The Guardians, the 2022 MLB trade deadline and a few potential paths (and a Juan Soto question)
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The Guardians approach the 2022 trade deadline with an opportunity to continue down the same path that has guided their overarching decision making for the past few years (win now while setting up tomorrow at the same time).
And yet, a tantalizing option exists — albeit an unlikely one — that would significantly change the club's course.
The moment Juan Soto turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract offer from the Washington Nationals, it put one of the game's true stars on the open trade market. He's one of the most talented hitters in baseball (not that Soto defeating Jose Ramirez and the rest of the field in the Home Run Derby last week was needed to know that). And he's still only 23 years old, which feels like an impossibility considering how long he's tormented pitchers.
Milestone: Guardians manager Terry Francona records win No. 800 with Cleveland
Another important element to the Soto situation: he's under club control through the 2024 season, giving any potential suitor in a trade about 2.5 seasons of Soto's services before he can reach free agency and potentially challenge for a half-a-billion-dollar deal.
Keeping him in whatever new uniform he might be donning within the next week beyond 2024 brings up some serious financial ramifications for a marketable superstar who is entering his prime.
The first question is whether, from an immediate standpoint, the Guardians could pull off such a landmark trade to bring in Soto for a few seasons. That answer is yes, if they wanted.
The Guardians are one of the few teams with enough prospect value and young MLB talent to be a fit and reach the astronomically high asking price that will accompany any negotiations for Soto.
The list of potential teams with enough prospect power to make a deal feasible isn't terribly long, but any team in that running has a superstar talent within its grasp, so the bidding could be fierce.
The New York Yankees are surely in the running. The San Diego Padres could be a strong contender. The St. Louis Cardinals likely have the right mix of MLB-ready talent to put together a proper package. The Seattle Mariners, New York Mets and possibly the Tampa Bay Rays could be fits. The Guardians are right in that mix.
Juan Soto trade: After rejecting $440 million, Juan Soto's ($500M?) future is the talk of MLB All-Star Game
USA TODAY: Seven potential landing spots for Nationals All-Star outfielder Juan Soto
The Guardians do have the available talent to jump into that race ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline. Their question is if it's worth it to change course to do so.
Think of a traveler driving down a country road, waiting for it to take him home. For so long, he's been accelerating, but has done so mindfully so as to reserve fuel for a later stretch. He's meandering along with traffic, just keeping up, but is also focused on getting some quality gas mileage.
Acquiring Soto basically means that traveler would be slamming the gas pedal as hard as he can to go for it now. Who cares if you run out of gas sooner? Acquiring Soto would not be a one-off move; others would surely follow, because the Guardians' contention window switches from possibly several years with a young roster (and Jose Ramirez and Emmanuel Clase under club control through 2028) to possibly only a stretch that includes 2022, 2023 and 2024.
After that, both Soto and Shane Bieber would be eligible for free agency. And with such talent on the roster, those three seasons — 2022, 2023 and 2024 — would become the absolute focus. Secondary additions would likely follow.
Who would the Guardians trade to the Nationals for Juan Soto, anyway?
Soto also shifts how the Guardians might handle their present and future outfield outlook. Without the superstar in tow, Oscar Gonzalez, Nolan Jones, Steven Kwan and Myles Straw figure to have roles moving forward, along with Franmil Reyes (if he can turn it around) in the DH spot that comes with an occasional cameo in the outfield.
And eventually — possibly as early as next year — George Valera will be a major part of that future, possibly along with Will Brennan or others.
If Soto does come to Cleveland, it's likely at least one, if not two or three of those aforementioned names would be on their way to the nation's capitol in addition to other players, perhaps including top pitching prospect Daniel Espino.
It would also make sense for the Guardians to dip into their glut of middle infield prospects in such a deal.
The ability for Terry Francona to pair Soto and Jose Ramirez back-to-back in the Guardians lineup would be tantalizing. Since the beginning of the 2019 season, no qualified player in baseball has a better on-base percentage than Soto's .432.
And since the beginning of the 2019 season, no position player in baseball has more fWAR than Jose Ramirez's 17.6. And who is tied for second with 17.5 fWAR? That'd be Soto, who is also third in the game during that time with a 157 wRC+ (Ramirez is at 137).
Having Soto hit right before Ramirez would give opposing pitchers nightmares. Surely, the Guardians have been dreaming up such an enticing scenario.
But turning that dream into a reality is much more complicated, like being woken up with a cold glass of water being dumped all over them. It doesn't mean it can't happen — the Guardians do have the talent to make it work.
But they've been traveling down this road with a clear plan for quite some time. A deal for Soto would be like pulling the emergency brake and drifting into a U-Turn.
Perhaps it is too much of an acceleration for the Guardians to take action. Perhaps they aren't ready to smash the gas pedal and leave much of the work — meaning the future value and how the franchise is set up for years to come with these prospects progressing through the minor leagues — in the dust behind them.
Or, perhaps the hoarding of future talent and players the club deemed part of their long-term plan has led to this moment. Perhaps the Guardians held onto their poker chips, saving them for future hands, to go all-in when the moment was right.
