The Guardians have made a habit of moving productive veteran starting pitchers over the past few seasons. Cleveland’s excellent pitching development pipeline has allowed them to consistently backfill the rotation with younger, cheaper starters while adding other MLB talent in trades that sent Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer and Mike Clevinger elsewhere.
Cleveland graduated another trio of top young pitching talents this year. Tanner Bibee, Gavin Williams and Logan Allen have all gotten to the big leagues and found immediate success. There was some related speculation about the Guardians dealing former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber this summer as a means of adding upper level hitting talent.
That no longer appears viable. Bieber is being shut down from throwing for a couple weeks because of forearm/elbow discomfort. While the club is optimistic he won’t require surgery, he’ll be on the injured list beyond the August 1 trade deadline. It’s hard to envision another team sending Cleveland anything approaching commensurate value for Bieber right now. An offseason deal or move at next year’s trade deadline (when he’d be an impending free agent) is the likelier scenario.
If Cleveland still has interest in balancing the roster by cashing in a starting pitcher, Aaron Civale now stands out as their top candidate. The 28-year-old righty has been an effective mid-rotation arm over parts of five big league campaigns, at least on a rate basis.
The former third-round draftee has started 73 games at the MLB level. He’s worked 410 2/3 innings of 3.88 ERA ball. Civale 21.3% strikeout rate and 42.5% grounder percentage are a hair below league average, but he’s a plus strike thrower who tends to avoid hard contact. While it’s not an overpowering profile, a healthy Civale has been a quality #3/4 option in a rotation.
Civale hasn’t logged the kind of workload typically associated with an innings eater. Some of that is beyond his control. He wasn’t an established MLB starter until late in the 2019 season. He stayed healthy in 2020 but the season was shortened, limiting everyone to 12-13 starts. Civale has lost chunks of the last three years to injury, however, only topping 100 MLB frames once.
In 2021, it was a sprained right middle finger that cost him two months. He lost a few weeks apiece to glute soreness, a right wrist sprain and forearm soreness last season. This year, a left oblique strain took him out of action for around seven weeks between mid-April and the start of June.
While the nagging health issues have kept Civale from amassing a huge workload, they haven’t impacted his per-start performances. His 10 starts this year look much the same as his overall body of work. He owns a 2.65 ERA through 57 2/3 frames, just under six innings per start. Opponents are only hitting .245 on balls in play, which is likely to tick back up closer to the .281 career mark he carried into 2023. Once a few more batted balls drop for hits, Civale should project as the upper-3.00s ERA type he has been in his career.
His 19.7% strikeout rate is narrowly a personal low but not dramatically off his previous level. Despite the slight dip in whiffs, Civale is throwing a little harder this year than in seasons past. He’s averaging 88 MPH on his cutter and narrowly above 92 MPH on his sinker and four-seam, all of which are slightly above his previous career highs.
Those are relatively minor variations. Civale isn’t a burgeoning ace, but he’s a good major league pitcher. He throws strikes and mixes four pitches effectively to keep off barrels. He is solid against hitters from both sides of the plate, keeping lefties to a career .227/.278/.400 line and same-handed opponents to a .255/.307/.439 slash. Aside from the aforementioned injury concerns, the Northeastern product looks like a solid middle or back-end starter.
There’s value in stability. That’s especially true given his affordability. Civale is playing this season on a modest $2.6MM arbitration salary. He’ll go through that process twice more before reaching free agency after the 2025 campaign.
That control window means Cleveland doesn’t simply have to take the best offer this summer. Even as one of the game’s lowest-payroll franchises, the Guardians could retain Civale without issue financially. Yet they’re likely to have a fair bit of starting pitching depth going into next season, particularly if they hold onto Bieber.
Triston McKenzie and Cal Quantrill will hopefully be past injury-riddled ’23 campaigns. Bibee, Allen and Williams could all be rotation fixtures, perhaps with higher upside than Civale possesses. It is tough to rely on Daniel Espino at this point given his shoulder woes, but the 22-year-old righty entered this season as one of the sport’s most exciting pitching prospects.
Cleveland isn’t abandoning hope on 2023. They couldn’t have drawn up a worse weekend to start the second half, though. The Guardians were swept by the Rangers while Minnesota swept the A’s. That wasn’t wholly unexpected — the Twins were playing the worst team in MLB while Cleveland matched up against one of the best — but it dropped the Guardians 2 1/2 games back in a division they almost certainly have to win to make the playoffs.
That’s hardly insurmountable, though the club has never really gotten rolling this season. That’s in large part due to an offense that has scored more runs than only the A’s, Royals and Tigers. José Ramírez and Josh Naylor are the only Cleveland players with 100+ plate appearances and above-average offensive production.
