Major League Ready

I don't think a real candid answer would have gone over very well with the players and manager. He could have said our big acquisition (Correa was very mediocre. Larnach regressed and we just need to wait for Walker Jenkins to fill that spot. Lewis was below average, and we need to hope he fulfils his potential or move on. Wallner has many holes in his game. We will audition a host of good prospects for his spot. Pablo only pitched 75 innings. Hopefully he is healthy next year. Ober was bad but we have guys that will be here soon that should be better than him. We will finally get Vasquez out of the lineup next year. Pereda can't be any worse and showed some potential. Maybe we can get a good back-up in free agency. Lee is too slow to be a major league SS and we hope Culpepper will be here by June. What should he have said? I suppose it would make people happy if he said I put together a roster of players that have not performed but it wouldn't go over to big with the players and also would be a good way to sell even less tickets.

Fedko needs to spend the winter working on taking ground balls and his foot work at 1B. He could find a role as a 1B/OF.

$30M in free agency gets us 3-4 wins. Does anyone believe that puts us in contention. Would $60M and 6-7 wins added get us in contention? The only way they have a shot in 2026 is spend $60M and trade away several top prosects to get a couple difference makers. I think the chances of that happening will be exceptionally small. The only scenario that's worse than a rebuild is starting a rebuild and then changing course almost immediately. If they wanted to retool they needed to keep Duran, Jax, Varland, and only traded Correa and the expiring contracts. Changing direction now would be the height of incompetence

Interesting you knew the lineup that scored 9 runs would cause us to lose.

Two-thirds of the MLB teams generate less than $400M. The 500th ranked company in the fortune 500 generates $7.4B. Put another way, the 500th ranked business generates 10-X the revenue of the highest revenue team and 20X the average. The 200th ranked company generate $21B which is alost double all the teams combined. I don't think we can compare the responsibility associated with the CEO of a $7B or 21B or $50B company to a baseball player. The most important person in a $400M company probably makes $1M so the $30M annual salaries even for teams that generate $600M is an extremely high percentage of total revenue. Professional athletes good enough to stick on a roster have the greatest gig on earth. I don't know how the solve the floor/ceiling equation given the massive difference in revenue. The bottom teams simply can't make a profit at $150M payroll. That would render those franchises to have virtually no value or arguably no value. Even if it was a $150M, what would the players accept as a ceiling? there is no way they can get it to a 10% difference as has been suggested. I doubt if they could get it to 50% meaning something like 300/150. Any floor that would allow for a floor/ceiling difference that would make a difference. It will be interesting to see what they do. The most feasible to me is to redistribute revenue sharing based in greater part to spending on payroll.

Hard to argue with that logic.

For me there are a number of reasons when taken collectively say reboot. The catalyst is I just don't think they have a chance in 2026 to completely rebuild the BP and fix the position players enough to have a reasonable shot at a playoff spot much less legitimately contend. I also expect a significantly shortened season in 2027. Given these realities for 2026-27 and the point you made about Ryan and Lopez returning the most talent, I think they move both unless the return is not compelling for some reason. Keeping Ryan/Lopez/Ober also means losing 3 primary SPs at the end of 2027. If they are successful transitioning Keschall / Jenkins and a couple of Gonzalez / Rodriguez / Rosario / Fedko and Culpepper, now they have a core of position players and 3 new spots to fill in the rotation. Some SP prospects are not going to get a shot at the big league level with this approach and they have created a problem. I guess they could move Ober but I think they want to audition as many SPS as possible, build a rotation and add to the BP with 2 or 3 guys that don't make the rotation. They need the roster spots for this portion of the rebuild. This rebuild approach is very complimentary to the point you have been making about prearb players.

