How The Guards Handle Their Prospects Will Be Interesting

The Cleveland Guardians have one of the best farm systems in Major League Baseball, and that’s after they graduated players like Steven Kwan, who is a finalist for American League Rookie of the Year, and Oscar Gonzalez.

While this bodes very well for the future, how the front office handles the glut of young players who should be ready to be in the big leagues over the next couple of years should be very interesting.

Some teams with great farm systems trade a number of their prospects for an All-Star type player. Think about the Cardinals trading for Paul Goldschmidt or Nolan Arenado. However, the Guardians don’t seem to operate that way, being averse to long-term, high-priced contracts.

Let’s look at the shortstop position for the Guards. Amed Rosario is the incumbent, and certainly was a big contributor to the 2022 Central Division title team, batting .283 (715 OPS). He is arbitration eligible and can be a free agent in 2024.

The organization also has Gabriel Arias, Tyler Freeman, both of whom spent most of the season at AAA, but did play in the bigs, and the player we believe is the future for the organization in Brayan Rocchio, who hit 18 HR and knocked in 64 runs with a 755 OPS at Columbus and Akron.

Now Rocchio probably won’t be ready for the bigs until 2024, but what will Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff do with Rosario, Arias, and Freeman? One of them could change position or be a utility infielder, we did see Arias play 1B in the playoffs, but does the other go back to AAA? And if that happens, doesn’t that block Rocchio?

The same situation exists in the outfield where Will Brennan is knocking on the door. Terry Francona could use the outfield spots and DH in a rotation, but that would preclude the front office from getting a power bat that could play a corner outfield spot, and perhaps first base as well.

And we haven’t mentioned George Valera, who is likely on the same timetable as Rocchio. The soon to be 22-year-old hit .250 with 24 homers and 82 ribbies (816 OPS) between AA and AAA this past season and could be ready sometime during the ’23 campaign.

We haven’t mentioned the pitching staff because the top prospects, Daniel Espino, Gavin Williams, and Tanner Bibee aren’t considered candidates to make the big-league roster to open the season, but we could definitely see one or more of them making a start in the second half of the ’23 season.

And we didn’t mention the hurlers who came up last year to help: Hunter Gaddis, Xzavion Curry, and Konnor Pilkington, nor did we say Peyton Battenfield, who went 8-6 with a 3.92 ERA at Columbus.

It’s easy to give these young players a shot on a non-contending club, but the Guardians made the post-season and were baseball’s youngest team in 2022.

This isn’t to say, there still isn’t room for improvement. We have said before it before, standing pat would be the wrong thing to do. But it will be interesting to see how Antonetti and Chernoff handle this situation.

Most organization would trade three or four of the prospects for a big-time talent, but we don’t see that as an option for Cleveland. That isn’t to say the payroll won’t increase, but the philosophy of the front office isn’t to have many long-term, big money deals on the books.

Evaluating Minor Leaguers Isn’t An Exact Science

The late, great Cleveland sports talk host Pete Franklin used to say something similar to this about minor league baseball players–until proven otherwise, prospects should be considered suspects.

The meaning being no matter how good a player performs in the minors, the big leagues are different.

Former Rockies’ and Pirates’ manager Clint Hurdle was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as baseball’s newest phenom after hitting .328 with 16 homers (978 OPS) at AAA in 1977. He wound up playing just 515 games in the majors, hitting .259 with 32 dingers (745 OPS).

Gregg Jefferies was another phenom after hitting .367 in AA with 20 homers in the Mets’ organization (1021 OPS). He wound up playing parts of 14 years in the majors, and made two All Star teams, but he never became the superstar he was projected to be.

More recently, the top prospect in baseball in 2013 was Texas’ Jurickson Profar after he hit .281 (820 OPS) at age 19 in AA as a shortstop. Profar is still in the big leagues, but has a career .237 batting average (709 OPS) and is currently a LF for the Padres.

No doubt the ranking of minor league prospects has become more sophisticated in recent years. Among the current players who were named the sports’ best are Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Adley Rutchman, Wander Franco, and Bobby Witt Jr.

However, here are two players who were considered top five prospects in all of baseball who are struggling. They may get everything to click at some point, but right now, they haven’t fulfilled what others thought they could accomplish.

Detroit took Spencer Torkelson with the first pick in the 2020 draft, and to date, in 264 at bats, he’s hit five homers and batted .197. He’s back in AAA with a .228 batting average and coincidentally, five long balls.

The Angels’ Jo Adell was a consensus top five prospect after hitting .289 with 23 home runs in AAA at age 22. To date, the majors have been a much bigger challenge, with a .215 batting average and 13 dingers in almost 500 plate appearances.

Why do we bring this up? Because he see various comments from Guardians’ fans pining for the youngest team in the sport to bring up even more rookies.

Complicating the matter is the Guards being in contention for the playoffs. If they were on pace to lose 90+ games, it would be a no-brainer to bring guys up and play them. So when Nolan Jones goes two weeks doing nothing at the plate, Terry Francona can’t afford to be patient.

And nothing causes a manager to lose the trust of his players than putting someone out on the field who doesn’t deserve to be there.

Also, just because someone is highly touted as a prospect doesn’t mean they will be better players at the big league level than the person currently at that spot.

For example, we think Brayan Rocchio is going to be a very good big league shortstop. However, to say he is better than Amed Rosario right now is crazy. He might be, but no one should be stating that as a fact.

We are sure Tigers’ and Angels’ supporters were saying the same thing about Torkelson and Adell not so long ago.

It’s Time To Start Thinking Baseball, But…

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.

A Flurry Of Moves Highlight Guardians’ First Day

Well, on the first day of the official name change of the Cleveland baseball team, the Guardians made a bevy of roster moves, designed to get the squad ready for the Rule 5 Draft.

