Giving this a little more thought and considering how I put together that roster, here are some thoughts:
(A) The roster contains at least 6 players (highlighted in blue) who have close to zero chance of being ready to play in the majors in 2022. That number is not that extreme but it is still a problem. Five of those guys (Cantillo, Noel, Rocchio, Tena and Valera) will have their option clock started and the other one, Carlos Vargas, will require another option to be used on him, meaning that 2 of his probable 4 options will have been used without him getting above A ball.
(B) Besides the above 5, 7 others (Morris, Pilkington, Lavastida, Freeman, Palacios, Benson and Gonzalez) will be on the roster for the first time.
(C) There are 6 relief pitchers who are currently on the 40 man who will have to be DFA'd if we roster all the prospects we need to. That can represent a problem for us as there are only 7 relief pitchers with any major league experience who we will roster this winter.
(D) All the other positions (catcher, infield and outfield) appear to have enough depth to field a ML team. We will obviously have to bring in a veteran catcher to play at Columbus until Lavastida and Bo Naylor are ready. Fortunately Bo Naylor does not have to be rostered until next winter.
Looking at the relief pitchers below who we may not be able to roster and some of the young players we want to roster, here are some thoughts.
Joey Cantillo - A key piece in the Clevinger trade, he hasn't pitched all year. He would be a likely player to not be rostered, gambling that he likely wouldn't have the experience to survive a whole year in the majors next year. At the same time, if he has surgery this winter a team could stash him all next year after drafting him in the Rule 5 and groom him for another year.
Johnkensy Noel - He is tearing up low A but the Indians have not promoted him yet. Interesting. Are they thinking that keeping him at low A will keep teams from getting a read on him? I have 3 things to say to the Indians:
Looking at this list and the relievers we have, I could see us rostering Justin Garza and not rostering Benson. If you believe Cantillo isn't going to be lost in the Rule 5 you could roster someone else but who would that be? Wittgren is nothing special but at least he has had SOME success in the majors. Hill, Allen, Moss, Nelson do not, right now, appear to be great losses as they don't provide anything special in terms of pure stuff or performance. Ditto for the players Chang, Mercado and Johnson and, maybe even Own Miller, although I think we should stick with him based on his pedigree (although he really sucks right now) and give him one more year.
Another point on the list below. It is a stocked 40-man roster. No fluff. So unless you non-tender someone in December, you can't really add a ML free agent. You would have to wait for opening day when you 60-day DL someone if you wanted to add someone to the roster. As it is now with the discussion above we would have to expose Joey Cantillo, Will Benson and Jose Fermin to the Rule 5 draft and that is in the BEST of situations. In addition to those guys there are a host of minor league relievers who would be exposed to the Rule 5 and given the trajectories of guys like Justin Garza and Francisco Perez this year, we could lose guys in the Rule 5 who might have made their ML debuts in the Indians' bullpen in 2022.
There will be some hard decisions this winter. I hope the Indians lean more toward the future than towards the present.
Last point: Given the list below the obvious thing would be to trade 2-3 guys from the current 40-man roster who we intend to DFA to some team in need of ML-ready players and get 1 good prospect back who doesn't have to be rostered this winter. However, I don't believe the Indians have the ability to pull of even one trade of this type when 2-3 need to be pulled off. This is the only way I can imagine having the roster we need for next year AND not losing players for pennies.
2022 Starting Rotation Candidates
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