How To Keep This Rolling - Part 3 - No, Really, We NEED To Make Trades

Many Guardians' fans are currently thinking 2 things about our team:

• We need 1-2 starting pitchers and an impact bat, preferably a RFer or CFer, before the deadline.
• We need to trade some of our prospect depth at AA and AAA to fill those needs.

The problem with that is two-fold:

• With all the injured pitchers in MLB and all the teams STILL in contention 25 teams within 5.5 games of a Wildcard or Division Championship berth), the competition for sarting pitching will be fierce at the deadline.
• Competition for ANY player at the deadline will be fierce
• It sounds like the Yankees, Orioles, Phillies and Dodgers, the four teams with the best chance to make the WS this year, will be active players at the deadline so any deadline improvement teams like the Guardians make at the deadline will likely be offset when some or all of those 4 teams make a bigger splash.

It is obvious that the Guardians have an excess of prospects, a lot of it being ML-ready or close to it.  But what is NOT so obvious is that, given the performance of those prospects this year, they will likely HAVE to make some deals by the November roster freeze or almost surely lose a good number of players in the Rule 5.

Yeah, yeah, I know. People like me warn about losing players in the Rule 5 every year and it (almost) never happens.  But I am telling your, it is REALLY going to happen this winter unless the Guardians do something.  Let's take a look at the numbers (with minor league options still available entering 2025) who will likely occupy space on the 40-man roster:

Pitchers (17): Allen, Bibee, Cantillo, Clase, Curry, Espino, Gaddis, Hentges, Herrin, Karinchak, Lively McKenzie, Morgan, Sandlin, Smith, Stephan, Williams

Catchers(2): Bo Naylor, Fry

Infielders (10): Arias, Brito, Gimenez, Manzardo, Angel Martinez, Josh Naylor, Jose Ramirez, Rocchio, Schneeman, Tena

Outfielders (6): Brennan, Freeman, Kwan, Noel, JRod, Valera

Yeah, you can debate about Karinchak, McKenzie, Allen, Arias and even Rocchio, but I don't honestly believe that the Guardians would non-tender or DFA any of these guys as they all have significant upside both in trades and in future development.  

So there you have it.  Right now, IMO, the Guardians are looking at 35 rock solid spots on the 40-man roster.  So we have 6 spots left to add this off-season IF we don't sign any free agents.  Let's look at who might fill those spots:

Returning players (2): Bieber, Avila

Players eligible for the Rule 5 draft not currently on the 40-man (ones in bold are top 40 prospects (my ranking) in the Guardians' organization):  

Pitchers (13): Doug Nikhazy (AAA), Will Dion (AAA), Franco Aleman (AAA), Nick Mikolajchak (AAA), Andrew Misiaszek (AAA), Ryan Webb (AA), Tommy Mace (AA), Aaron Davenport (AA), Lenny Torres Jr. (AA), Trenton Denholm (A+), Ethan Hankins (AA), Alonzo Richardson (A), Yorman Gomez (A)

Infielders (5): Dayan Frias (AA), Milan Tolentino (AA), Maick Collado (AA), Jose Devers (A+), Juan Benjamin (A+), 

Outfielders (4): Petey Halpin (AA), Alexfri Planez (AA), Wuilfredo Antunez (A), Esteban Gonzalez (A), 

So, without even dipping into the guys who might be flyers as Rule 5 picks (Halpin, Frias, Mikolajchak, Misiaszek, Planez), we are talking about about 1/4 of our top 40 prospects, with 7 being pitchers in AA or AAA, who are very easily projectable to make the Guardians' ML roster sometime in 2025.  

Those 7 pitching prospects, along with our glut of ML middle infielders, represent the real problem here.  All the other guys on the non-40-man roster list above are typical Rule 5-eligible guys.  That is, guys who are selectable but have little chance to stick on a ML roster in 2025.  Some small chance but very little.

But those 7 pitchers, added to maybe Bieber and Avila, represent 9 guys battling for 5 40-man roster spots.  So maybe FOUR guys will be lost for nothing, either to free agency or to the Rule 5.   That's not acceptable for a small market club.

And that's if we don't make any trades or acquisitions.  They also represent guys who might be good enough to keep us from wasting resources in trades if they can fill SP roles next year.

