Ineligible Man Downfield: What comes next for the Cleveland baseball team?
The Strategy, the Centerpiece, and the Impending Challenge
On Jan. 7, the Cleveland Baseball Club executed the inevitable, it traded Francisco Lindor for salary relief, and talent, in one of the longest anticipated trades in decades. Trading Lindor was a categorical certainty based on the organization’s approach and the league-wide construct of crying poor. That they attached Carlos Carrasco to improve the return, and the cost-savings was the only surprise.
This piece, however, is not about the Dolan’s culpability in baseball’s earnings suppression mechanism, or in scurrilous claims about a lack of profitability. The reason being, these issues have been thoughtfully and thoroughly addressed. Chris Cwik detailed how this trade makes it difficult to like modern baseball, and Ben Lindbergh thoughtfully asserted “Cleveland Could’ve Kept Francisco Lindor. The Team Just Valued Money More.”
The Strategy
First, the organization is centered around the notion that bottoming-out is unacceptable which is why most of their recent trades are an awkward combination of now and future. Travis Sawchik most effectively articulated the approach and issue it poses:
If one thinks of roster construction in terms of a bell curve of target wins, the organization has behaved as if the middle 50% is the goal. That is, avoid tanking and the bottom 25%, as well as conserving assets to stay slightly right of the middle of the bell curve with the cost being that the team rarely leaks into the top 25% tail of the bell curve. Of course, 2017 was the great exception when the team doled out money to Edwin Encarnacion, and even Boone Logan. The 2017 team which suffered a first round exit had a legitimate claim as the best team in baseball.
This is all to say that beyond the contextual factors around the return, like Lindor only having one year remaining on his deal at approximately 75% of his market value, the strong near term shortstop market, and league-wide payroll cuts, the return appears underwhelming because it is a mixed return which limited the type of long term prospect centerpiece included.
With the Lindor-Carrasco-Mets trade integrated Cleveland is still 13th in projected WAR for 2021 via depth charts from Fangraphs. Again, the middle of the bell curve, which in a middling division gives them real playoff hopes.
The Centerpiece
The complete return for Cleveland is Amed Rosario, Josh Wolf, Isaiah Greene, and Andres Gimenez. While Wolf and Greene are far away draft pieces with unclear upside, the true centerpiece to this deal is Andres Gimenez. Amed Rosario is a once elite shortstop prospect who has been mostly average as a big leaguer, but at 25 is a nice buy-low.
Gimenez is an athleticism/glove-first shortstop who reached the big leagues at just 21 years old. The major question for Gimenez is whether he can generate enough power to be more than an average big leaguer. Still, it is once again worth emphasizing that average big leaguers are important, and Cleveland fans should appreciate that as the team has run a stars and scrubs roster for the past three years.
Through his first 49 big league games, Gimenez looked like his scouting report posting 96th percentile defense, and hitting .263 with a below-average ISO of .136. All relevant contact authority measures further emphasized that as of now, there is not much power. Gimenez was in the 20th percentile for exit velocity and the 11th percentile for barrels, obviously, sample size caveats are relevant with all of this data but it does generally align with his scouting report.
Adding power is not as simple an action as we may pretend in the era of launch angle adjustments but it is an organizational competency. Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Michael Brantley all arrived in the big leagues with limited isolated power data, and contact driven approach which the organization leveraged into creating more power. Of course, the minor leagues and big-league benches, including Cleveland’s are littered with contact types who failed to add contact authority.
However, it is clear that Cleveland believes this is an organizational competency to leverage be it Gimenez, Tyler Freeman, Owen Miller, Brayan Rocchio, Jose Fermin, Ernie Clement, Angel Martinez, and Aaron Bracho. The wager is that with those hit tools, if you can get one or two of these players to league average or better power, you have an impact player.
Will Gimenez be the guy who can flip that switch? We really have no way of knowing, and it is a difficult expectation to reach. However, with average to above contact, and handling himself in the big leagues at just 21 years old, there is a *real* chance.
With plus speed and defense, solid feel for contact, Gimenez is a nice floor starting-caliber shortstop in the mold of the historic tradition of the position. The organization is wagering it can help transform him into more.
The Impending Challenge
As witnessed in the operations in Tampa Bay, this consistent high-end talent salary-shed for future and near term talent creates certain roster construction challenges, especially when minor league baseball is suspended for a season and an organization loses important differentiating information.
Cleveland already had 40-man roster issues resulting in Luis Oviedo and Ka’ai Tom being lost in this year’s rule-5 draft, and with its recent deals, the potential crunch gets tighter.
As Eric Longenhagen noted at Fangraphs, the team’s 2017 international class, and overall system depth create a significant likelihood of 40-man roster crunch following 2021, and this deal did not lessen the crunch at all. Indeed, adding two 40-man middle infielders in Gimenez and Rosario makes it likely the team has to deal some up the middle talent relatively soon. Indeed, the organization’s strong depth actually introduces the situation where some consolidation is necessary. Therefore, the organization would be wise to use Miller, Arias, Freeman, Rosario, Gimenez, Rocchio, with another piece to add a young starting outfielder.
As an interesting note, this team does have room to actually improve its offense over 2020, and 2019, where it was a bottom-five offense in baseball, if the team consolidates part of its crowded depth.
And while the team is constructed for sustained competency, it is heavily pitching reliant, and the rotation has thinned significantly of late, increasing in risk.
Triston McKenzie has to prove he can maintain velocity, Aaron Civale and Zach Plesac have appeared competent but the sample is limited. There is a path to rotation collapse. The organization has refused to tank, with the result being a gamble by the organization to try to add certain tools to high floor player types so as to raise the organizational ceiling. The strategy is not fun for fans, nor perfect. But for the past eight years, it has been a tenable one. — Mike Hattery
ICYMI
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How various Browns responded to Chase Claypool
Sammy Watkins doesn’t seem impressed by the Browns
Kareem Hunt seems excited to be going against his old team
Collin Sexton underwent an MRI on his injured ankle, but it’s apparently not a major concern
Two Browns who started on Sunday are now on IR
Carrasco says his trade was ‘not unexpected’
The NBA has several new COVID-19 protocols
One thing to read today
At The Ringer, Ben Lindbergh on the Lindor trade
Who we are
Chris Manning: Site Manager at Fear the Sword, co-host of the Locked on Cavs podcast, words at places like Cleveland Magazine and Forbes. On Twitter @cwmwrites
Jordan Zirm: Social editor at @TheCheckdown. Formerly of ESPN Cleveland. Words at B/R, SB Nation and UPROXX. Host of The Rebuild podcast. On Twitter @clevezirm
Alex Hooper: Contributor at Fantasy Sports Insight. Former Cleveland Baseball Club beat writer for 92.3 the Fan (WKRK), and contributor at Sports Illustrated, Let’s Go Tribe, and the News-Herald. On Twitter @lexhooper.