Cleveland’s outfield has been especially troublesome. Steven Kwan has been fine but not recaptured his stellar rookie form. Myles Straw is providing next to nothing at the plate for a second straight season. Will Brennan has been inconsistent as a rookie.
There aren’t a ton of clear sellers this deadline season. That could lead to a few more “baseball” trades, deals between hopeful or fringe contenders to address respective areas of weakness. Civale would be Cleveland’s clearest option to market rotation help to another win-now team that could make a surplus outfielder available. Speculatively speaking, the Orioles (Kyle Stowers) and D-Backs (Jake McCarthy/Dominic Fletcher) could offer intriguing upper level outfielders as part of a Civale package.
Whether Cleveland pulls off a deal of this nature remains to be seen. Bieber was the higher-profile and more enticing trade candidate at this time last week. With that no longer plausible, Civale could be the next target for other teams eyeing the Guardians’ rotation depth.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Stowers for Civale would be an absolute no brainer for BAL. Cleveland doesn’t need another lefty in the lineup unfortunately.
I could see Baltimore taking interest; but Stowers is nowhere near enough.
Norby would be a reasonable trade for Civale.
Honestly- does Hayes or Santander make sense? Clevland is not out of it, and it would allow them to swap what amounts to depth SP for Baltimores now odd men out (Mullins in Center, Cowser should get every day at bats, and then Santander or Hayes in the other corner)
I’m not messing with the ML team this year for Baltimore. Norby should be a trade chip but I’m thinking for a higher level starter in a package.
I agree; but if we did norby for civale i think i would be fine with it.
I could see a junk drawer for Civale also making sense for both teams- Civale for Mateo, Stowers, McKenna, and Haskins. (you can also swap Urias for Mateo)
That seems more like reasonable value for Civale (who would slide into the 3rd SP slot behind Wells and Bradish- and in the running for a post season SP slot with Grayson and whomever else could be hot).
Stowers is not enough, but Haskins and McKenna give them both a shot for regular AB when neither has had a real shot in baltimore, Mateo is also now fringe with the club but has a lot of control and has played CF (at this point i think the post season INF will be Mouncastle, Frazier, Gunnar, Westburg- with Urias off the bench- with Joey Ortiz as the darkhorse and maybe Frazier or Urias being flipped- but Urias really is the flex play when frazier plays 2b).
Guards don’t need Mateo though. Haskin is done for the year also. Cleveland is a team that actually has that kind of fringey depth. I could see the White Sox being a team that would take a quantity package like that for a lance Lynn. Say Stowers + Haskin or the like.
Haskin doesn’t work for CLE since he’s done for the year. Unfortunate because I think he was a prime chip prior to.
Mountcastle , Westburg, and Mullins for Civale sounds like a good deal for the O’s
James1243 is obviously an Oriole fan. Why would Cleveland trade for your junk drawer. as you put it? How does that make sense for the Guardians. Mateo is not needed and Stowers and McKenna are 4th -5th outfield types. Cleveland is not going to give away a solid starter for your spare parts.
To Anthony Franco, please do 5 minutes of homework on the Guardians before writing a piece about them. More left-handed hitting outfielders do little to fill a need of the Guardians.
Any outfielder that can hit, left or right handed fills a need for the guardians tbh
Offer up an outfielder that can hit and we may talk. Stowers and McKenna are not going to move the needle for the Guardians. Besides, with Bieber, Quantrill, and McKenzie injured, I don’t see how Cleveland can trade Civale.
Mullins is not the odd man out. That’s Santander.
The Guards are in playoff contention. There struggle is offense. They need a proven big league hitter or 2, not prospects. Os don’t wanna give up the likes of a Santander or Hays or Hicks for that matter while in the middle of their own playoff run. Not a match here.
Hays and Bautista go Civale …. It’s close to happening
So are Shane and Justin related?
Cousins
ERA went from 4.92 to 2.65
FIP went from 3.86 to 3.80
ERA shows what happened. FIP shows what should have happened everything else being equal.
Hard to imagine them trading pitching until the next wave begins to emerge. Sure Bieber’s contract may demand a move and the Plesac fail is unfortunate. Until they know for sure they have dependable controllable pitching in the pipeline trading one now is a hard sell to me.
It sure appears they have some dependable starting pitching in the pipeline to me. Williams, Bibee and Allen is a heck of a trio and all have at least 5 more years of team control after 2023. That’s about as good as it gets. Next wave? I don’t understand that comment. The next wave just showed up and it’s good.