So, between the middle infielder excess who we can't find playing time for, and SP prospects who we can't protect AND maybe a couple of outfielder prospects, we need to make a trade...or two...or three.

Fans may think we need to make those trades to make us more competitive this year.   But what we need to make trades for is to clear some roster space AND make us more competitive this year AND in the future.  The question is, will the market allow us to do that and will our FO be savvy enough to make that happen?

Let's hope they can.

July 2, 2024 - Thoughts For A Tuesday Morning

1. Draft 2024 - What did he mean by that?  Should I be worried?

Chris Antonnetti said in an interview yesterday that he doesn't expect to know who the Guardians will select #1 in this year's draft until right before the draft.  This is a little scary to me because it MIGHT insinuate a couple of things:

• That their #1 pick is going to be a fluid situation, meaning there will be plenty of room for their scouting director to try to show the world that he is the smartest draft director in baseball.
• That they likely are trying to get deals in place with over-slot bonus players in later rounds which brings up two red flags: (1) will those guys still be there when the Guardians want to draft them and (2) if they are still there will they really be worth the money or will this just be another example of this draft director trying to show everyone how smart he is and overpaying for guys that no other team will pay that much for...which is NEVER a good thing.

...or it could just mean that they aren't willing to commit to a player now because something might come up late in the process that would move them off a certain player (e.g, injury, drug use, personality issues). 

...or, as my wife said, it could just be his way of saying 'mind your own business' and that asking that was a stupid question that the media should have known better than to ask.

Let's hope it's one or both of the latter two!

But let's assume for the second it was one of the first two.

Right now, from everything I have read, the #1 pick could be a two-horse race:

• January's #1 prospect - JJ Wetherholt
• May's #1 prospect - Travis Bazzana

I also believe, as many others do, that this will come down to money, which probably eliminates Charlie Condon, who, as a draft-eligible sophomore, will probably not settle for a lot less than slot money.  Hopefully, and I repeat, HOPEFULLY, they are not seriously considering Chase Burns (huge reliever risk) or Jac Caglianone (huge chase rate).  Again, and I will likely say this dozens of more times before the draft, Burns and Caglianone would be picks where our scouting director thinks he knows more than the rest of the industry.  So let's hope at no point in the first 5 rounds of this draft does he act like that.

So, will we pick the early #1 or the later #1?  If I had to bet, I would say the following:

• If the bonus they are searching for is $8.5 million or less they will draft JJ, giving them $2 million extra to work with later in the draft
• If their bonus target is $9.5 million or less, they will likely draft Bazz, giving them over $1 million more to work with but $1 million less than if they could snag JJ at $8.5 million.

Two things to consider here:

• JJ is currently 4/5 in most rankings.  The last team to take a college player that low at 1-1 was the Pirates with Henry Davis in 2021.   
• The Pirates saved a lot of money (almost $2 million) but spent all of that and more on Bubba Chandler (#63 prospect overall right now) a HS pitcher but prospective college quarterback.  

The key here is that Chandler was going to college to play football and baseball and they had to offer him an obscene bonus ot $3 million to get him off that commitment.  Chandler was picked at #72 but was the 21st best prospect, matching the slot value that was almost identical to his eventual bonus.  

I think a good case can be made that the Pittsburgh scouting director tried to show he was the smartest guy in the room and we found out that, in fact, he wasn't.  Let's hope the new Cleveland scouting director doesn't repeat that mistake.  

...and let's hope Antonnetti was just deflecting a question that the media should have known he would never answer.

2. It's not enough.  It's NOT enough.

Currently, the algorithm that Baseball Reference uses to calculate a team's chances in the post-season sayings that Cleveland has a 98.5% chance of making the playoffs and a 10.6% chance of winning the World Series which, I think, is one of the top percent chances currently in baseball.

Yet the Twitter fanbase is nervous.  This makes me think of two things:

First, I remember in the NFL playoffs of 2021 when the Browns played the Steelers.  They were putting up points like crazy in the first quarter and I remember thinking when it was 21-0, "It's not enough, they need to put up more points".  Then it went to 28-0 and I felt a lot more secure.  Anecdotally, I later talked ot my brother who was watching the game in a different city and he had EXACTLY the same thoughts at EXACTLY the same time.

