Rant for a Saturday - Laureano? Quantrill? De Los Santos? Clase? Oscar Gonzalez? Bieber? Really?

 The off-season opened with the following moves:

• Claimed Alfonso Rivas from Pittsburgh for the $50,000 waiver price
• Signed Adam Oller (he of the 10+ ERA) to a minor league contract with a NRI.
• Claimed Christian Bethancourt off waivers from Tampa

The first two moves were headscratchers.  First, Rivas is a LHH 1B/DH type who has had no success in the major leagues.   Waiting until he was a free agent and signing him to a minor leage deal with an NRI to spring training is one thing.  Paying the $50,000 waiver fee for a redundant guy with no fit on this team is another.  Oller, as a NRI, is less puzzling except for his terrible stats and that we signed him so early.  Not to be lost in all this is that he is a former teammate of our new manager Steven Vogt.  The third move, for another Vogt acquaintance, Bethancourt was less puzzling, I guess.  Bethancourt will be a proven backup catcher with some pop.   The key for me is that Bethancourt would have had no internal competition in Tampa for the EXACT role he will play in Cleveland.  Yet Tampa waived him, presumably to save the $2.3 million arbitration salary he was likely due.   When I saw that Andrew Kizner was DFA'd by St. Louis instead of paying him the $2 million salary he was likely owed, it became clear to me that the market for backup catchers was going to be soft and that we will end up overpaying a little for Bethancourt's services.  That will be fine unless my pick for that roster spot, Bryan Lavastida is picked in the Rule 5 draft and has a good season with his new team while playing for the ML minimum (about $800,000, in his case).  While I still like Bethancourt more than Lavastida, I am not sure if it is $800,000 more.

OK, so that takes up the first 45 days of the off-season.  While these moves are just nuisance moves, this post is really about what happened from Nov. 15th on.  Let's go over them (and current rumors) and then discuss:

• Designated Cal Quantrill (with 2 years of control left) for assignment.  
• Traded Quantrill to Colorado for minor league catcher Kody Huff
• Traded Enyel De Los Santos (with 3 yrs of control) to San Diego for Scott Barlow (with 1 yr of control)
• Protected Daniel Espino and Cade Smith from the Rule 5 draft 
• Left Dayan Frias, Ethan Hankins, Lenny Torres, Jr., Brayan Lavastide, Daniel Schneeman, Aaron Bracho, Micah Pries, Nick Mikolajchak, Andrew Misiaszek and others unprotected from the Rule 5
• Designated Michael Kelly for assignment and lost him on waivers.
• Rewarded a mediocre performance by a platoon player, Laureano with a $5.1 MM contract which was well above the $4.6 MM he would have earned in arbitration
• Lost Oscar Gonzalez on waivers to the Yankees
• Signed RH SP Jaimie Barria to a minor league contract with a NRI to ST.

In addition, now we have a couple of pretty significant rumors:

• The Guardians are open to trading Shane Beiber
• The Guardians are open to trading Emmanuel Clase

Adding all this together:

• They de facto traded two players (Quantrill and De Los Santos) with 5 years of control for Barlow, with one year of control, effectively making our rotation weaker while only making our bullpen marginally stronger...and didn't even save any money doing it.
• They DFA'd Gonzalez even though, if they needed a roster spot, they could have DFA'd the very expendable Rivas.
• They are considering trading Clase (4 years of control) without an internal solution at closer
• They are considering trading Beiber without an internal solution for his roster slot.

None of these moves made in the off-season are logical and the only rationale I can think of is that the FO thinks they are smarter than all of baseball.

• They think that Quantrill is worth less than $6 million although the going rate in free agency for a SP like him is $12-13 million
• They think one year of Barlow is worth more than 5 combined years of Quantrill and De Los Santos
• They knew more than anyone else and overpaid Laureano when we have a number of young players who could have taken his ABs in the outfield, using up valuable resources for a cash-poor organization because they think journeyman Laureano is more special than he has shown in 5 years in the big leagues so far.
• They think that Rivas is worth more than Gonzalez and has earned a shot at making the team next spring although nothing in his history would show that he will do that 
• Like they did with Jones and Benson, they have made a decision on Gonzalez too early that cannot wind up positively and could end up in disaster.
• Taking it one step further, they drafted, in 2023, a whole slew of LHH slap hitters even though, when they applied the same strategy in 2022, it was a dismal failure. 
• Finally, they have set the table for us to sell low on our middle infielders, overplaying the underperforming Arias and burying on the bench both Freeman and Rocchio, both of whom could be traded this off-season for peanuts as they have depressed their value so much no one will even consider them a significant part of a trade.

These guys think they are going to turn baseball on its ear and show their peers that they have a better way of acquiring, developing and using talent.  They are trying to show all of baseball how smart they are and, in so doing, are going to take all the fans down with them, leaving this franchise in ruins for 10 years to come.   If this path is followed it will likely result in the following:

• Josh Naylor will not sign an extension here and will be gone after next season
• Jose Ramirez will be gone after next year or the year after that as they will have likely had to go into total rebuild mode.
• The best years of Tanner Bibee and Gavin Williams will be wasted in this rebuild as will any production they get from Manzardo, DeLauter and any of our MIF prospects we sell low on.

Maybe it will all be clear to me in the future on how this is going to work.  But this FO has given away so much talent and are doing stupid things that there is no way for this franchise to come out the other side stronger than it was at the end of the 2022 season.  

I am a Guardians fan for life. 

But I want this FO to stop doing stupid, unexplainable things that are stripping the heart and soul out of this organization just because they think they are so smart.  We don't deserve the world as a small market team.  But we deserve more than these idiots are giving us.

FO, please get your stuff together.  You are KILLING this franchise.  Just DESTROYING it.