Thoughts for a Sunday evening

 (1) Baseball at its purest:

I can only imagine how maddening it is for other teams with huge pockets in the AL East to have to compete with Tampa Bay.   I think when they beat the Guardians on Saturday they had something like 4 players who entered the game with sub .200 averages and another 4 under .250.  They are just well-managed and well-prepared.  They get more out of less than any other team in MLB.  

As I was watching the game today I saw the Guardians beat them at their own game.  Two of our sub .200 hitters (Hedges and Call) played instrumental roles in the victory.  We used the opener to close to perfection.  We got more for less with bunts, bloop hits, working counts and taking walks and, for the most part, playing good defense.  

We did all this with the youngest roster in the majors and one of the smallest payrolls.   

I hope that we can become the same kind of thorn in MLB and, in our case, the AL Central, that the Rays are in the AL East.   

However, I hope we can surpass them with the addition of proven star players and get back to makng the playoffs and, hopefully, winning WS championships in the not-to-distant future.  

(2) The trade deadline

I still haven't seen any proposed deal for any group of Guardians' prospects/major leaguers.  I hope that whatever deal we makes only hurts our farm system in ways in which we can easily recover AND where we don't get robbed.   Fair trades are great and, actually, necessary for teams like the Guardians.   Hopefully most fans should know be now that this team should never 'go for it'.

Trading prospects like Battenfield, Pilkington, Tena, Martinez, Noel, Planez, Palacios, Lavastida, Fox and most of the pitchers we drafted last year makes sense, tradng the rest of our top 30 doesn't make sense.  Trades like we should make should be made to remove excess prospects and clear the log jam in our 40-man roster that will continue with the guys we have to add this coming winter.   It will also allow us to add guys who can help us this season like Curry and Gaddis and even Bo Naylor, guys we SHOULD be protecting this winter, and give us chances to see and sort out guys like Brennan and Benson instead of trying to trade them before we truly know what we have.

I want us to make trade(s) between now and Tuesday but they need to be smart trades that help us in the present and in the future, keeping us from losing guys in the Rule 5 and helping us to get our minor leaguers reps in the majors to sort out what we have going forward.  B

But let's not overpay with prospects just because we have a bunch.  Use these resources judiciously to make our major league team better and don't be afraid to do multiple prospects for one uber prospect trade, if that trade gives us a star in the making.

(3) Whether we realize it right now or it hits us in the future, it is a golden age-like time to be a Guardans fan. Enjoy Francona, enjoy this team and wish the FO luck in what will come over the next two days..

Draft budget - final numbers and analysis

The Guardians had a draft budget of $9,980,900 for the 2022 draft.

The Guardians spent, counting the $35,000 overage they paid their 19th round pick Geo Rivera, Jr., the Guardians spent $10,476,200.

That is an overage of $495,300 or 4.96% over their draft budget

They will owe MLB 75% of the overage or $371,475

They should NOT lose a draft choice next year as that penalty would only kick in if they went over 5% above their draft budget.

However, counting the penalty, the Guardians, in total, spent $10,847,675 on this draft.  

Analysis:

Look, this draft was considered a weak draft. Their first 3 picks were, a guy considered a high risk pick with lots of red flags (unorthodox swing that required him to sell out to be able to turn on velocity making him susceptible to slow stuff away, poor performance early in the season against Florida St. and a broken foot in April making it impossible to tell if the Florida State series was an aberration or whether it was due to his unorthodox hitting motion), a righty college pitcher with an average, at best, fastball and a left-handed college pitcher with a little bit below average fastball.  After that they went with a series of college lefty outfielders without power, more pitchability pitchers and two high school pitchers who you have to consider flyers.  Before the two high school flyers (Humphries and Zibin) none of these guys were deep discount guys, meaning their draft status would allow us to gve them a very low bonus for their draft slot.  That's good because most of them only got small reductions from what they were slotted to get.  That leaves us with Humphries (who got $420,000 above what his draft slot was worth) and Zibin (who got $1,048,000 above his draft slot).  They were rated by MLB as the 128th and 131st rated prospects in the draft.  That means, in essence, they had 4th round talent.  However, their bonuses represented what you would pay 3rd (Humphries) and 2nd (Zibin) round talents.

So, in summary, in a weak draft year, not only did the Guardians not draft the proper guys (in my opinion) they way overpaid for the guys they did draft, costing a small market club to throw $371,475 down the drain in penalties.  