So I get the feeling that Cleveland sports fans have.  We are only happy when we know the outcome is absolutely not in doubt.  Other than that there is always the trepidation that the sky will symbolically fall in and the unthinkable will happen.  I get it.

Second, I remember a poster that a colleague had hanging on the wall of his cubicle of a vulture sitting on a cow's skull in the desert with the caption "Patience?  Hell.  Let's just go out and kill something".

I get that emotion, too, as it feeds into the first point above.  

So, let's address the need for trades right now:

(1) It would be great to trade for a starting pitcher.  Notice I didn't say we NEED to trade for a starting pitcher.  The latter will only be true if Gavin Williams tanks in his starts before the all-star break.    So right now it would be nice, but it may turn into NEED

(2) Almost every team in baseball is still in the playoff race and almost every team in baseball needs pitching and, with so many starting pitchers injured, good pitching is at a premium and every available SP will be the subject of a bidding war.

There is a sentiment among those "It's not enough" people who likely make up the vast majority of Guardians' fans that we don't have enough to even win the division and that, in no way, can we compete with the Yankees, Orioles and Dodgers in the playoffs as we don't have enough ammunition in our magazine.  

But let's set things straight:

1. Yes, it would be nice to gain talent separation between us and Minn and KC.  But at what cost?

2. There is no way that I can to gain in talent on the Yankees, Dodgers or Orioles.  Any trade we make will surely be bested by the Yankees and Dodgers meaning that even if we go all in on 2024 the gap beween us and them is gonna get greater and the odds of us beating them is going to get smaller.

So, we are back to "At what cost". 

I am going on record as saying that we need more starting pitching (maybe 2 guys) from the trade market and we could use a good RHH outfielder who can play RF or maybe even CF.

So the only question, as I said above, is at what cost?  Hey, read my blog post

Cleveland Guardians Perspective: How To Keep This Rolling - Part 2 - Time For Some Trades - But Who Do We Trade? (ciperspective.blogspot.com)

I am willing to trade just about anyone to improve our 2024 team.  But the question is not who I would trade but whether we get equal value back.  This is Cleveland.  The talent going out HAS to equal the talent coming in.  We can't buy our way out of a mistake.  

So, my call to the FO is to make a deal or two but don't overpay.  If you are forced to overpay then don't make a trade.  Another example I fall back on:  The A's asked for THREE top 100 prospects in baseball from us for Sean Murphy and eventually accepted ZERO top 100 prospects from Atlanta/Milwaukee in the trade for Murphy.  There isn't much argument now that the best player in the trade that left Atlanta went to Milwaukee, not Oakland.  

We need to do something but not overpay.  In a seller's market, that is a tough sell to Cleveland fans, especially those who have seen top prospects, Freeman, Arias, Rocchio, JRod, Osacar Gonzalez, Bobby Bradley, etc. struggle and us get nothing back for them.  

But the FO needs to stay the course.  They know what our prospects are worth and they shouldn't just throw guys away because we have duplicates.  They SHOULD trade those duplicates away to get value back.   Be creative, guys.  Get us some pitching and some veteran hitting but don't overpay.

It sounds easy, right? Good! Now go get it done.

3.  This is the most crucial series of the year.

Literally, every series from now to the end of the season could have that label slapped on it.  But, in reality, we do need to win a good number of games before the all-star break.  This means, to me, that:

(1) We need to win the series against the White Sox to keep up what we need to do.  Sweeping them would be a tough task but if we do that it would help immensely.

(2) We need to win the series against the Giants.  I doubt we sweep them but it could happen as they remind me, to some extent, of Toronto at this point.

(3) We need to go 2-2 against the Tigers.  3-1 is optimal but a split is necessary.

(4) We need to win one game in Tampa to go 1-2 there.  Tampa is playing better and we need to scratch out a game against them in anticipation of Minn and KC doing no better than that when they play a similar team to TB.  

If you look at it in sum, that means we need to go 7-6 in the games before the all-star break.  9-4 is optimal but 6-7 would be the lowest we could go and, depending on how Minn and KC do, even 6-7 could cause us to lose a lot of our lead.  

So, 7-6 is the standard and 9-4 is the goal.  Anything above 9-4 and I think we enter the trade deadline period in a strong position to do something if it makes sense but not in a position where we feel any pressure to do something.

There you have it. 

Go Guardians!