hitting college hitters, good command college pitchers) is your flavor of the month just because you have a player or two you drafted/acquired who happen to fit that profile and has been successful (e.g., Brennan, Kwan).  In later rounds you make low ceiling, high floor guys and in much later rounds you pick players with one dominant tool who you feel you can develop their other tools.  You won't hit on every pick (confounders) but you won't blow a draft, either.  

The Trade: Latest Thoughts

 As fans look for ways to run their latest whipping boys, Myles Straw, Amed Rosario and Mike Zunino out of town, I have been following the LA Dodgers prospects who I proposed to trade for.  Here is the latest update to the trade proposal.

Cleveland trades: Myles Straw, Amed Rosario, Shane Beiber, Zach Plesac and Eli Morgan

LA trades: Michael Busch, Bobby Miller and Chris Taylor

While Miller has made himself almost untouchable by his first 3 starts in the majors, this package might entice the Dodgers.  Us taking back Chris Taylor's bad salary is, to me, a key to this deal as it offsets most of any additional luxury tax LA would have to take on now and in the next two years.  The enticement for the Guardians is that they are essentially buying Miller for an increase in their salary budget over the next two years while saving a little money on that budget this year, maybe for a deadline rental. 

Maybe this doesn't work.  Maybe, as I do a lot, just pipedreaming to make my team better both by subtraction and addition.   Maybe LA sees the same deficits in our players that we see and would laugh at this offer.  

I don't know, but that is what blogs like this are, at least partly, about.  Making proposals that will, hopefully, help the Guardians now and in the future.

Hello Michael Kelly. So Long Michael Kelly. Welcome Back Triston. So Long Zach PLesac

 You have to be happy that McKenzie is back.   You have to be sad that Plesac is gone.  And, you might be scratching your head about Michael Kelly and Peyton Battenfield.

Let's peel back the onion.

We all knew Triston McKenzie was coming back today.  We all knew that this would require us to trade or DFA someone.   What we didn't know was who that would be.  There were several candidates who were making themselves available by bad performance.  Zach Plesac and Richie Palacios were the most likely. 

Palacios is hitting close to .200 at AAA.  He started the season by raking and taking walks in bunches.  Then in May the bottom fell out.  Right now he is looking like a AAAA player as he doesn't have any great tool and his defense at the premium spot, center field, is below average.  He was brought up as a second baseman but apparently the Guardians thought he wasn't playable at that position.  

Plesac is a sad story.  He has been given a long leash by the Guardians after his COVID-related transgressions in 2020 and his anger-related injuries in 2021 and 2022.  Yet, this spring, the Guardians still gave him the keys to the 5th starter's role, much to the dismay of the Plesac nay-sayer fans.  But he botched that up and the Guardians finally tired of him and sent him to AAA, hoping it would be the intervention he needed.  But it wasn't.  After his first, excellent start with Columbus, he stunk it up in every other start...against AAA hitters.  I can't figure out if he just wanted to be released or if he is just that bad.  Maybe he was hoping to join his buddy Clevinger back at the scene of their 2020 night out.   Who knows.  But he was set up to be DFA'd, which might be a real shame for the Guardians because ML baseball right now is not pitching-rich that any glimmer of talent shown by him at AAA might have made him a trade asset, at least to get a B prospect or two (look what Will Benson brought).  

There was also the possibility that Cal Quantrill or Peyton Battenfield could be moved from the 15-day to the 60

So today came and Palacios got a reprieve as it was Plesac who was DFA'd.  In addition, Battenfield was added to the 60-day DL and Michael Kelly was promoted only to be sent back to Columbus (but stayed on the 40-man) when McKenzie was called up.  This is in line with what we did last year when we had the 40th spot on the roster as a revolving door where we would bring up a guy for a short time and then DFA him to bring up someone else.  So we are set up to do that with Kelly and Toussaint and whoever else we feel we may need for a short time.  

Our starting pitching looks pretty solid with Beiber, McKenzie, Bibee, Civale and Allen 1 through 5.  Allen is the most vulnerable if and when Quantrill comes back, in my opinion.  Remember that Allen struggled later in the year at Columbus last year.  As the league gets to know him better he may not have the weapons right now to combat them, maybe requiring more seasoning at Columbus before he can have enough weapons to stay ahead of ML hitters.

Finally, I think Morris, Gaddis, Quantrill and even Battenfield, if and when he comes back, could provide us depth both in the bullpen and in the rotation.  I would love to see us use an opener like Morris and then go to Gaddis or Quantrill as the bridge to the back end of the bullpen.  

