I, for one, am glad we did not make a trade today. People will say that we could have done this or that but, except for Soto I don't know if there were any guys I would have wanted today, even Sean Murphy. Some of that is due to expiring contracts, some of that is that we have enough of whatever it is would have traded for. But I would have used this opportunity to consolidate prospects to get great prospects for good prospects.
To be real, I don't know if any of prospect geeks like to part with prospects. For those of us at a certain age, we lived for years on the hope of a confluence of prospects and veterans to give us a good enough mix to make the, at the time, Indians, a power in major league baseball.
Many of us got to experience that in 1995 and continued to experience that most years since then. Rooted in tthat, at least for me, was the knowledge that your tomatoes always taste better when you grow them in your own garden. Thus, when one of our own prospects succeeded and, in so doing, helped my team to succeed, it made it all that much sweeter.
I never, ever, considered that this could be done in as homegrown a fashion as Antonnetti, Chernoff, and staff have done it.
Yet, although some of the guys on this year's team came as young veterans or advanced minor leaguers, here we are with an essentially homegrown team.
In his press conference today Antonnetti stressed the importance of team chemistry. None of us have the insider knowledge to know which players fit that chemistry and which don't. What I think many of us can figure out, however, is the following:
(1) It is likely a waste of a year if you have to give significant numbers of starts to Tully, McCarthy, Pilkington and Bryan Shaw. You just put yourself behind the 8 ball too much. That was the beauty of 1995. Yes, you had lots of homegrown young guys but you had Dennis Martinez and Orel Hersheiser, Eddie Murray and Dave Winfield.
(2) It is not sustainable, from a maximization of resources perspective, to build a team on homegrown talent if you have any sort of vibrant farm system (and ours is REALLY vibrant right now). By that I mean that if you have a good player development system and develop bunches of good players you are not going to be able to keep them all. There just isn't room on your 40-man roster for all of them. There has to be a balance of young players and older players who are obtained by trading our excess of young players. You just can't lose the worst ones of them because you get to a point where the worst ones are Will Brennan, Oscar Gonzalez and Will Benson. Losing guys like that for nothing cannot be acceptable in the model that Aontonnetti is trying to sell us on.
So, here are my comments directed towards the Guardians' management:
(1) To Antonnetti and Chernoff - Neither of you have shown the ability of take our excess of young players and parlay 3 good prospects into one great prospect, for example. We are quickly reaching a point where our prospects, like those tomatoes, are going to rot on the vine if we can't 'pick' them, either by getting them playing time or trading them for proven assets that can help us win now. It is a 'flaw' that I have pointed out repeatedly and today showed me, once again, that I have no evidence to support that you can do this.
(2) Today should have been not just about fit right now but about fit next year. Look at our pitching prospects. It is highly probable that next year ZERO of our top pitching prospects will be ready to pitch in the majors. Look at Logan T. Allem, Daniel Espino and Gavin Williams. It is likely that none of them helps us in the rotation next year. These are great prospects but if they are not ready we may be forced to endure loss after loss when we throw guys like Tully, McCarthy and Pilkington to the wolves. You just lose too many games to make up. Ditto for Ernie Clement. Just like Mercado, Zimmer and Chang before them, the time has past when you can afford to put these guys on the roster, let alone play them if you are forced to have them. So Clement and even, possibly, Owen Miller, should be gone next year. Clement has cost us games with his glove and he hasn't had an extra base hit since May 1st. If there is one thing I don't like about our manager is that he will continue to throw guys out there who we know are very likely to fail. This has to stop next year. We need to stop giving him guys like this because he overuses them and it costs us games.
(3) Today we had a chance to free up spots for guys who are not on the 40-man to be placed there this season and/or this winter. One thing I hope I heard wrong from Antonnetti today is him celebrating the contributions from Gonzalez and, maybe wishfully, Brenson going forward. Gonzalez was a mistake that didn't happen to cost us because there was no Rule 5 last winter. So we can celebrate our good fortune on that. However, what we should be saying is "Never Again!!!" Our lack of activity today DOES put us at risk of losing the next Gonzalez to the Rule 5 this winter. By your inaction today you have lost the right, in my opinion, to ever say "Well, we can't protect everyone". If you aren't going to trade them you HAVE to protect them. You are out of free passes on these types of situations. You have gone down this path, now make it work.
The clock is ticking. You, Guardians' management, can keep threading the needle but you need to use a better quality of thread. You can't keep a Chang on the roster at the risk of losing a Gonzalez, or a Benson, or a Brennan or, for that matter, even a Gabriel Rodriguez and an Alexfri Planez. You must find a role for Curry and Gaddis so both can be on the major league team next spring.
I agree with Antonnetti's comment today that there are some guys at AAA who can help us this year and some guys at AA who can help us next year. It is just time to commit to every one of those guys and stop wasting any repetitions on guys like Clement, Bryan Shaw, Tobias Meyers, Chang, Zimmer, Mercado, Tully and McCarthy. The Franmil Reyes situation should be a shining light in that regard. Whatever is wrong with Franmil he needs to fix it or get out of the way. Happened with Bobby Bradley. Needs to happen with Franmil.
Hey, Chernoff and Antonnetti, be proud of how you juggled players to not lose any quality players to being DFA'd. That has been wonderful and you can use it on a roster cantaining real prospects this winter and next year.. Just don't put yourselves in a position, by keeping 4A players on your roster, where you have to do that again. EVER.
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