Think for a moment how many positions are question marks or need and upgrade. Both corner OF spots. 1B has nobody and they have given some OF prospects reps at 1B. Keaschall has solidified a spot on the roster but I am not sure it's 2B. 3B is Lewis for now but he is also questionable. Catcher has no depth and Jeffers is gone after 2026. Lee is not an everyday SS. The BP has nobody. They literally need 4-5 RPs with a couple of them being back of the BP types. That's a team that needs to be rebuilt. They understand that fans hate the idea of a rebuild. I interpret the statements about major league ready assets as posturing. They can point to all the soon to be here prospects and make a reasonable case to the fan base that the rebuild period will be considerably shorter than normal. I would that from a buyer's perspective, they knew the core was just not there and tearing it down prior to a sale is far more appealing to a buyer than doing it soon after buying the team.

If trading away Duran, Jax, Varland and Correa did not convince you I guess we will just need to wait until this winter and see what happens. Let's revisit this in March. Changing direction now would be exceptionally incompetent.

It will be unfortunate if either one of them is playing a corner OF spot at the end of 2026. If Jenkins does not take one of the spots, it will be extremely disappointing. We really need one of Roden, Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Rosario or Fedko to take the other. Austin Martin is also looking like he is in the mix. We are also going to be smack dab in the middle of a rebuild or major retooling. A couple of the above-mentioned prospects need to step up if we are to become a contender. Larnach and Wallner are just not good enough complete players, so the answer is neither. The more nuanced answer is Wallner has 4 years left and Larnach 2. There is no point in holding onto Larnach. Trade him for a RP. Walner could be held onto as a DH / 5th OFer.

Good question. You could make a case either way. I would tend to go internally produced because it was clear Alonzo really wanted to stay. My interpretation was the Mets were not willing to pay "market" early in the process and Alonzo gave them a discount to stay in NY. BTW ... I only did teams in the bottom half of revenue. My interest was specific to teams that could not buy a team through free agency, like the Twins.

I didn't collect every team because that would have been an enormous task and I was only interested in how winning teams were built when revenue was similar or less than the Twins. I was also interested in how they acquired their productive players as opposed to all players. Therefore, I collected the data for teams in the bottom half of revenue win 90 plus wins and I only included position players that produced 1.5 WAR and RPs with 1.2 WAR. So, my focus was pretty specific. The 80% is an average but there has been a few teams that produced 20-30% from free agency, including the Twins. The 2019 Twins stand out with 30% coming from free agents. If you look into that detail for all of these teams, about a third of them are medium priced free agents that performed exceptionally well and most of them are modest priced free agents that put up 1.5-3 WAR.

Culpepper is way ahead of Houston and will start the year at AAA and be up as soon as he can string 4-6 good weeks together at AAA. Obviously, this is purely opinion, but it sure seems to be setting up this way. The OF situation will be similar. I guess Jenkins could be there to start the season but my guess is that Culpepper and Jenkins are in the same boat.

I am not implying anything. I am supplying factual data that took me about 30 hours to put together as to how teams acquired the players that are producing on winning teams. They can draft them, trade for established players, trade for prospects or get them in free agency. I took the time to get the data because of instances just like this one. If you don't like the facts, ignore them if it makes you feel better.

Yes, really. You are looking quite literally at how much is produced by rookies which has very little value in a discussion about how contending teams were built. I am looking at how players were acquired to determine which acquisition methods most impact the success of contending teams. For example, players on the current Tigers team that will produce 1.5 WAR or more this year are listed below. 86% of their WAR is from players that were drafted or acquired as prospects. This demonstrates the dependence of average revenue or below average teams have on drafted players or prospects acquired in trade like Joe Ryan. Yes, they are prospects and many fail but the premise we should not rely on them defies logic given success is dependent upon developing them. That's the point. History is very clear that free agency and acquiring established players plays a much smaller role in success. 2025 Tigers Acquired WAR Riley Greene Drafted 3.0 Zach McKinstry AaP 3.2 Gleyber Torres FA 2.4 Dillon Dingler Drafted 3.7 Spencer Torkelson Drafted 2.1 Wenceel Perez Intl 1.9 Colt Keith Drafted 1.4 Kerry Carpenter Drafted 1.5 Tarik Skubal Drafted 6.5 Jack Flaherty FA 2.2 Casey Mize Drafted 1.9 Reese Olson AaP 1.4 Will Vest Drafted 1.4 Acquired by: Drafted 8 66.0% International Draft 1 5.8% Acquired as Prospect 2 14.1% Trade for Proven 0 0.0% Free Agent 2 14.1%

