As expected, it has been a quiet start to the offseason for the Guardians. Their only major league moves thus far have been to re-sign backup catcher Austin Hedges and add middle reliever Connor Brogdon. Cleveland rarely attacks free agency, and they seem generally unlikely to make major moves on the trade front in either direction this winter.
The Guardians heard teams out on Steven Kwan at the deadline. They didn’t find an offer to their liking, and they’re less inclined to sell after making a surprise late-season run to another AL Central title. Unsurprisingly, ESPN’s Buster Olney wrote this morning that while the Guards aren’t going to close themselves off to offers, they’re currently inclined to hold him into next season.
An offseason trade would be selling at a bit of a low point. Kwan had a .700 OPS or worse in each of the final four months. His overall .272/.330/.374 line was league average, but that was carried mostly by a fantastic April. It’s primarily a reflection of a drop in his batting average on balls in play. BABIP volatility is to be expected for a player who rarely hits the ball hard but is one of the sport’s five best pure contact hitters. The bat-to-ball skills and plus defense in left field give him a solid floor, and both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference valued him around three wins above replacement.
Kwan is under team control for two seasons. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him for an $8.8MM salary. The Guardians don’t have much on the books beyond the well below-market José Ramírez contract. They’re not under any financial pressure to move him. Even if other teams value him just as highly as they did over the summer, a trade would remove the only established outfielder from Stephen Vogt’s lineup. Rookies Chase DeLauter, Petey Halpin and George Valera and the out-of-options Nolan Jones are currently in line to divide the center and right field playing time. The Guards already need to add to the outfield, and a Kwan trade would only push that further.
Cleveland is also in the market for multiple relievers, Vogt told reporters at the Winter Meetings (link via Tim Stebbins of MLB.com). “We need depth in the bullpen,” the two-time AL Manager of the Year said. “We have four, maybe five guys in our bullpen, and we need eight.”
It’s safe to assume Emmanuel Clase isn’t coming back. That keeps Cade Smith in the closer role. Hunter Gaddis is a quality setup arm from the right side. The rest of the group is in flux. Brogdon and Matt Festa are out of options and probably set to open the season in middle relief. Neither should be ticketed for leverage spots. There’s even less certainty from the left side. Tim Herrin and Erik Sabrowski have each shown promise but struggled to throw strikes. Even if a depth starter like Joey Cantillo or Doug Nikhazy ends up in long relief, they need more trustworthy arms.
Additionally, Zack Meisel of The Athletic reports that the Guardians have been granted a fourth option year on both Valera and second base prospect Juan Brito. Players can typically only be optioned to the minor leagues in three separate seasons after being added to the 40-man roster. After that, teams need to pass them through waivers and outright them off the 40-man to send them down.
Exceptions are made for players who have less than five full seasons (90+ days) on an MLB or minor league active roster. That usually occurs because the player took a while to reach full-season ball — especially for international signings who signed their first contract at 16 — and/or missed chunks of a season to injury. Valera didn’t play a full minor league season until 2021 and missed most of this past season working back from knee surgery. Brito didn’t play a full season until 2022, so he’d have been eligible for the fourth option even if he were fully healthy. He missed most of the ’25 season because of thumb and hamstring issues.
Valera and Brito could each be in the mix for Opening Day roster spots. The Guardians have the flexibility to send them to Triple-A Columbus for another season, though both right field and second base are open in the short term. There’s probably more pressure on Brito to break out, as top prospect Travis Bazzana has already hit his way to Triple-A. Bazzana has the higher ceiling and is viewed as the long-term second baseman, meaning Brito might not have much runway even if he breaks camp.
Vogt told reporters that Brayan Rocchio will play a lot of shortstop during Spring Training. They’ll move Gabriel Arias around in a utility role, leaving the door open for Brito or Bazzana to play their way into the second base job early in the season. Rocchio divided his time evenly between the middle infield spots this year, though he was mostly at the keystone in the second half. He’s out of options and probably isn’t in jeopardy of losing his roster spot, but he’s a .222/.293/.327 in more than 900 plate appearances over parts of three seasons. He’s entering his age-25 campaign and in a bit of a make-or-break spot himself if he’s going to remain an everyday player.
Sounds like expect next to nothing on the offensive side and probably a handful of minor league invites to training camp to fill out the bullpen…
Does Cleveland even have a representative at the Winter Meetings ?
They do, but why. In this day and age of Zoom, they could save themselves some time & not bother. Truthfully, at the end of the each season, they could tell everyone in the front office, coaches, scouting, see you in January. We won’t look to improve this team unless forced to do so.