Several of the minor leaguers were no brainers to be added, notably INF Tyler Freeman, OF George Valera, and INF Brayan Rocchio, all among the top 10 prospects in the organization.

Others figured to be added, like C Bryan Lavistida, two players making a name for themselves in the Arizona Fall League, INF Richie Palacios and Jose Tena, who won the batting title in the prospect oriented league, and P Cody Morris, who could pitch in the major leagues next season.

You wonder if Tena would have been added had he not had such a great AFL season.

What is very curious is that 14 of the 40 players on this roster have no major league experience, so you have to wonder are more moves in the works, if and when moves can be made due to the absence of a collective bargaining agreement.

The most notable players designated for assignment were OF Harold Ramirez and Daniel Johnson.

Ramirez received 339 at bats with the team in 2021, hitting .268 with 7 HR and 41 RBI (703 OPS), decent numbers, but was a defensive liability. Johnson, who was acquired in the Yan Gomes trade with Washington, hit .221 with 4 home runs, in just 77 at bats.

With all of the problems the Cleveland outfield had offensively in 2021, why Johnson didn’t get more of a chance was a head scratcher. In fact, we was sent down in the midst of a period where he was 8 for his last 28.

Out of the remainder of players released, the biggest surprise here was Kyle Nelson, who had a 3.72 ERA over his minor league career, but pitched just 10 innings at the big league level. We would guess the emergence of Anthony Gose, aced out Nelson.

We were happy that Steven Kwan was added. The left-handed hitting outfielder is an on base machine, getting on base at a .380 clip in the minor leagues. We were hoping he would have been added to the big league roster in September.

However, Oscar Gonzalez was not added. Gonzalez, who will be 24 years old next season, belted 31 homers at the AA and AAA levels this past season, and our guess is he is a good candidate to be drafted by another organization.

Somehow, Bradley Zimmer and Oscar Mercado survived this purge. We hope Gonzalez isn’t lost because of the blind loyalty to two players who really haven’t been productive for awhile.

Zimmer got his biggest look since his rookie year of 2017, and still had the same problems that have plagued him throughout his career, namely, he can’t make contact.

He fanned a whopping 122 times in 348 plate appearances, hitting .227 with a 669 OPS. In his career, totaling 754 at bats, the soon to be 29-year-old former first round draft pick has a 658 OPS.

We get that his tools are enticing. He has tremendous speed and good power when he connects, but that isn’t often. He’s a great athlete, but he’s just not a baseball player. And it’s not like he has age on his side as a prospect.

Mercado will be 27 next season, and had a very good rookie season in 2019 with a 761 OPS. Since then, he is 59 for 300, a .198 batting average. He did walk 21 times in ’21, but hit just .224, so his on base percentage was just .300. His OPS was just 669.

All Kidding Aside, Having Many Shortstops Is A Good Thing

We joke a lot about the number of shortstops the Cleveland Indians have on their top prospect list.

According to Baseball America’s ranking of the farm system, the Tribe has three shortstops and a second baseman among their top ten–Tyler Freeman is third, Gabriel Arias is sixth, Brayan Rocchio is 7th and the second baseman, Aaron Brocho is #10.

And don’t forget, the two major league players the team received for Francisco Lindor, Andres Gimenez and Amed Rosario also play short, and so can Owen Miller, who came over from San Diego with Arias. That’s seven pretty good prospects playing the same position.

Look, it makes sense. Generally, shortstops are the best athletes on the field, and if you can handle the position at a competent level, you probably can play any spot on the diamond, outside of pitcher and catcher.

So, stockpiling good players who can play the most important defensive position on the diamond is smart. They can be moved to other positions of need and it’s always good to be able to be in a position to deal from strength if another organization needs someone to play in the middle of the diamond.

It’s the offensive equivalent to having pitching depth.

The question is how soon will the front office use the excess talent at the position to improve other areas of the roster? We think the Tribe has to be very careful about moving more pitching after the recent trades involving Trevor Bauer, Mike Clevinger, and Carlos Carrasco.

We wrote last week that outside of Shane Bieber, the 2021 starting rotation will be manned by hurlers who haven’t thrown 200 innings at the big league level. Adam Plutko has pitched the most frames outside of the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner.

There is depth in case an Aaron Civale and Zach Plesac takes a step backward in their development. Terry Francona and Carl Willis can plug in a Scott Moss or Logan Allen to make some starts if that occurs. But there isn’t a lot of experience for the rotation.

That leaves the glut of middle infield prospects as the lure to get some outfielders who can hit. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe Daniel Johnson deserves an opportunity or that we’ve given up on Oscar Mercado, but the Indians do need a couple of proven bats to go with Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes.

Minnesota non-tendered OF Eddie Rosario, who tormented Cleveland for years, and he’s a possibility. He batted .257 with 13 HR (792 OPS) in the shortened 2020 season, and .276 with 32 HR and 109 RBI (800 OPS) in 2019. He’s a free swinger, but would be someone who could hit in the middle of Francona’s batting order.

For now, the talent evaluators within the Indians’ front office need to decide who is the future at shortstop and who has enough hitting ability to be able to move to another spot. We really like the hitting potential of Freeman and Miller, both of whom are said to project more as second basemen.

Could either become a piece in the outfield, the organizations’ biggest area of need?

What happens if Gimenez shows he’s the guy to hold down the position for the next five years (we don’t go beyond that because, you know)? That would put the Indians in an enviable position with other teams.

The one thing that will be intriguing over the next few years, is how the players like Rocchio and Bracho develop. That’s why we want minor league baseball and their box scores in 2021.