OK, let's dive in:
Overall Assessment of Trade Deadline Activity
One of my readers commented that I might rant about this. This trade has to be considered in the entire scope of two things:
(1) Our transactions in preparation for competing for the division this year
and
(2) Our transactions since the end of the 2020 season
Looking at (1), it is hard to believe that the Guardians did their due diligence on Zunino and Bell. They made the decision to buy damaged goods, with Zunino's being physical and Bell being his hit tool, and both failed miserably. Given their inability to sign quality free agents and their lack of resources, this seemed like a bad combination. However, they obviously had SOME resources and their real need was an outfielder who would step in and be a starter at the beginning of 2023. Those starters signed elsewhere for less dollars and less years. My guess is that their evaluation process on both Zunino and Bell was inadequate or faulty and their plan for the 2023 season, clogging the DH with Bell and not leaving the DH position open as they did in 2022 was, again, faulty. In hindsight here are some thoughts:
(a) What would have happened to our offense and defense if we had made Rosario the full-time DH going into this year? No power would have been added but the youngsters would have gotten to play. Rosario's biggest tools, his bat and his legs, would have still been utilized. In hindight this would have been cheaper and a better way to go, especially since losing Rosario would have been losing a DH, a much easier fix this coming off-season.
(b) Lost somewhat in the Sean Murphy trade to Atlanta is the piece where Milwaukee traded speedster Esteury Ruiz to Oakland and Atlanta traded then-excess catcher William Contreras to Milwaukee. The rap on Conteras was his defense. Well, currently he ranks 5th among catchers according to Fielding Bible. His WAR is 2.5 and his OPS is .805. It is beyond me why Cleveland did not jump into that trade as while Ruiz leads the AL in steals (currently on IL) he is an anachronism in the 2023 version of MLB. as a no power, all speed kind of guy. If we traded Will Brennan or even the 2022 version of Oscar Gonzalez to Oakland and gotten Contreras where would we be now?
Looking at (2), I recently posted about how the Guardians' best transactions since the end of 2020 were trading JC Mejia for David Fry and signing Enyel De Los Santos. Almost every other transaction during that period has been a real negative, including the Rosario, Bell and Civale trades. In my opinion Cleveland has been exposed as (1) being really bad at due diligence, (2) having a bad evaluation paradigm in their acquistion of players and (3) when they make deals to shed salary and/or players they don't like anymore, they tend to do three things: (a) use the same broken paradigm: (overvalue extreme hit/batting eye/LH or switch hitter) even if they have accumulated too many of those guys already, (b) use the mis-direction tactic of trading for 'broken' prospects (IMO both Watson (attitude/lack of performance) and Manzardo (injury/bad platoon splits/poor defense) are broken and so may be overvalued right now) and, finally, (c) always trading from their heels, meaning that they undervalue their players so much that they are willing to accept pennies on the dollar for the talent they are sending away. (the latter being especially true with Civale but true in almost every case I can remember in the last 3 years or so). NOTE: I will say that recently they HAVE been, maybe to a fault, been overly protective of their prospects, making sure that they have given guys EVERY chance, plus some, to find their true value even if, like Arias, they constantly fail.
Finally, within (2) above, you have to consider that Cleveland is doing a very bad job at playing the long game. As much as some might disagree, our minor league pitching cupboard is, for the time being, barren. No way in a million years is Joey Cantillo ready and Doug Nikhazy, Tommy Mace, Ross Carver, Will Dion, etc. are less ready. The depth guys we have in the minors: Gaddis, Battenfield, Plesac, Karinchak are underperforming, some at INCREDIBLY poor, almost I-don't-give-a-shit-I-just-want-out-of-this-organization levels. With that background, the trade of Civale was a terrible one and the players know it. You just don't give away your best current starter, under team control for 2+ additional years, in the middle of a pennant race, in a rotation where rookies are being pushed to their pitching limit for the year ALREADY, for a guy with as many warts as Manzardo has, especially when he can't help you this year and especially when he plays a position, DH/1B that is so easily backfillable in 2nd tier free agency. Now if you had told me we traded Civale for Pete Crow-Armstrong I would have been more OK with it even if we have to add a AA or lower prospect like Angel Martinez. If we had packaged Civale and, say, Brennan, for Colton Cowser I would have been fine with it. But not Manzardo and not when we are now forced to give 1B or DH to this guy next year, regardless if he is ready or not and, ESPECIALLY, not in the middle of a pennant race where we have very few options to backfill Civale's innings.
