Back in November of 2022 I was livid.
The Guardians (actually the Indians, then) made a trade right before the roster freeze date in November. Cleveland traded Nolan Jones for Juan Brito. Here are the particulars of that deal:
o Juan Brito was Colorado's 30th best prospect, who had played in low A in 2022. He was R5 eligible and had to be rostered or he could have been lost in the R5 draft. Colorado HAD to trade him or risk losing him, and they really didn't want to roster a player at low A who would likely run out of options before he became a ML player. To add insult to injury, Brito's defense was bad, he had no base stealing ability and, at that point, showed very little power with his only + skill being that he could take a walk. So he had to develop A LOT just to be a ML player.
o Nolan Jones was Cleveland's 7th best prospect who had made his ML debut in 2022. Jones, obviously, was already on the Cleveland 40-man roster. The Guardians had given Jones a handful of games early in 2022 but then sent him to the minors for the rest of the year. even though he didn't do bad in his time in Cleveland. He was a ML ready power hitting outfielder.
o At the time of the trade the Guardians had a lot of middle infielders in the low minors. There was no need there. The Guardians chose Oscar Gonzalez over Jones, which is why they traded Jones, thinking he was expendable. That didn't work out for them.
o In 2023 Jones finished 4th in the NL ROY voting and finished with 20 HR and 20 SB and an OPS of .953. Will Brennan played RF for the Guardians and finished with 5 HRs and an OPS of .655. Brito split the season between High A and AA, with a cup of coffee at AAA.
We did not have to trade with Colorado. We had the Rockies over a barrel and instead of leveraging that, we actually gave them a deal, giving them our #7 prospect for their #30 prospect, a ML ready prospect for one that was likely 3 years away.
I think you can see why I was livid at the time. We obviously didn't have an excess of power hitting outfielders yet we traded Jones away and he immediately raked in Colorado and, in return, got a bad defensive infielder with no speed and little power who had to be rostered even though he wasn't going to help the ML team for years.
Fast forward to March 22, 2025.
The Guardians traded Tyler Freeman to Colorado for Nolan Jones. Here is the situation surrounding the deal today
o We needed a second baseman after trading Andres Gimenez and Freeman was winning that competition over Gabriel Arias and, you guessed it, Juan Brito who was just sent to AAA after losing the competition.
o We already had a Noel/Brennan platoon in RF so while we just gave up Freeman in the trade, Jones also took Brennan's spot on the roster.
o We have no idea how Jones' back, that bothered him all of 2024 is doing.
o This trade GAVE the starting second base job to Arias, even though his penchant for not hustling, striking out and hitting ground balls has appeared identical this spring to what it was over the last 2 seasons. Arias didn't earn this position and, despite the rhetoric, he appears to be the same player. I have to note that I watched a lot of Arias highlights from winter ball and, IMO, there was something 'off' with how he was treated after he had a big hit or hit a HR.
Hey, I am not against re-acquiring Jones. However, not at the cost of the guy who clearly won the second base competition this spring.
Look, Tyler Freeman hasn't proved ANYTHING in the majors but giving the 2B job to Arias and pushing Brennan off the roster and bringing in Jones as a platoon OFer, likely taking ABs away from Noel doesn't make sense to me. AND THAT IS IF JONES IS EVEN HEALTHY!
So, we have now, in the course of 2 years, made 2 bad trades involving Nolan Jones. The first contributed to killing the 2023 season and prompting a deadline sell-off.
We'll see what the most recent trade does but, as I have said before, if we don't have a great start to the season we could be a seller at the deadline in 2025, too. IMO this trade didn't keep us from being out of the race by the time Fry, Stephan, Biever and Means come back. That was the kind of trade we needed to make...and this one wasn't 'it'.
Just as livid today as I was back in Nov. 2022.
Re. Freeman, it's just my gut feeling when I have watched him this spring. It just looks like it has all clicked for him. Time will tell. Re. Jones, if the Rockies REALLY believed he was closer to 2023 Jones then 2024 Jones, would they have traded him for Freeman? Re. Arias, we will be 45 games into the season by mid May. My issue is that if we are like 18-27 at that point we might not ever recover. We didn't start strong in 2023 and, even though we were NOT out of it at the deadline, we sold anyway, because our record was bad. In 2024 we started strong and bought at the deadline. If Arias plays badly he could AID in a bad start. We are razor thin on offense. Things like that WILL matter.
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