I think they deal Bieber in the offseason if McKenzies health checks out. If McKenzie has to miss time in 2024 then perhaps they don’t. McKenzie is really good btw people forget about him.
and the more control you trade away the more you get in return. A playoff team trading for a guy now will view it as getting them an extra year since they are healthy mid season (now) and they will have them when it really matters (the playoffs).
Next year Bieber would be only a rental (since he is going into his last year of arbitration). Civale would get you 2-3 playoffs (this year and 2 more years of arbitration). So Civale is likely to net you a lot more.
Good lineup of value for need (since cle can compete this year) is Civale and a decent prospect for Austin Hayes (baltimore). Hayes has 1 more year of control but a boarderline all star OF for a mid rotation arm is reasonable, and both are spare parts…. in the alternative just with baltimore- Civale for Jorge Mateo (3 years of control and has played CF), and Ramon Urias (4-5 years of control and former GG at 3b that plays all over the INF for depth). Basically you get useful parts now that become insurance when rosario walks.
I like the idea of finding guys to replace Rosario. I don’t trust Civales stats his FIP says he’s more of a back end guy not the front of the rotation guy the ERA suggests. I think some kind of a deal involving Civale and Mateo makes sense. Mateo is a heck of a defender at short.
Next wave after the 3 rookies. Can you name them yet?
If you have 3 rookies who all have legit talent you don’t need a next wave anytime soon.
Hard to imagine they trade Civale right now with Bieber going down.
I agree. Now that they lost a starter to injury, that extra doesn’t really exist anymore.
For weeks MLBTR has been writing that the Guardians should be trading Bieber – and at the same time saying he wasn’t going to bring much back.
Now they want the Guardians to trade Civale.
All I can think of is that they want the Guardians out of the way so the Twins can win the incredibly weak AL Central. The fact that the Guards are as close as they are with their 2 top starters injured and little hitting including no RH litters to counter the LH pitching that other teams load up on when facing the Cleveland is both an indictment of the Twins roster and the way they play baseball. If they were half-decent they’d be 7-10 games up in the ALC.
I think their point is not “they should trade him” but rather “they have so much value at SP, they should use it to fix their hitting”
Stowers is a terrible return for Civale, but as part of a larger deal where they get Mateo, Stowers and McKenna- all with years of control left and really bolstering a weak lineup- it could make sense. All 3 may be a mild overpay by Baltimore, but they are all now spare parts on that team with no realistic way to get regular playing time.
Another option would be Mountcastle for Civale- Again established young players being swapped to fill holes on both rosters. (i think Mountcastle is worth more- but it does solve some youth backlog for the Os- maybe Mountcastle for Civale and a org 10-20 prospect- if you want to get silly- Mountcastle, Stowers, Mateo and Haskins for Bibee also makes a ton of sense for everyone.
James123;
You must be an O’s fan. LOL
Cleveland has no use for Mateo – Andres Gimenez will be moving to SS next year when Amad Rosario is allowed to leave in free agency. Andres Gimenez and Brayan Rocchio will be leading the competition for 2B. McKenna is Myles Straw, and Cleveland is awash in LH hitting OF’s now and next year George Valera will be up – he’s considered by most as a better LH hitting OF prospect than Stowers.
As for Mountcastle – Josh Bell is signed to play 1B for the Guards in 2024, they’re paying him a decent salary for a small market team and are not going to sit him on the bench. Hoskin (without the “s”) would be interesting as he’s a switch hitting OF. However, since Cleveland is built on pithing and likes to develop and keep their own. The chance of them trading someone like Bibee for a prospect and some so-so vets is probably not going to happen. The Guardians are not an expansion team. Put Gunnar Henderson into the conversation and maybe the Guards FO thinks about it.
It’s not abnormal for fans of teams that sucked for years to come on and propose outrageous trades thinking their bench players are worth another teams best young players. Heaven knows how many trade proposals like that there were posted here for Cedric Mullins over the past 3 years. But….Get Real.
Tyler Freeman and Brayan Rocchio will be leading the competition for 2B.
Whether they’re buyers or sellers I can’t see them trading Civale. They’re just too short of SPs in the organization for that. And if anyone thinks we’ll be seeing Hunter Gaddis again any time soon, think again. Since he was sent down to AAA last month he’s gotten lit up like an Xmas tree – ERA over 9.00. They just need an innings-eater like Rich Hill ASAP. He’d only cost a lottery ticket.
I agree but perhaps in the offseason they trade some of their pitching. Lot of injuries lately but those guys will hopefully be healthy for next year.
It would seem they would trade from a position of strength, but you never have too much pitching. I feel Cle values Civale highly, especially Tito.