You can't be this bad at trading and remain competitive given the realities of Cleveland baseball. You can't be so bad that you essentially throw away over $30 million in less than 4 months for failed free agent signings. Finally, and you knew this was coming from me, you can't have such a stupid, moronic, idiotic predilection to drafting/acquiring these extreme high OBP, hit-over-power guys over and over again in the drafts of 2022 and 2023. I have said repeatedly that I don't have to be a clairvoyant to know that these last two drafts will NOT help us much in the future in terms of staying competitive. We will have a lot of empty draft choices coming out of these drafts and that number could be much worse if injured guys like Campbell, DeLauter, Zibin and others aren't uber-performers once they get healthy.
This combination of bad acquisitions/trades and bad drafting has put us in a bind this year and in the future. As troubling, to me, however, is the attempts to cover bad trades with smoke screening (Watson, Syndergaard acquisitions) and the total inability to discern a long-term pathway when they were right in front of us (e.g., trade for William Contreras when the Murphy thing was falling through). Our FO is supposed to be having contingency after contingency plans and, instead, in both the General Manager's office and the draft room, it looks like we REACT intead of PROACT. I could say that they have to be better than this and, while that is still true, I think we are close to screwing ourselves for years to come unless some of our upper level minor leaguers suddenly don capes with a big "S" on them and surprise us all by becoming superstars (Valera, Rocchio, Manzardo, Cantillo, Espino, Brito...yes, I am talking to you!).
Josh Bell Trade
Specifically about this trade, I see the FO trying to accomplish two things here:
(1) Erase from right in front of the fans' noses the bad signing and, therefore, bad scouting decisions that led up to the signing and bad negotiation that led up to the albatross deal with Bell. I think the thought process goes, out of sight, out of mind. If the fans don't see Bell anymore they will be less likely to remember this failure by the FO
(2) Immediately opening a future spot for Manzardo, who won't be here until sometime next year, in a lame attempt to justify the bad Civale trade.
(3) Acquiring a former high draft pick in Watson as part of the smokescreen that also includes (1) and (2).
I am not upset with this trade and don't feel we were necessarily robbed in the deal (unless we are still on the hook for Segura's money and Bell opts out this winter, then we got screwed royally in this deal). I also don't feel we could have gotten a lot for Bell although, if I was going to take a low minors prospect or two I would have targeted the best Marlins' DSL players rather than Watson.
So I am neutral on this trade because (a) Bell's low production/high salary, (b) our need to use the DH spot to rotate guys and give auditions and (3) get more talent into our organization.
Do I think we accomplished all 3? Well there is the rub. Should we have done better? Sure, we should have had a creative FO who would have shrewdly netted us future value without sacrificing the present. But, unfortunately, we don't have Tampa Bay's FO, we have ours. So how can I be disappointed with mediocre performance by a FO who has shown repeatedly in the past 3 years that they are mediocre-to-bad at doing player acquisition transactions. The answer is I am resigned to it so I am not upset with it.
About Watson
Well, I almost made it through a post in these frustrating times without being snarky...but not quite.
When you get fans/media from other organizations making comments that smack of 'not our problem any more, he's Cleveland's issue now/no great loss' you have to know that your chances of getting ANYTHING out of this trade are low. Given that Watson is a middle infielder and it is even more puzzling. Again, Cleveland accepting someone who, on the surface, looks like a prospect who we all know is likely just window dressing to help make the Bell signing look less pathetic. This is NOT Junior Caminero for Tobias Myers in reverse, believe me.
***SNARKY SPOILER ALERT***
One positive [tongue firmly in cheek] thing I will say about acquiring Watson is that the Guardians have become quite adept in recent years at making HS infielders high draft picks and then miserably failing to develop them (Carson Tucker, Yordys Valdes, Christian Cairo) so they will be well-prepared for Watson being more of the same. Given the organization he is coming to and this recent track record, I don't see this turning out any differently with Watson. Well, no big deal, he got his big signing bonus. Hope he has invested it wisely because, unless Cleveland finds a way to dislodge his head from up his rear end and realize that, in fact, getting to the majors involves hard work, no ego and no attitude other than the one where he outworks everyone else in the room, Given that they couldn't develop Tucker, Valdes and Cairo, or their draft 'experts' overvalued those guys and thus overvalued Watson, as well, they are likely to have obtained a future HOF employee at McDonald's. I wonder if part of the Guardians player development is to teach these guys to say "Would you like fries with that?"
So, Mr. Watson, if you are somehow reading this realize something. You have just been thrown away (don't think this was a trade, it was an exorcism) from your drafting organization before you even got out of A ball. Every player I can think of that this has happened to never even got a sniff of the major leagues. If you truly have the talent people say you do it is time to get your head out of your butt and do two things: shut up and perform. Your future large paydays are about to disappear. It is your time. Perform or get the hell out the door. Thus ends your wakeup call.
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