Thoughts On The Final (?) Roster

 Lots to unpack about the final roster.  So here goes.

• Devison De Los Santos was returned to the Diamondbacks.  On paper he was never likely to make this team and the thought process may have been, in part, that if DeLauter wasn't going to make the team with limited experience how could De Los Santos.  In addition, Antonetti apparently said 'for now' in regards to him being returned to Arizona.  A salient point here is that if we made a trade for him BEFORE we returned him to Arizona he would have had to stay on the 40-man.  The only way to be able to keep him NOT on the 40 would have been to DFA him after we traded for him.  By sending him back to Arizona he now is taken off the 40 man and doesn't lose an option year because he was never on an active roster during the regular season.  Following that path we can now trade for him if we like him and can find a reasonable trade AND not have him on the 40 man until at least this November, when we would have to roster him to protect him against the 2024 Rule 5.  Smart thinking all around by the Guardians as the deal could be about the same now as it was before he was returned, we have more time to make the deal or an expansion of that deal to include additional players on both sides, without any pressure.  Essentially, we have until the first minor league game in early April, giving us extra time to come up with a deal.
• Estevan Florial made the team.  Even though this could be just a temporary situation this likely leaves a bad taste in the mouth of Guardians fans, given how pathetic Florial was this season.  Now that he is on the roster they are going to give him all the playing time he can get before opening day.  He likely will platoon with Freeman just like Brennan will platoon with Laureano.  While I don't like it, keeping Florial makes perfect sense from that POV and because if we DFA'd him the FO would have egg on their face for the stupid loss of Cody Morris for a guy (Florial) that many of us believed was just a AAAA guy.   However, if you were going to dump Florial, now would have been the time with Morris being sent to AAA after sucking in ST this year.  
• Rocchio will be the starting SS but Arias makes the team.  This makes perfect sense on so many levels, given the resources we are working with.  Arias has some experience at 1B and in the OF besides the IF so he gives us good depth.  Rocchio gets a chance to prove himself.  Not sold on his defense yet but, given how he was misused last year which clearly could have negatively impacted his offensive stats, I think it is the best way to go.
• We keep THREE utility players, Fry, Freeman, and the aforementioned Arias.  I love this.  Again, they all should be on the roster given the resources we had to work with to construct the roster.  They give us 'protection', if they hit well, against teams stacking their LHP against us.  Love this if Freeman can, indeed, play a decent CF.  Fry certainly deserves this and if he gets 300 AB this season I hope that everyone will see how valuable he is.
• Carrasco and Beede make the roster.  Given how they performed this ST AND the injuries we have had this is no surprise.  What happens when Williams comes back is the question.  At that point, if there are no other pitching injuries (knuckles knocking on my wood office desk), as the Highlander says, "There can be only one" as we only need one long man and I doubt if we go to a 6 man rotation with only 7 relievers.
• Lively and Curry to the IL - Don't know the reason for this but it may be flu-like virus related.  The likely plan is that, once they are ready, they are built back up and go on a rehab stint at AAA to buy the Guardians time so they don't have to waste an option year on either of them.
• Cade Smith makes the roster...if.  In one of the most interesting and scary things I heard over the past few days regarding the Guardians, Cade Smith has made the roster unless the team trades for anther reliever.  Any of us who lived through Tobias Myers worries what that means.  I would frankly have Smith than any bordeline veteran reliever or any reliever who we have to trade for because it would likely mean we would be trading or DFAing someone on the 40-man roster to clear a roster spot for the new addition.  Aside from Lively and the above-mentioned Florial, there is not a single expendable guy on the 40 man.  Now maybe the FO sees it differently but remember that this is the same FO who gave us Tobias Myers, Justin Boyd/Steve Hajjar and even Juan Brito (when you consider the circumstances of his trade for Nolan Jones).  Bottom line: I don't trust the FO in any trade they make, Manzardo-Civale not withstanding.
• Placed Myles Straw on waivers.   Again, the perfect solution to rip the bandaid off and get him off the active roster.  If he is claimed, we are out from under his contract.  If he decides to become a FA, we are out from under his contract.  If he goes to AAA we pay him like a MLer but he is ML-ready insurance if we are in desperate need for a veteran OFer or if Florial falls on his face as some (including me) expect him to do. 
• Did not roster Chase DeLauter or Kyle Manzardo.  The Guardians can say what they want but this was totally a years of control manipulation play.  Both DeLauter and Manzardo made this team better this year if they were on it.    Plus, if they were on the opening day roster the Guardians were eligible for ROY compensation in next year's draft  if either surprised and had a great rookie year as I think both qualified for that draft compensation if they won ROY.  Bringing them up in May negates that possibility of the Guardians getting ROY compensation although, as we found out with Tanner Bibee last year, you can still lose that extra year of control if either ends up finishing in the top 3 of the ROY voting.   
• All other roster decisions appear to be valid and there weren't any decisions (so far, knock on wood, ewpecially regarding the Cade Smith situation) that would cause us to DFA or trade a real prospect.

SUMMARY

Clearly, I don't like this roster.  The FO did NOTHING to make this team better in the off-season except bring in Barlow at the cost of Quantrill and Enyel De Los Santos AND try to make this offense better by giving the young guys opportunities and doing an addition-by-subtraction move by waiving Myles Straw.  On opening day I will have my prediction for the Guardians' record this year but, given the new manager who is essentially working with the roster that took us from 1st place at the AS break to 76-86 at the end, I could see this team going 61-101 and being boring to watch, to boot.  But at least it appears that, given the hand they were dealt and the results this spring AND that there was never any way that they were going to roster DeLauter and/or Manzardo and lose that extra year of control, they did the best they could with what they had to work with, even being somewhat ingenious in how they worked the system...at least until their next screwup if they pick up a reliever.