Players acquired as prospects. We need to define what is unproven. When I compiled this date, I defined a prospect as a player that have never produced 1.5 WAR is a season and an established player as a player that had produced 1.5 WAR in a season. That might not be what people ask for the organization to go out an get but I wanted to be consistent. The table below is for all of the top 7 Guardians teams in the past couple decades. Add together Drafted / Intl & AaP (acquired as Prospect) In Cleveland's case, in aggregate, 90% came from players acquired as prospects. 7 Cleveland Guardians WINS Drafted Intl AaP Trade FA 100% Cleveland 2017 102 24.3% 19.3% 44.3% 4.3% 7.8% 100% Cleveland 2007 96 30.5% 38.2% 31.3% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2016 94 33.1% 22.7% 44.2% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2019 93 34.0% 17.8% 44.1% 4.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2005 93 7.5% 21.8% 51.4% 2.5% 16.8% 100% Cleveland 2022 92 34.2% 19.7% 46.2% 0.0% 0.0% 100% Cleveland 2013 92 14.9% 0.0% 50.1% 10.2% 24.8% Guardians Total 94.57 25.5% 19.9% 44.5% 3.0% 7.1%

I have compiled the data from literally every 90+ win team since the turn of the century. With all of the very adamant positions about these things posted on this site, I was curious to know what has actually produced results.

I think he gets a roster spot to start the season. However, we need some combination of Jenkins / Rodriguez / Gonzalez / Rosario / Roden, and Fedko to push him off the roster. Unless, of course, Martin really picks it up a notch.

The whole prospects are just prospects ignores that 80% of WAR comes from prospects in all of the most successful organizations with average or below average revenue. I just don't understand how hoping for the only viable avenue to success is misguided.

Was the previous team a "good team". We had a good BP and two good SPs. 1B was covered by mediocre free agents. 3B and SS were under performing players (Lewis/Correa) The OF was a couple mediocre corners OFers and Buxton. Keaschall is part of the next generation. Getting rid of Correa helps a little for budget but we are not going to fix our position player problems unless the next wave is the answer. If we are talking about their odds in 28, given Lopez and Ryan would be free agents, are our odds better with the haul we will get from those two players, plus all of the players we picked up at the deadline than if we had stayed the course with the team we had and tried to augment it. If that augmentation was anything other than a spending the $23m from Correa, that would take significant assets away from 28 and beyond. The difference in post 27 teams can only be projected but that projection is far better than if we stayed on the previous course. So, we can stink it up for a year or two now or several years post 2027.

What are the chances the bottom revenue teams spend more if the top revenue teams did not share their revenue?

I deleted my post when I found TwinsDr2021 posted pretty much exactly what I wrote. I would add that the point of a trading these players is to get their replacement for 6-7 years for far less. That's the only way teams with half the revenue of the big revenue teams can compete.

Rosario was sensational after April. I hope they have him taking ground balls and learning the foot work for 1B all winter long and spring training. They have a good shot at coming up with a 1B/OF between Rosario, Menedez, Fedko, and Sabato.

I think Jenkins is an absolute stud. I just don't believe in using a sample size of 29 ABs. I like the odds that they build a much better core of position players this time around. Keaschall / Jenkins / Culpepper / and Gonzalez are easy to get excited about. I didn't mention Rodriguez in that group because I have more reservation about him. At the same time, if he can cut the K rate a bit, he is a great defender and he hits both handed pitching. Rosario might be right there with these guys as well and Tait looks like a guy that could debut very young.

He has a .624 OPS in AAA so he has not been even close to the same hitter. However, he also only has 29 ABs in AAA so it means very little at this point.