Baseball’s international signing period started this week and is getting all kinds of attention, more than normal.
The signings are very important, to be sure. It’s how the Guardians signed Jose Ramirez, and more recently several of their top prospects, OF George Valera, SS Brayan Rocchio, INF Jose Tena, and power hitter Jhonkensy Noel joined the organization in the same manner.
But it’s getting more publicity this year because it’s the only baseball we can talk about with the lockout imposed by the owners still in place. It doesn’t help that the two sides have met once since the calendar flipped to 2022 either.
Spring training should be starting in less than a month, with the sentence baseball fans love to hear, “Pitchers and catchers report on either February 12th or 13th”. It seems very unlikely that will happen as of today.
The first exhibition game for the Guardians is supposed to be February 26th, but unless negotiations speed up drastically, that’s unlikely as well.
This is the time of year Guards’ fans should be talking about the various position battles around the diamond and do any of the hard throwing young arms out of the bullpen have a shot at making the Opening Day roster.
Instead, the ray of hope that gets fans of the grand ol’ pastime through the winter isn’t there. The hot stove season has been turned off.
Fans should be discussing the make-up of the Guardians’ current 40-man roster, which includes 14 players who have never played even one inning of a major league game. Teams can keep 26 players, so does that mean all of the men who have big league experience are a lock to be at Progressive Field to open the season? We doubt that it does.
What does Terry Francona do about the middle infield? Amed Rosario did very well with the bat last season, but defensively, he’s not an everyday shortstop. So, what does the organization do?
They could move Andres Gimenez back there, and he should be better defensively, or do they give rookie Gabriel Arias, who spent all year at AAA a shot? And then what happens at second base?
Does Rosario go there? Or does the team look at Owen Miller, Yu Chang, or even Ernie Clement, who appears to be more of a utility man at this point.
Or does Rosario get traded to open up the spot for Gimenez or Arias. Or do two of this trio get moved to make room for Rocchio in 2023?
This is the speculation and discussion that aren’t at the forefront right now because there is nothing going on in the game.
We should be talking about the Cleveland outfield, and who will play in the corner spots surrounding Myles Straw? Will Tito lean on the retreads of Bradley Zimmer and Oscar Mercado, or will he entrust the high on base percentages of rookies Steven Kwan and Richie Palacios. The latter had a strong Arizona Fall League season, and could figure in the mix at 2B too.
Will Josh Naylor be ready for Opening Day and will he return to the outfield, or will he move to first base and challenge Bobby Bradley and/or Chang?
Again, spring training is supposed to start very soon. Our guess is when (fingers crossed) an agreement is reached, a flurry of moves will be made by all teams. We don’t believe for a minute that discussions haven’t been going on.
Until then, all baseball fans can do is hope that some intelligence prevails, and baseball can start next month. For people who live in the northeast, it’s one way we use to get through the snow and cold of winter.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 