The problem with people, anyone actually, who think they know more than the system is that they generally don't.  Most people who try to buck the system and go with picks that are way different than what would be expected, usually fail miserably on those picks.  When they do all that and don't address the needs of the farm system AND overpay causing their team to lose money in penalties as they are executing their 'strategy', they are actually damaging the farm system that they are being paid to help.

Look, the great thing for these draft gurus is that we won't know for years whether they were right or wrong.  By then, they will generally be in new jobs but the team will, potentially, feel the impact of a bad draft for years.  Now, as I have said before, this wasn't a terrible draft.  Gett Humphries and Zibin makes the draft better simply because more 4th round talent was added.  But the Guardians way overpaid for mediocrity in my opinion.  And the great thing about my opinion is that it is just that: one person's opinion.   

I wish the Guardians luck with this draft as I want it to be successful as that is the only way a small market club can compete.  I just think they could have, and should have, done MUCH better and not had them pay nearly the amount that they did!

One final thought.  I said I thought that the Guardians were in trouble with their budget when the rumor came out (eventually substantiated) saying they were giving Zibin $1.2 million.  But I gave them credit for year after year finding a way to make this all work so they wouldn't go over budget and still sign all their guys.  I guess I gave them too much credit because Zibin's bloated bonus almost did them in.

Why is it?

 The Yankees get Benitendi and give up basically no top prospects.  

The Mariners get Castillo and give up their #1, #3 and #5 prospects plus one additional prospect.

I get it.  Different players, different years of control. 

But the Mariners gutted their farm system for 1+ years of Castillo.  

Imagine what it SHOULD cost to get Soto or even other players who have real value.

This type of panic buying makes me want the Guardians to sit out this trading deadline...unless they can bundle a couple of their very good prospects to get one great one.

Draft Signings Post

 OK, it has been reported by Guardians Prospective that tomorrow all 21 of Cleveland's draft picks will be in Goodyear to sign their contracts.  

Any time you can sign all of your draft picks that is a good thing.  The Guardians are, in my opinion, geniuses at drafting guys who can fit within or below the draft bonus slots and still be able to sign quality draftees to overslot bonuses.  As always, it will be interesting to see how the jigsaw puzzle of available bonus pool dollars and draftees' bonus expectations will fit together.  I imagine that, looking at the draftees, we can expect our 3rd-7th and 9th round picks taking bonuses below the slot for their draft position.  We might see slightly over slot bonuses for our 11th and 19th round selections and significantly overslot bonuses for our 8th and 10th round selections.  All the rest of our picks I can see coming in at or slightly below what was expected with DeLauter and Campbell being lower and Messick and the rest of the picks being at slot value, with the exception of our 15th and 17th round picks who appear to be college seniors.  we might have saved money there to apply towards signing a couple of undrafted free agents. 

So, while I totally disagree with the premise of the players drafted in this draft, I applaud the Guardians for getting all these guys signed.

The next question is will any of these guys actually play this year?

Pre-deadline post

 Given that we are not trading for rentals (yeah!) here are some random thoughts as we approach the trade deadline:

Franmil Reyes - Look, we are between a rock and a hard place with this guy.   Look at all the chances they gave Oscar Mercado.  Let me be clear: addition by subtraction doesn't work here.   If you want to do addition by subtraction with Reyes you just send him to Columbus.  According to FanGraphs he still has two options remaining.  If he gets his game together he gets his game together.  In the meantime you give his ABs to someone who needs them.    

Sean Murphy - The darling of the media right now as far as being acquired by the Indians, the rationale AGAINST this move is that it appears Bo Naylor is almost ready.  Yes, handing the keys to the kingdom to a rookie seems fool-hardy until you imagine how much it will cost to pry Murphy away from the A's.  I just don't see paying that much for a mediocre major league hitter just because the average major league catcher is hitting about or below the Mendoza line when your answer is in AAA and should be available next year.  Even if he isn't available, there have to be better options than shipping a bunch of prospects to Oakland for Murphy.  Now, if Murphy could be had for Peyton Battenfield, Richie Palacios, Bryan Lavastida and Josh Wolf, I am on board.  Basically, 4 second tier prospects.  

Brian Reynolds - In March I would have said yes, but now I would say no.  Murphy is almost as good a hitter at a more important position.  Given our current outfielders, I just don't see Reynolds and his yeat-to-year roller coaster stats coming to Cleveland.   At the same time, if he had gone to the Yankees I think he would have turned into a star.  I just don't see us having the winning pct. or hitters around him to make a dent in being a .250/20 HR guy.