On another note, calling Will Brennan inconsistent seems like a broad stroke for a guy who’s been raking for over a month.
The Guardians certainly chose the wrong guys to trade from their young hitter surplus in Nolan Jones and Will Benson.
HBan22;
Am not enamored with the hitting coach Cleveland brought in last year.
I know the explanation for both is they were victims of the 40-man crunch, but they could use both their bats right now. I especially like the part in the article that points out they’ve gotten next to nothing at the plate from Straw the past 2 years. The man needs to be sent down – period. The FO is dead set on him being in the lineup come hell or high water. It seems like Straw dotes on being the last out of the game especially.
Straw is a very good defensive player.
“It seems like Straw dotes on being the last out of the game especially.”
One of the most illogical comments in baseball history.
How can a guy “dote” on such a thing, especially when it’s out of his power to determine at what point in the game he comes to the plate?
You seem to hate Straw as a player, but come on–that assessment is asinine.
Classy response. If you hadn’t copied and pasted it I would have though you missed the word “seems”. Straw makes the last out in so many games it SEEMS like he’s trying to do it. If you need help with reading comprehension there are many programs online today that can help you with that.
solaris602;
For Straw they gave up a quality relief pitcher as well as a good-hitting catcher that the Astros have developed into a solid defensive catcher. He’ll be taking over the bulk of their catching duties from Martin Maldonado in 2024 or 2025.
For all the pub about the Guardian’s FO being smart in trades, they’ve made some big clunkers the past few years…..Nolan Jones is going to be a massive loss…..joining Yandy Diaz who they traded and Harold Ramirez who they released – both functioning as RH hitting run producers since they got on the Rays…..while Cleveland can’t find a RH hitting run producer to neutralize LH pitching that kills them.
Far too soon to criticize the Nolan Jones trade. He’s got big power but those numbers are certainly heading south until he learns to not strikeout in a 1/3 of his PA’s.
They got a quality prospect who is doing quite well in AA back. Would be careful to throw that one in the crap bucket.
Samuel, you are correct. They’ve needed a right handed run producer all year long, and that problem hasn’t solved itself. They never wanted Harold Ramirez to begin with, and they were quick to discard him. He’s got the best numbers of a bench player in the league. They REALLY tried to make the Bauers/Diaz trade work – gave Jake every chance in the world to succeed. If they’d kept Yandy, the last few years would have been much different. I think the Straw extension was too early, and now they’re stuck with him. They could have had Billy Hamilton much cheaper and for fewer years.
Civale is good, but that’s about it. His K/W is the lowest of his career. And contending teams don’t trade pitching unless something is wrong. I would steer clear.
You can add Bartolo Colon, CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee to that list.
They could have had Sean Casey!
Civale isn’t going anywhere this year. With Bieber out a few weeks, McKenzie possibly out for the year, Quantrill in the middle of a terrible year, and three rookies likely approaching innings limits, there isn’t really anyone left.
Maybe he gets traded over the winter (same with Bieber), but right now it really doesn’t make much sense for them.
You mean that you don’t want to see more of Hunter Gaddis?
Cleveland never tanks. They wont tear it down. Why? Cleveland must sell tickets in September. It needs the revenue. If they stay in the race until the end people may still buy tickets for a reason other than cheap beer. If they make the playoffs they confirm the approach. There will be no sell off, no tanking, no tearing it down.
Their best shot was hoping Bieber would turn things around this year and get them a great return. The injury has ruined that. Rosario is really their only trade chip left because Freeman has been hitting well, so I’m sure they could take a chance on him getting everyday at bats. Maybe they get a good hitting center fielder and move Straw to be a 4th outfielder, as long as they can keep getting Fry some at bats.
Prior to his injuries, Civale was looking as good as, if not better than, Bieber. I don’t know if he can return to that form, but he was dominant just a couple short years ago. If McKenzie and Quantrill were both healthy and pitching like themselves, then you can let Civale go. I’m interested to see how Curry does. He’s been one of the best bullpen arms this year. Can it translate back to a starting role? Even if it does, they still need that veteran presence in the rotation.
Ex former GM here, I can actually see a very big trade here with Civale, Straw, and Rosario going over in exchange for Mullins, Henderson, and Cano
What is the relevance of you being a GM at McDonald’s here??
Ex Former GM? So you got fired from a GM position, but then got hired elsewhere?
Are you Jerry Dipoto?
Guards are in an odd position. They still have a shot in the worst division in baseball but they are really hampered with pitching injuries. I’d still like to see them trade some the middle infield depth we keep hearing about for a power righty