Fnally, let's hope we get someone of value for Plesac.  The Benson trade gave me hope that we are learning how to get some value for these DFA guys.    There is enough need for starting pitching in baseball and probably enough buzz around baseball about Plesac and how both sides may have needed a split that someone will be willing to beat the waiver wire and give us enough value for Plesac that we want to pull the trigger now.

Caution!!! Rant Alert - Reader Beware

 GUARDIANS

Didn't actually get a chance to watch any of this game live...yet.  But my general thought from afar is what I have said already: Some games you win.  Some games you lose.  Some seasons you win.  Some seasons you lose. This team has enough talent to make the playoffs but if the FO doesn't help the manager by giving him good players, if the manager doesn't manage the players well, if the support staff (yes, I am talking to the guy responsible for determining the replay challenges as it is getting really embarassing) don't do their job and if the players take turns screwing up during the season (including Naylor getting hurt stealing 3rd when it wasn't really a smart move at the time), it is going to be a long year.

Tonight was just another example of all this coming to fruition.  Look, the way we get back into this thing, given that Minnesota has played a much stronger schedule than us so far is to beat them head-to-head.  When the game goes south like it did tonight, you have blown a golden opportunity to make up ground.  You either do or you don't and tonight enough us them didn't that we lost the game.    So now we need to win 3 to win this series.  Didn't have to be that way but now it is.  We either will or won't and that, if things don't change, will be the epitaph of this season: "They could have but they didn't"

MINOR LEAGUES

I have watched enough minor league baseball this year to pose this question:

WTF are our minor league managers doing with all this middle of the inning ptching changes?

Now, at first I thought it was because the best way, under the new rules, to extend a game, is to do intra-inning pitching changes.  I just thought that the ownership came to the managers and said, "Look, we need to sell more beer and hotdogs to make a profit and so you guys are just going to have to find a way to make the games longer"

But I don't think that is it.  Unfortunately, I can't make heads or tails of it so I need some help from all of you.  Can someone please explain these things to me?:

• Morris is scheduled to go 45 pitches or 3 innings, whichever comes first.  Not my words, those of the club.  He is in the 3rd inning, no one on base, and he gets the second out in the 3rd inning on his 39th pitch.  So the manager comes out of the dugout and takes him out.  Hasn't reached 45 pitches.  Hasn't finished the 3rd inning.  Why did he get taken out?  It wasn't in the plan.  He wasn't getting beat up.  He had 6 pitches left.  He clearly should have been allowed to finish the inning if he did it on the next batter.  Did someone in the dugout lose count  of the pitches he threw?  Did Cleveland call and say 'hey, we've seen enough.  Take him out we may need him over the weekend'.  I don't know.  I am confused, but not as confused as...
• Columbus was leading 8-5 and had one out to get to win the game.  Caleb Barager, a lefty, had just struck out 2 guys and Darius Hill, a lefty hitter, was coming up followed by a switch-hitter.  Instead of letting the AAAA pitcher Barager finish the game, or try to, Andy Tracy brought in Ponticellii FOR ONE OUT, FACING TWO GUYS WHO WERE GOING TO HIT LEFT HANDED AGAINST HIM.  Why?  We ended up burning Ponticelli so he won't be available tomorrow.  The game is tied up and, best case, we go to the 11th if our new reliever can clean up the mess (bases loaded, one out in the 10th) that the same Ponticelli left.
• Wednesday night, in a game Lake County was losing 10-6, the manager pulled Denholm with 2 outs in the top of the 9th to bring in Tyler Thornton.  Two outs in the 9th, no runners on base and you bring in a new pitcher, one of your better pitching prospects on that team, a guy whose prospect status is on the rise...to get one out.  He has to warm up and come in a game that was all but lost...to get one out?!?! 

I looked through recent games and found that in the last 4 games Columbus has removed a pitcher in the middle of an inning 8 out of 14 times and in the last 4 games in Akron they have removed a pitcher 9 out of 14 times.   Now once in a while I get.  Maybe a guy is on rehab and has reached his pitch count, maybe a guy is getting bombed and has to be rescued due to a long inning or general ineffectiveness that night.  I get it.  But to have 60% of your pitching changes over a 4-game period be in the middle of an inning....that doesn't seem right.    The 3 examples I have given above, none of them seems right.

WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?

Someone please explain it to me as it is maddening to be watching a game and have that game delayed, extended or lost due to an unnecessary pitching change.   