@westcasey
Oh, just SO funny, what a knee-slapper…did you just think of this today? Brilliant! Seriously, you should write for SNL! Wait a minute, you probably already do, am I right?
You would never know this is a team that wins, given the complete indifference of Ownership.
grateful for membership in AL Central. It’s been easier to finish 1st last 10 years than to finish last.
Excellent turn of phrase, and such a brilliant observation!
I mean really, even though Cleveland wouldn’t even get a team if the major leagues were started today, is the smallest city to have all three major sports and they are fourth or fifth in payroll in the division every year, somehow they’ve won three of the last four divisions and have had a top five record in baseball over the last dozen years even though they play 3/4 of their games out of the division. Yep, the most accomplished “fail up” team in history, it would have been harder to finish last, let me tell you….
So tell me, what is Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, and Kansas City’s excuse for not “failing up” the way Cleveland has?
Cleveland’s hospitality suite must be in the wrong hotel Or maybe the wrong city entirely. Maybe no one is monitoring the land lines for phone calls.
Although he has a great handle on pitching, one thing Chris Antonetti hasn’t done well is manage the latter minor league stages of his hitters. He left Yandy Diaz in Columbus in 2016 despite his .325 BA in over 400 AAA PAs and 1.080 ops vs lhp and guess who the then Indians had left to make the final out of the World Series vs that great lefty closer Aroldis Chapman? — little Michael Martinez. He then gambled Anthony Santander away to the R5 draft despite his 62 XBH.
The minefield is littered with more — Caminero (early), Yainer Diaz (middle) and Jones and Benson before breakout seasons for other teams. He waits for the bitter end of the control clock to break in most. In what was thought to be his final option year former top prospect George Valera had just had an extraordinary AAA August 2024 (7 HRs 1040 ops) for a team in dire need of power but he didn’t get the Sept 1 call and he was injured badly soon thereafter.
Likewise with Juan Brito. 64% of the Athletic poll saw Brito and his 60 plus 2024 XBH in AAA as the Guards 2B for 2025. In April he started AAA hot, had a .950 ops and he had passed the 172 day benchmark. He should have been called up but like Valera he then got injured and required surgery. MLB hands out these extra options like confetti, hold more back to these stingy teams and perhaps we’ll get to see better more interesting young players at earlier dates.
More bunk from the peanut gallery.
Never mind the consistent winning, the three division titles in the last four years, the top 5 record in baseball despite playing 3/4 of their games outside the division, folks like you parade around anecdotes of front office failures as if Cleveland were the only team which has things like this happen to them.
Your criticism is devoid of balance and context, which makes it just the typical carping of a bitter, whiny fan who feels wronged by, what, achievement that fails because it doesn’t give you perfection, an All-Star at every position?
Cleveland’s failures on the position side of the field has had nothing to do with “finishing off” players, but a weakness in player evaluation in the drafting and signing of amateur talent. Even then their highest regarded players stumble when get close to the major leagues. That’s not the fault of the organization, but the players themselves. Same thing happened in Baltimore. And in St. Louis. Even Tampa Bay is experiencing many of their vaunted prospects underachieving once they reach the majors.
People like you who constantly whine about specific players act like organizations should be infallible. Are you? You’re just crabby because you think you deserve a World Series winner, as if anyone is ever entitled to such a thing.
Ouchie! Quite the vitriolic ad hominem assault very short on substance, I guess you didn’t like how our previous argument left you feeling. Grrr! I was clear that our FO handles pitching very well, which only makes these constant (anecdotal!?) lapses on the hitting side so frustrating, so hard to digest for someone hoping to see a World Series win in my lifetime. And they are fairly repetitive and all too real, the team’s inability to assemble an offense that could rise above league average since 2018 has its roots in extremely poor decisions like these.
Btw Yandy Diaz and Santander like Jose and Lindor were inherited from the Shapiro regime. The penultimate, perhaps only real in-house hitting achievement of the last decade has been Steven Kwan. That says quite a lot. I’d simply prefer that this FO was forced to make immediate provision for Brito and Valera instead of being allowed to dilly dally further with more with the likes of Jones and Arias. Nothing bitter or whiny about that. Toodaloo to you. Cheer up, it’s just baseball.
I’m sorry, but it would be very frustrating to be a fan of this team. I mean, I respect them as a ball club because Vogt is a magician getting these guys to play together as a team so well and become more than the sum of their parts. Even with their bare bones offense they always put up a fight with the Mariners and you feel lucky to get out of the season series with a split. However never putting any money into their offense would drive me bonkers, getting excited about an Austin Hedges signing every year would drive me bonkers. Just knowing you have nothing to look forward to at the Trade Deadline or Winter Meetings would be depressing as heck.
