Since the Guardians’ entry in MLBTR’s Offseason Outlook series was posted earlier today, our related live chat about all things Guards also had to launch. Click here to read the chat transcript.
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Under Shapiro-Antonetti Cleveland would come up with a new philosophy (that the analytic community was hot about) each year or two, then run it into the ground. Sort of like the fad diets that come out each Spring.
Francona squared them away some, but Antonetti’s doing it again.
Their farm system was ranked highly the past 2-3 years, primarily because of their abundance of middle infielders (SS, 2B; some could play 3B, 1B, even OF as well). But all those guys have come up and they’re pretty much the same player: Decent fielders but no gold glove candidates; contact hitters that don’t hit for much of a BA; a little speed but no one that has enough to turn a game. Fact is that Andres Gimenez (who they acquired in trade) is the best of the lot and should be the everyday SS.
Not being able to pay for power in free agency is true, but a team that acquires a young players’ rights through drafting or other means controls his rights for 6 years at the ML level. Arbitration might be higher, but seldom are power hitters in arbitration awarded $30m a year…..and if Cleveland had a player like that (think a Juan Soto / Pete Alonso) and couldn’t afford the salary in his 4th/5th/6th season, they could easily move him for a decent major leaguer and one of two very good prospects.
This is a team stuck in a rut. Superior pitching, too many LH hitters, little power. A few years ago they won doing some stealing and playing smart fundamental baseball, they’re stopped that. Their D is OK, but the most important position is C and Bo Naylor is going to take years to develop there (he’s not Roberto Pérez or Austin Hedges behind the plate) – look at the work Yainer Diaz has had to do with the Astros coaches the past 2-1/2 years. They need new hitting coaches to start. But mostly they need to become a balanced ML team that can give the manager multiple options to win each game.
The best thing they have going for them is being in the worst division in MLB. But the Tigers and Royals have made some very solid moves in their FO and organization, the results will be seen in the next few years.
I would not give up much of anything for the oft injured highly overrated Tyler O’Neil.
Seattle fans, Morosi is a moron just trying to get clicks. Jose Ramirez will be a Cleveland Guardian for a long time.
Jose Ramirez is 31 years old.
I have a bit of a long theory, but here goes. Small market teams like the Guards, A’s, and Rays have to “gamble” a bit to win. The A’s made a big gamble last year on speed with the new hold rules, that’s why they went hard after Ruiz. That didn’t work out. The Guardians had a different gamble go bad.
The Guardians thought that the high contact/low strikeout/less power approach would be rewarded by the rule changes with the shift. There’s quotes to that effect from both Antonetti and their hitting coach. That was why they decided to trade off Will Benson (high power, low contact) and Nolan Jones (same, but also playing out of position in RF) for further away prospects and instead commit to Will Brennan and Oscar Gonzalez as their OF. To put it mildly, those gambles failed.
Instead the shift ban really opened up that left side of the infield. Which was a boon for left handed dead pull hitters like Benson and Jones. Which made the offensive contributions of Kwan, Straw, and Brennan look that much worse. In addition, not being able to play way out of position exposed a lot of Amed Rosario’s defensive shortcomings and made him near unplayable (he has well documented issues with range to his left).
Misfiring on Josh Bell hurt. I’m not convinced Zunino was a huge deal because they were probably just buying time for Bo Naylor. But the thing I think they would really do differently if they had a time machine is instead of trading Jones and Benson, trading Rosario and Brennan.
Col_chestbridge;
Don’t agree that small market teams “gamble”. The O’s surely aren’t. The Rays know exactly what they’re doing, and will turn over quality young productive players with 2-3 years left in arbitration to get multiple prospects back (that play cheap) which they can coach up to be productive for the years they need them (most players peak at age 28 anyway).
The A’s do a different sort of rebuild, basically they turn over the roster as the majority of their players are approaching their 6 years of control limit. They didn’t get Ruiz with the idea that they’d be a speed team and win in 2023. They’re really playing to have a contending team in place when they get to Las Vegas in a few years.
As for trading off Benson and Jones – yes, it might be that they went with more contact over power. But truth be told I have no idea how they think about these things – they were simply overloaded with young LH hitters (probably why they held onto Oscar Gonzalez who hits RH). As far as Benson and Jones go – and I keep writing this – they went to teams that had balanced line-ups. Consequently they weren’t seeing a disproportionate number of LH pitchers – particularly at critical points in a game. Hitting is so much about getting good pitches to hit. And since there are so few LH pitchers in MLB, LH hitters that are used to seeing the ball coming out of a RH pitchers hand (much easier to adjust to) are at a large disadvantage when they have to face a LH pitcher (RH hitters do not have this issue against RH pitchers because they see so many).
That was simply a poorly assembled position player roster, and has been so for years now. The obsession with LH contact hitters has not worked, but they seem to be stuck in that mentality.
You don’t think that if they’d held onto Yandy Diaz and Harold Ramirez as solid RH hitters that the team wouldn’t be better? If anything, opposing managers would have been hesitant to bring in a LH pitcher at a critical point in a game if Diaz or Rameriz were on deck, since a new pitcher has to face a minimum of 3 batters unless it’s the end of the inning.
Tanking for awhile to pick up draft picks and prospects is gambling of sorts. You’re gambling a certain percentage of those prospects (both from drafting higher and from the trades) will work out well enough. There’s always risk in doing that vs. the risk of a proven mlb caliber player.
But trading guys in arb is a fairly decent gamble. All of those teams also sign guys in free agency every year, hoping they’ll flip things around and be valuable trade chips. Those are low stakes – if they don’t work out you’ve at least saved some service time I guess – but still gambles. Nothing is as sure as signing and trading for proven mlb caliber talent.
Yandy and Harold are for sure guys who would help the current roster for the Guardians, sure. Harold was a random waiver claim so I don’t think just the Guardians can be blamed for passing on him. Yandy I think they considered to be the price of doing business for going “all in” to get Carlos Santana back during an ultimately failed playoff push.
Chase Delauter. Leading up to his senior year at JMU, he was getting legit press as #1 overall pick in the draft. Injury happens, stock drops and falls to you guys. A steal!