Juan Soto - I keep going back to him.   Looking at the player packages that are being proposed for his two biggest suitors (St. Lous and San Diego) I think we can exceed that without destroying our system.  And let's be honest, we need to move some PROSPECTS off this 40-man roster.  Murphy would help the offense and have longer tenure here AND likely be cheaper than Soto but Soto is a generational player.   Just ask yourself, would you rather have Andres Gimenez or Juan Soto?  Gimenez is a sometimes all-star, Soto is a perennial all-star.  As much as I love Gimenez, who 'moves the needle' but with help from ALL of his teammates, Soto moves the needle by himself.

Look, something HAS to be done with these prospects before the trade deadline.  If we can get Murphy for quantity rather than quality I am on-board.  If we can get Soto without giving up any of our core major league pieces I am on board, withing reason.  If we can trade guys like Noel and Tena and get one quality prospect like Jordan Walker from St. Lous, I am on board with that.  Anything that keeps the young talent coming and clears up roster space.

Roster, Draft Signings, Trade Deadlne and Rule 5 thoughts for a Monday

 As we approach the middle of this treacherous road trip against good teams I wanted to take a few minutes out to discuss the roster, trades possibilities and the upcoming Rule 5.

Rule 5 

Peyton Battenfield, Xzavion Curry,  Hunter Gaddis, Joey Cantillo and Peyton Battenfield were locks for me in my last post on this issue.  Still feel the same way and it may be a moot point as I think all three of them have a good chance to be called up before the end of the season.   As far as position players Bo Naylor is clearly going to be protected.  So that is where we WERE about a month and a half ago.  Since then the following things have happened

• Will Brennan has continued to hit
• Will Benson has really turned it up and is looking like the 5-tool guy we drafted
• Gabriel Rodriguez is now playing every day and even though he is hitting 6th or 7th (not where your top prospects would likely hit on a A ball team) he is putting up solid numbers with a lot of multiple hit games.
• Aaron Bracho, so far below the Mendoza line he couldn't even see it, is actually starting to hit.  Although he won't dent .250 by the end of the season, his second half numbers may make him interesting to teams looking for value.   Depending on the shrewdness of our FO, Bracho might be left exposed to the minor league portion of the Rule t.
• Micah Pries and Trenton Brooks keep hitting, continuing to prowl around the edges of Rule 5 World.
• Alexfri Planez is still raking and hitting long, long HRs.  If he could follow Noel's path by getting to and performing well at AA this year, he might be in contention for a roster spot this winter.

So now it looks like we would be fools not to roster an additional 7 guys by the roster freeze deadline in November (Benson, Brennan, Naylor and the above 4 pitchers).  That should put some strain on our 40-man this winter although I can easily see a path for Cody Morris, Curry, Gaddis, Naylor, Brennan and Benson on the 26 man roster next spring.  However this would likely cause up to trade some prospects now or in the off-season and maybe at the deadline.

Trades

Look, teams have holes.   But I don't believe that there are many teams in baseball that have holes they could fill if guys with surprisingly bad offensive numbers just return to their average from past years AND, even if that doesn't happen, see those holes being filled next year by guys on their AAA team.  The latter, in the long-term view, is the way to go instead of trading prospects for rentals for the short term gain at the expense of the long-teram future of this club.   Trading for Sean Murphy of Oakland instead of promoting Bo Naylor (and maybe losing Naylor in that trade) seems to make no sense.  The same is true with Andrew Benitendi, Wilson Contreras and other rentals.

Except for the Juan Soto trade I have long asked for and is not become hot topic #1 among Cleveland baseball writers and broadcasters, I just don't see a fit that betters this team in the future while relieving a glut of prospects now.   One key to the Guardians trading for Soto is taking on a bloated contract like Patrick Corbin's.   No team needs Patrick Corbin and his performance per salary but the Guardians, but would you really rather have Konnor Pilkington now or Patrick Corbin every 5th game?  

Current Roster

A lot of roster decisions are based on availability of reinforcements on our 40 man.  I doubt if Gabriel Arias had not broken his hand if Ernie Clement would still be on this team.  Clement, along with Francona trying to stretch Shaw to 2 innings, cost us the second game on Saturday which, of course, almost guaranteed us a split of the series with Cease pitching on Sunday.  We had it in our hands and we let it go.  I am not saying Arias could have made that play but I am saying that we were supposed to live with Clement's lack of offense (he hasn't had an extra base hit since May 1st!!!).  But the guy is costing us on defense.  But Arias is not available as he is still trying to recover from his injury and so we are limited at what we can do if we want to rest Jose Ramirez.  Owen Miller started off 2021 very hot at AAA and then cooled off when he was brought to the majors.   This year he started off very hot in the majors and then experienced the same cool down he did in 2021.   Will he rebound in the remaining games?  We will see but even if he does he is extremely replaceable with his 0.3 WAR and -0.9 career WAR.