Thoughts for a Thursday Morning - No Series in June Is Crucial...Except This One and Other Things

 MAJORS

• Anytime you win a series against a hot, first-division team in their home ballpark it is a good sign.  When your two veteran starters EACH get hammered for 8 runs in 4 innings it is pretty disturbing, though. 
• I try to tell myself that this is just another series but with teams starting to make decisions about whether they will be buyers or sellers at the deadline...or even right now, if the Guardians tank in Minnesote and end up leaving there 7 to 9 games under .500 I am afraid they will make the decision that this season is lost and they need to salvage what they can in prospects while still making the effort to compete.  As I said before I think Beiber, Straw and, especially, Rosario are still in play to be traded and what we have seen from these guys recently really lowers their trade value and doesn't help the ML team win this year.  Not a good situation for a team on the fence like Cleveland to find themselves in.
• Looking at the pitching matchups for this weekend it is obvious why the Twins are in first place: dominant starting pitching.  Let's see if the Guardians can continue their hitting breakout this weekend.  If they do it against these starters it is, to me, a really good sign.
• I don't know if people were paying attention but twice on Wednesday guys chose not to take the extra base on Arias' arm in right field.  It is a shame that he really hasn't shown he can hit ML pitching as if he could produce at the 2022 Oscar Gonzalez level with that arm he could be a useful player at multiple positions as evidenced by his THREE great plays the other day at 3rd when Ramirez DH'd.
• I don't have the stats to back it up but we have to be one of worst, if not the worst, team in the majors at requesting or failing to request a replay challenge.  I mean, yesterday was just another example where we WASTED our challenge on whether Ramirez should score on an errant throw from the OF.  It was obvious that he had stopped about 10 feet past second base and no way was he going to score if the ball hadn't gone out of play.  I probably can't read Francona this well but looking at him in the dugout I thought I saw him seething after being told to challenge that play.  Too many times I have seen the Guardians make ill-advised challenges or be too slow on the trigger to get a challenge when they would have won.  This is, to me, a MAJOR issue that needs to be corrected. And one that is EASILY fixed by people just paying attention to what is going on.
• Go Guardians!  Let's have a June this year like we had a September last year.

MINORS

• Hey, I had forgotten that Justin Boyd hits right-handed.  That's different.   Excited to see how he can produce now that he is back playing.
• I got to see Lynchburg hit against the Brewers young stud prospect Jacob Misiorowski and his high octane fastball.  Only Angel Genao solved him with a solid line drive up the middle.  Everyone else either took walks or faliled at heaters, mostly out of the zone, much like you would expect for young hitters like this who have likely never seen this level of veolocity except from maybe a pitch machine.  Good to see him be able to handle a tough fastball on the inner half of the plae.
• Herrin's fastball was electric.  I bet he is back up at some point this year and I think he has a 6th/7th inning future in the big leagues after he gets a little more seasoning.
• Not a good day at the plate for the Clippers' top prospects Naylor and Rocchio.  These things happen but you would like to get both of them on a roll in case the Guardians call.
• Zach Plesac.  Man, I just don't get it.  I can't tell if he is just so lost mechanically that no one can help him find his way out or if he just wants out of this organization and is tanking it so he gets his wish. After the 2020 incident I have wondered how much his heart is in this organization as Clevinger was his buddy and he might feel, as I did, that trading him was more of a sign that they wanted his personality out of the organzation more than that they saw the opportunity to fleece the Padres and leverage their excess of starting pitching into a long-term upgrade for the organization's prospect list and ML team's immediate success.   Clearly, after his first outing in Columbus where he went 7 strong innings, he has looked really bad.  This is not good for the Guardians who needed Plesac to find himself so he could be a viable option this year or so that he could be a valuable trade chip at some point this year.  Neither and I doubt it ever will with Cleveland even though part of me believes his value will return if he ends up with another organization like, say, the Yankees.
• Do Daniel Schneeman and Korey Holland have a chance to surprise all of us?  The longer they have success the more it looks like they might.  Time will tell but we are quickly moving out of small sample size range.
• Just when I was really concerend about Halpin and Martinez they have started to hit.  Brito is being Brito, which is not a bad thing if he can perform at AA like he performed at A+ earlier this year.
• Yesterday was not a good day for 2021 draftees at Lake County.  Fox did have a triple but is still hitting .194.  Johnston, Denholm and Thornton, all who have varying degrees of success this year, looked not too good on this one day.