Air

 Air is all around us.  It is free.  We can breathe as much as we can and no one charges us for it.  Right now, there is a lot of it (hope that stays that way).  

That's the thing, though.  Air is not really a commodity.  You can't really put a price on it because we need it but it has no value.   

To put this in baseball terms, when I read that a player has been traded for a player to be named later or cash, my mind immediately defaults to him being traded for air.  

Owen Miller was traded for air today.  I am not saying that I think that Owen Miller was going to be on our 26 next spring or that he should remain on our 40 this winter.  Just saying that he was worth more than air.  

Trading Owen Miller for air as the Guardians did today is just a smokescreen to make it look like we didn't DFA him.  That is important because when you look at the players that are DFA'd as this time of the year they are generally 4A players.  Most, if not all of them, do not even have the major league career that Miller has had.

Why am I bringing this up?  Because Cleveland fans tend to underestimate the value of our borderline players.

Tobias Myers (let's just call him AIR Myers) brought Tampa Junior Caminero.  If you thinking there is an air reference here, it's because Myers, in a baseball sense, immediately turned into air, meaning we trade Junior Caminero for air.  

We traded Nolan Jones for Juan Brito who is likely going to turn into air down the road.

So when, for the millionth time I hear a Cleveland fan say "He stinks, there is no way we could get anything good for him" I think back on the Junior Caminero (and other) trades.

I am pretty sure that Owen Miller, at this point in his career, is worth more than air.

It is becoming too typically a disappointment that we keep giving players away for something that is free for us all to breath.  And that is not what Miller is worth, despite what the Eeyore-like fans of the Cleveland Guardians might try to tell you.  If Tobias Myers got Tampa Junor Caminero, if Juan Brito got Colorado Nolan Jones, Owen Miller should have brought back more than air.

The FO needs to do better with our assets.  They can't just throw them away for nothing and the better ones need to get back quality, equal value or better.   Otherwise, in a year or two we won't be able to maintain the talent level on this team.    Owen Miller isn't the problem, he is just a symptom of the problem with the FO.   They simply can't turn prospects into value...they only turn them into air.