Draft Signings

When your draft choices do well out of the gate it does 2 things for your organization (1) it increases your prospect resources to help guard against the impact of injuries or sudden lack of development of other prospects, the overall effect being to keep your farm system strong, eventually allowing quality replacements to come up to the majors and (2) it increases faith that prospects at higher levels of the minors can be traded as there is someone to replace them on your organizational depth chart.

So far we have seen one signing (Dylan DeLucia, 6th round, $9,200 under slot) and one projected signing (Jacob Zibin, 10th round, $1.05 millon above slot).  It would be great to sign Chase DeLauter and get him to the AZL to see if he is truly helathy and get his development underway.  If we have a good, powerful bat in the minor league outfield mix it might facilitate us trading a bat for an important piece sometime in the next year.  So many first rounders have already signed that all I can figure is that we are trying to lowball DeLauter due to his injury and to save some of the money to sign Zibin.

Time will tell as we have less than a week (August 1st) to sign all of our draft picks of lose them.   Surely more have signed but the Guardians tend to announce signings in bunches.  

Post-draft odds and ends

 (1) On the Barnsby zoom call after day 2 he and Paul Hoynes talked about a new rule in effect.  For those of you who remember the draft used to have a rule where a team could draft a player going to or returning to junior college the next year.   They would retain his signing rights until right before the draft the next year.  This rule was called the draft-and-follow rule and teams like the Guardians employed it extensively when they had to find 40 or more guys to draft in what was an expanded draft at the time.

Barnsby said, on prompting from Hoynes, that there was a new rule this year where if a guy currently at a junior college after his freshman season decided to return to junior college for his sophomore season that the drafting team retained his rights until the next year and that they could sign him for up to $225,000.   Don't know any more about that rule than that but the one JUCO kid they drafted (Ellerts) would not be eligible as he completed his sophomore year in JUCO and would have had to move on to a 4-year school.

(2) The good people over and Cleveland Guardians Prospective tweeted out that we apparently have a $1.2 million deal in place with our 10th round pick Zibin.   In these cases the deal isn't formalized until the funds are available once the other bonuses in the top 10 rounds have been agreed to and contracts have been signed.  If you did it any other way, especially for a 10th round pick like Zibin, you would be really screwed if you couldn't sign all of your earlier picks because each pick you don't sign in the top 10 rounds causes you to lose that slot amount from your bonus pool.   The only way to come up with the $1 million overslot money for Zibin is to give some or all the draftees in rounds 1-9 underslot money.   That is why these handshake deals, if done, are kept on the down low so that it doesn't poison negotiations with other draftees.   In fact, I have heard, though don't have any substantiating evidence, that a-wink-and-a-nod deals like this have been killed if they were leaked like this one has been.  

Just sayin', if the kid or his family or friends leaked this information that kid will likely be heading to college this fall.  He may be headng there anyway now if there is any truth to this rumor, no matter who spread it.  If a scout told this kid that this was a done deal when it really wasn't, then that is bad for and on the scout.

While I would love to get Zibin and Humphries signed, I just don't see this year where we have the money.  Normally, as in the case of Kumar Rocker and some of the other head scratchers from the first round this year, pre-draft deals are cut for up to half of the slot value of that bonus.  That gives the drafting team serious coin to spend on overslot deals with later draft picks.  Looking at our draft there are not of lot of headscrathers and guys were drafted around their prospect ranking, telling me there won't be a lot of excess bonus money, at least not in the first 3 rounds where bonuses are high.  

Even if we shaved off 10% of the bonuses for every guy in the first 9 rounds that would barely get it done.  And when you consider that the first three guys we drafted were drafted almost EXACTLY in the slots corresponding to their ranking, the 4th guy was slightly higher than their ranking, the next two were both draft eligble college sophomores (who still can be drafted two more times) folled by one college junior, one college senior (bonus slot $161,000) and 3 high school kids, I just don't see how all of them fit into the first 10 rounds if we give Zibin a bonus $1 million over his slot.

Hey, the Guardians are great at figuring this stuff out, so much so that I have seen them pull rabbits out of their hats every year since the slot values and penalties came into being, but, even with their magic, I don't see how this one will work out.   Time will tell but my guess is that someone stuck their foot, or cyberfoot, in their mouth on this one.