Gio Urshela -
It was May of 2018. The Indians needed a roster spot and had to DFA Gio Urshela. Essentially, they needed a roster and had given up on Urshela. We all knew he was a great defender, maybe Gold Glove level at 3B and that he was an adequate SS. But he couldn't hit. He had an OPS for Cleveland of .587. His war was -0.4. He showed very little power, didn't walk much nor did he steal bases. Essentially, he was a defensive replacement, which is what I argued at the time. If you are going to have a defensive replacement why not have it be Urshela. Homegrown. Cheap. But the Indians decided to let him go. Not saying I was a fan of the move but only because I saw value in him as a 25th guy of the roster. So he goes to Toronto and they give up after 3 months. He goes to the Yankees and plays in the majors in 2019, hitting .314 with 34 doubles and 21 HRs.with an OPS of .889.
WTF?!?!?!?!
The rest is history. He is a solid defender, clutch hitter and generally well-above average player, all things considered.
What went wrong? I don't know but something went wrong and the Indians (and Blue Jays) got nothing from him whereas the hated Yankees turned this toad to a prince with a single kiss.
Yandy Diaz -
In December of 2018 in a trade not worth unpacking here, the Indians sent Diaz and Cole Sulser to Tampa and got the infamous (or un-famous) Jake Bauers back. It was thought we were buying low on Bauers. Turns out we were selling low on Diaz.
The rap on Diaz was that he couldn't lift the ball. Lots of exit velocity but most of it lost as he pounded ball after ball into the ground. At the same time he was a poor defender without any speed who was relegated to play two power-hitting positions, 1B or 3B, or DH. In 265 ABs with Cleveland he hit ONE homerun.
So he goes to Tampa and what happens? Suddenly he lifts the ball and slugs .476 his first year. While that is a wasted resource it stings even more when realizing that Bauers hit almost the same in Cleveland as he hit in Tampa. Now it wasn't easy for Tampa to get him to lift the ball and, truth be told, he is back to not hitting HRs (he has only 5 this year).
Not the worst loss for the Indians in a trade even if you don't include that Bauers came back here and wasted our time for 2 seasons. But still a loss. This one, the fans called at the time as Bauers was as advertised and Diaz became who the fans thought he could be.
Franmil Reyes -
The Indians/Guardians got Reyes at the deadline in 2019.in another complex trade not worth umpacking here. He hit HRs from the time he came here, 58 in all, including 30 last year. The Guardians DFA'd him when his pathetic hitting stretched out over 4 months of this season. And it wasn't just that his stats eroded from previous years. He swung repeatedly at pitches a foot off the plate. and would take fastballs right down the middle. His ABs were so frustrating that I couldn't even watch sometimes and you could tell the frustration in Rick Manning's voice every time Reyes had another pathetic AB. The advantage here was that, unlike Urshela, we had options remaining on Reyes that would have kept him in the minors this year and next year before we had to DFA him. Instead, we DFA'd him. The point was not that we brought up AAAA pitcher Jake Jewell to take his roster spot. That was an incidental footnote of bringing up AAAA players to burn some innings to save the bullpen then DFAing them when a new player needed to be added to the roster.
The point was that we gave up on Reyes. As I have said previously there has to be a back story here. No way that a half season of baseball is enough, in and of itself, to want to erase from La Mole from the collective memory of the Guardians.
Well, as predicted, he landed with a rebuilding club willing to take a flyer on a guy who had 37 and 30 HRs in his only two full seasons in the majors. A relatively young guy with 2 minor league options left (counting this year).
SUMMARY
So, what have we learned from all this. The Guardians traded away 3 players and got nothing in return. Yeah, teams do this all the time. But the Guardians are in a unique situation. They can't just buy their way out of a mistake by signing a high-priced free agent. They have to hit on more trades than they miss on. They missed on 3 big trades in the last 4 years here, dumping players for nothing, relatively young players at that, players they gave up on, only to have the first two, Urshela and Diaz, come back to bite them with the likelihood that Reyes will do the same.
The Guardians management should be asking themselves why were Urshela and Diaz so quickly developed after they left Cleveland? Why couldn't they develop these guys who turned out to be above-average ML players. Why, in my opinion, did they give up on these guys out of what appears to be frustration when they should have found a way to make this work.
You can't have these kinds of failures when you are in Cleveland. To paraphrase from a national pizza chain commercial: EVERY...ASSET...MATTERS. Here were three assets that were squandered and we are no better for it.
We simply need to do better!!!
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