Thoughts for the Monday: Changing of the Guard, Decisions Week, ROY Vote Implications, AFL Aftermath, Help in the Outfield, Potpourri

Back in the swing for a Monday morning after a weekend of fun. 

Stephan Vogt

In all the excitement about our new manager here are some things people should not forget:

• The Guardians could not get the experienced manager of the type they wanted.
• They had their pick of guys with no ML managerial experience and picked who they wanted.  It was their plan to begin with and they followed through.
• It is very likely that he will lose some games for us from inexperience.  He is going to have to grow into the position.  Francona did it so effortlessly although he said how much effort it really took.  Fans need to prepare for this being a bumpy road and to give the guy a chance to grow into the job.  Realize that with a rookie manager like Vogt at the helm in the last 11 years we might had only had 4 winning seasons out of 11 instead of 9.  That stark reality it what we may face at the beginning of his tenure.  Maybe not but it is possible, to be sure.
• Vogt will need strong coaches to help him.  He has to know where to find them and he has to embrace not just bringing in his buddies or people he will be comfortable with.  That is the knee jerk situation, not bringing in the best but, rather, bringing in people you know.  It looks like he will have to find
• Third base/infield coach
• Bullpen coach
• Bench coach
• Hitting coach (my bias is showing through here.
• There are areas that he can be a positive influence right away
• He can bring the energy - Francona was beat up both mentally and physically.  
• He can more fully embrace analytics.  Not saying he will or that he fully knows how to use them but at least he is young enough to.
• He, along with his next replay coordinator, can improve over the last couple of years.

Steven Voght - Old Cronies Edition

So far the Guardians have made 3 off-season acquisitions

• Picked up Christian Bethancourt on waivers
• Signed Adam Oller to a minor league contract
• Picked up Alfonso Rivas on waivers

You could speculate that Bethancourt and Oller were pickups suggested or approved by Vogt as he had overap with each of them.  It is harder to find the direct connection between Rivas and Vogt, especially when Rivas was picked up before Vogt was officially offered the job.  

Still, it would be great if Vogt could have a positve impact on obtaining guys who really made a difference.  While Bethancourt is, on paper, a good pickup (but we thought the same thing about Zunino, right?) he was DFA'd by Tampa Bay when it wasn't necessary, likely because they felt that his arbitration salary was not equal to his value.  Oller being signed now if ominous because you are generally not signing free agents to minor league contracts this early unless the guy is someone who is likely to pitch on your team next year (guys with lifetime 10+ ERAs don't fall in that category).

So, Steven, use your former relationships to help this team build its roster next year and to trade for appropriate ML players and prospects.   So far the results have been OK to poor.  We are the Guardians with a questionable FO.  We need better than that.

Rookie of the Year Vote Implications

This will be a short section.  The truth about this year is:

• The Guardians will receive nothing if Tanner Bibee wins ROY this week.  He won't as that award will go to Gunnar Henderson.  The reason is that the Guardians did not bring him up in time to qualify for the Prospect Promotion Incentive.  He needed to be on the the roster by April 14th.  He wasn't added to the roster until April 28th.  I don't believe even if he was on the roster by the 14th if we would have qualified for the PPI as he wasn't ranked in the top 100 prospects.
• As I have previously posted, if, as expected, he finishes 2nd in the voting then Bibee will earn a full year of service time meaning, if he is not demoted to the minors any time in the future.  This is a negative for the Guardians as it means he would be a FA one year earlier than if he finished 3rd or lower in the voting.  

So, for the Guardians, the only good outcome this week is for Bibee to finish 3rd.  For Bibee, finishing 1st or 2nd helps him immensely.

This is one thing about the PPI that I hate.  Why does a player have to be in the top 100 to qualify for the PPI?  Bibee would have been eliminated before he even through a pitch even if he had been on the opening day roster.  For lower rated prospects there is the stick (loss of one year of control) and no carrot (draft choice compensation).  That is totally unfair to small market teams who likely will have better prospects due to worse records, especially if their strength is prospect development.  

So, look for Bibee to finish 2nd and for the Guardians to be screwed by the new PPI system.

Decisions Week

On Wednesday (roster freeze ahead of Rule 5 draft) and Friday (non-tender of ML players, especially arbitration-eligible players) decisions will have to be made.  

These decisions can be short-sighted (DFAing guys like Kyle Nelson to clear a roster spot) or long-term (adding all those prospects to the 40-man in 2021).  BTW, both of these decisions were in the same 2021 roster freeze.

So I am approaching these two dates with trepidation for the following reasons:

• We have a currently full 40 man roster
• We have guys (Kelly, Rivas) who should be expendable but I am not sure that the FO considers them that way
• We have guys like Gaddis who should be solid end of your 40-man roster guys but may be considered fungible and, therefore, given away for nothing.  Not that I think that highly of Gaddis' ability to be a ML pitcher, but he is a cheap depth guy who we have experience with so, as a AAA option as a reliever or starter, he is perfect for a small market team's end of the 40-man roster..
• We have guys like Gonzalez and Noel who, like Nolan Jones last year, might be undervalued by our FO and given away for less than what they are worth with the same disastrous consequences as what happened with Jones this year.
• We have Laureano who should be DFA'd as he is overpriced and Karinchak who, under no circumstances, be DFA'd or traded for little value to avoid going to arbitration with him.  The former is expendable while the latter is likely an important part of our bullpen who cannot be replaced for the cost of his arbitration settlement.
• We have multiple prospects who need to be rostered, starting with Daniel Espino, Ethan Hankins, Dayan Frias and others.  However, each of these prospects has significant warts that I could see the FO not protecting ANY of them or maybe just protecting Espino due to his prospect status while gambling that all the other guys will not be LOST FOR GOOD in the ML Rule 5 draft system.