It totally is. I am almost numb to it by now. The only thing their front office looks forward to at the Winter Meetings is the Rule 5 Draft where they can do some bargain bin shopping but only about 2 players, can’t afford anymore than that.
@Ignorant Son of a B
Frustrating? You know what’s truly frustrating? LOSING. Spending millions on free agents, the sucker game for incompetent organizations. What’s truly frustrating is watching a team cut corners in organizational development so they can spend money on “name” players who will be overpaid for past performance. Or the MOST FRUSTRATING thing of all, is making trades or moves just to create headlines, you know, to satisfy the dumb fans who think action for action sake is a virtue in itself.
Fortunately, I root for Cleveland, a team that does none of these things. Not that its undeniable competence placates fans who think they are entitled to shiny things they can brag about. A good team is never enough.
I can assure you that Cleveland loves fans like you who completely drink the Kool-Aid. As a lifelong fan of theirs, I totally get their M.O., recognize their constraints within revenue and salary constraints and personally think their front office is probably one of the brightest and sharpest in all of baseball. They can not afford dead money contracts (like an Anthony Rendon) to be on the books without production but to choose to never spend on any free agents is ludicrous. They have the best manager in the game who gets his players to elevate their game and I guess as long as fans like you are ok cheering without wanting to see their team win a World Series, then so be it. As a fan, is there anything wrong with wanting to see them get better in the offseason and if in my case I had the capability to challenge management to improve?? Nope, that’s my prerogative. If you choose not to, are ok with status quo and after 2028 when Jose Ramirez walks away so he can have a legit shot at winning a WS elsewhere, you’re ok with going to the cellar for years to come, that’s your prerogative.
Unlike you, I choose not to chide everyone for a response. Carry on. And Go Guards, I’m still cheering for them regardless of their frugality.
Such a courageous man you are, spitting into the wind like you do, standing on principle and conviction, willing to jump on and off the bandwagon as you see fit, all because you feel entitled to the good life and not all the “suffering” this franchise puts you through.
This team punches well above its weight, and it does so precisely because it ignores complaints like yours. There is no “Ramirez window,” there is only the day-to-day challenge of remaining relevant in a system that makes it darn near impossible to do so.
And as for Jose, god love him, but he’s had how many bites at the apple compared to Mike Trout and others? Heck, he’s been in more playoff games in his career than that bum Francisco Lindor. And what has Jose done with all those opportunities? Look it up, and tell me again we’re wasting Jose’s time in Cleveland.
You don’t build around “competitive windows” much less a superstar in this game. This isn’t the NBA or a sport that depends on franchise quarterback. The Dolans learned a long time ago that CLE doesn’t give a damn about baseball unless the team is half decent, and they’ve built an organization that reflects that reality, and they’ve given us much more than half decent.
Only so-called fans like you still whine and moan about it, like a perfectly wonderful plain Jane who complains about not being a Hollywood movie star.
Smh
Whatever happened to freedom of speech. You made a point. And then I made a point. I don’t agree with your original point and you don’t agree with mine. Good by me. I am not within the inner circle of the front office, I do not know the parameters & constraints that they have to ultimately negotiate, based upon what the owner says is the budget. So I can only go, based upon the eyeball test, what I see from the moves made so far. Signed a great clubhouse guy & solid defensive catcher but hit well under .200 with little power in Hedges. Signed a pitcher in Brogdon for under $1M and also coming off a well above 5+ ERA with barely any holds. Signed another relief pitcher in Holderman who had an ERA well above 5. And they just trade for another relief pitcher in Justin Bruihl who yep had an ERA north of 5 as well. And they drafted 2 other relief pitchers in the Rule 5 draft.
This isn’t me making crap up, these are there actual moves, so far. For sure, only one way to go up for those guys, but do they become solid shutdown relievers, not likely, but they could have solid moments.
I’m glad that you seem to have all of the inside info when it comes to the team, good for you.
But as a fan of the team for 40+ years, I have the right to voice my opinion, same as you. I don’t expect the team to ask for my advice, and I’m good with that.
Basically, have your opinion and stay in your lane and I will do the same. But I appreciate your candor Mr. Antonetti. Tell your dad I said hi.
Kwan has been pretty meh the last 2 years in the second half of the season.
Hoping everything goes to plan, again. As much as LA beat reporters want a Kwan to Dodgers scenario, Cleveland can’t trade Kwan but feels handcuffed to trade any prospects for the outfield bat they need to compliment Kwan.