After the roster freezes of 2021 and 2022 I thought I had a good feeling about how the FO handles these things but now I am really worried as there is no way Kelly or Rivas should be on the roster after Wednesday and, frankly, we have so many OF prospects with higher upsides than Laureano I can't see him being here past Wednesday as I think we need his roster spot.   

And this is just the beginning.  You still have the roster changes that occur after the Rule 5 where guys like Benson are given away for nothing just to clear roster spots for FA signings or trades where we obtain ML players for non-rostered prospects.

AFL Aftermath

Team Finish

Second only to having the best spring training record in baseball for being a meaningless team accomplishment is winning the AFL championship.  Look, all these guys, I am sure, have been trained that winning (in terms of team over individual) is the goal.  It builds selflessness and teamwork over me-first selfishness.  

I get that.

Still, you put a bunch of guys from different organizations for a month and celebrate because your all-star team beat someone else's.  Just really not important...as written by a guy whose team lost in the finals, LOL.

But let's look at the individual performances, including the playoffs.

Webb 

Completed his AFL season going 4 scoreless innings on Tuesday.  He looked poised and got it done without striking out everybody.  He gave up two hits (one line drive, one seeing eye ground ball) and walked 3 (all on 3-2 counts).  He looks like a keeper and might even make it the majors by the beginning of 2025.

Manzardo and DeLauter

The playoffs were cool for each of them and built on their AFL regular season stats but truth be told, they both need more seasoning before theyare ready to be important contributors in the majors.  Whether that is 2 months or 2 years is not know yet.  Still, they both look like bona fide major leaguers in the future.  Whether they will just be solid regulars or more is to be seen.  But I think we have turned the page on them being Joe Charboneau-type flash-in-the-pans, IMHO.

Hanner, Carver, Cairo, Sabrowski

As I said two weeks ago, these guys have played well enough to be guaranteed a spot in the Guardians farm system next year.  None of them really enhanced their status to be considered for a 40-man roster spot but, still, they have shown that there might be something there, especially with Carver and Hanner.  Truth be told, I wouldn't put Hanner, Cairo or Sabrowski on the Columbus Reserve list (Carver isn't Rule 5-eligible yet), so each of those 3 might be lost in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft.  I just see too many other prospects, inlcuding A ball prospects like Antunez, who aren't good enough to be rostered yet but who you want ont he Columbus reserve list so they would have to be selected in the ML Rule 5 where they have to be kept on the ML roster next season.  If they are NOT on the Columbus reserve list they can be selected in the minor league Rule 5 (like Hanner was last year), and not have to be returned if drafted in that phase.

Help in the Outfield

At the moment, the Guardians' X, blog and website gurus are proposing all kinds of FA signings and trades to help us gett more OF production in the majors.  The issues I see are

• Guys are being suggested who are only short term (1-2 year) rentals
• Guys are being suggested are not positional fits (mostly LFers (Arozerena, for example) or sub-par (defensively) RFers or, and this is the worst, firstbaseman or DHs who are trying to be sold as outfielders (Hoskins, Soler)
• Most people are not addressing replacing Straw EXCEPT by moving 2-time Gold Glover Steven Kwan from LF to CF, likely really making the whole outfield defense worse.

The names that make the most sense to me are:

• Fernando Tatis, Jr.  The problems with him are his huge contract, his maturity issues and the fact that his stature is superhero-like in San Diego.  And that doesn't even include the cost of acquiring him.
• Luis Robert Jr.  The main problem with him is would the White Sox trade him and, if so, would they trade him in the division?  

Both these guys instantly make our offense better while not hurting our defense and Robert replaces Straw, immediately making the need for a veteran RF power hitter less necessary, allowing us to maybe give a LH/RH platoon with Brennan and one of Gonzo/JRod/Noel.

The next tier would be controllable guys who have ML or significant AAA experience in RF, like Jordan Walker.

I think the key here is do not try to fit a square peg in a round hole.  If you do you will just be creating one or, in the worst case, multiple problems just to try to address our RF problem.

I don't know what the answer is but I, like many others, would like they to get Robert or Tatis and would be OK with a guy like Walker (albeit not for a HUGE price).  Many of the other guys are analytics moves and, after last year (or even the last 3 years), I don't trust the Guardians to spend money or trade assets on veterans.  

Potpourri

• Not sure I like the Albernaz signing.  Words spoken so far make it sound like he will be a FO spy which might undermine Vogt's ability or mean the FO is hedging their bets that Vogt can be more than a game/locker room manager.  And, even at that, can he handle the complex issues that come with dealing with drama like what happened to Francona after the deadline purge.  On the plus side, maybe having Albernaz in this job will obviate the need for brining in overvalued veterans players who cost us too much in prospects/money.
• Reading about Jose Tena and seeing how he is doing in winter ball I like him more and more.  He seems, unlike Rocchio, Freeman, Martinez or Arias, to be on the steep portion of his learning curve.  To me, however, that means that he should be our primary trading chip if we have to give up a MIF prospect in a trade this winter.   The other 4 really have been devalued by how they were used in 2023.  Trading your prospects when they are at their highest value (which Tena is right now) is better than trading prospects when they are devalued.  Besides, in the end, I don't see Tena having upside greater than the other 4, assuming all 5 were given a long-term chance by a rebuilding franchise.