The odds are heavily in favor of the former, that adding Soto to a lineup is an absurdly enticing proposition, but in the Guardians' case, with all they have done to set up the future for contention, the price is too steep to veer off that course now.
The David Blitzer impact on the Guardians
Guardians General Manager Mike Chernoff recently hinted that David Blitzer's addition to the Guardians ownership group as a minority owner wouldn't drastically change the team's financial strategies overnight.
Bringing in Soto would be adding roughly $20-30 million per year for the next two years (he's making $17.1 million this season in arbitration, and that number will only go up in 2023 and 2024).
That is likely doable considering where the payroll stands. But the concept of eating into Soto's free-agency years beyond 2024 is biting off more than the Guardians can likely chew based on how they have operated in the past.
Even with Ramirez's re-worked contract, the Guardians' payroll has plummeted in the past few years, leaving room to grow. But considering Soto reportedly turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract extension from the Nationals, that's already a stratosphere in which the Guardians have never operated.
Ramirez's deal was the largest the team has ever handed out to one player. Locking up Soto, depending on the number of years, would make Ramirez's deal look like pocket change.
It would certainly energize the fan base. With Soto, the Guardians would retain the youngest roster in baseball, but they'd elevate their perception from a plucky, youthful contender to one of the most dangerous tops of the lineups in the game, particularly in 2023 and 2024 as the entire roster gains experience and, presumably, as the team keeps aggressively adding players around Soto, Ramirez and Bieber in the offseason.
The organization has been willing to make an aggressive push in the past. The trade-deadline deal for Andrew Miller in 2016 signaled a willingness to push their chips into the middle of the table when the time was right. With Miller, a banged-up Cleveland roster made an improbable run to within a win of winning a World Series.
This potential move might not be as likely due to an asking price that is closer to the moon than the Earth's surface, and that Soto would almost assuredly wait until he can hit free agency after the 2024 season to sign his megadeal elsewhere.
But being one of only a handful teams with the resources to make such a deal puts the Guardians in an interesting position.
Aside from Juan Soto, who might the Guardians target in a trade?
At some point, the Guardians will need to consolidate some of their prospect-rich resources. A log jam exists amongst middle infielders, and it hasn't budged much. The only way the problem takes care of itself over time would be a negative one for Cleveland, in that several prospects (especially infielders) falter and fall off the board as an option at the major league level along the way.
Otherwise, there aren't enough spaces for some highly-valued prospects that would have a better path to the majors with less competition elsewhere. Eventually, it would make sense for the Guardians to use a few prospects to acquire major league help. Having depth in the minors certainly isn't a bad thing, but it also creates an opportunity to be more aggressive on the trade market.
The question is where, and for whom? It always takes two (or even three) to tango in a trade. The pieces have to fit. Who can the Guardians add that both helps them enough now but also matches well with the contention window they've tried to keep open for years?
Catcher: Willson Contreras, Sean Murphy
The Chicago Cubs and Oakland Athletics are home to several potential trade targets at multiple positions for any contending team. That includes catcher, a potential fit for the Guardians.
Francona and the Guardians have long valued a catcher's defensive abilities (calling the game, controlling runners, pitch framing) and viewed offensive contributions as a bonus. The Guardians' pitching development has been their strength for quite some time, so it does make some sense to pair that with a group of catchers who are above average defensively.
That being said, Cleveland's catchers have left much to be desired offensively.
Together, that group, led by Austin Hedges and Luke Maile, has combined to hit .176 with a 55 wRC+.
Those figures rank 29th and 27th out of MLB's 30 clubs, respectively. Defensively, Guardians catchers rank 10th overall using FanGraphs' defensive rating metric.
There's a wide gap between the value Guardians catchers have brought behind the plate compared to at the plate. The current duo also isn't necessarily in their longterm plans. Hedges can be a free agent after this season and Maile is only under club control through next year.
Bo Naylor, the club's top catching prospect, was recently promoted to Triple-A and hasn't had much trouble with Triple-A pitching thus far, posting a .312/.449/.597 slash line in 22 games.
Naylor represents the club's long-term solution at catcher once he's promoted to the majors. But even if he's deemed ready to make the jump early next year, the Guardians will need a stop-gap option at some point between now and when the team opens camp next spring.
A few clear options exist for an upgrade that fit a couple different situations. The first is Willson Contreras, who helped the Chicago Cubs win the 2016 World Series over Cleveland.
Contreras, 30, is a pending free agent at the end of the year, making him a short-term rental should the Guardians opt to add a few players at the deadline to make a postseason push. Contreras has a career .811 OPS, making him one of the most productive offensive catchers in the league since he was promoted to the majors in 2016.
This season, Contreras has hit .258 with an .843 OPS, which was enough to earn his third career All-Star selection. Defensively, Contreras ranks 40th overall among catchers since 2016 by FanGraphs' rankings.
Sean Murphy of the A's would provide a long-term option. Murphy, 27, is under club control though the 2025 season. He has hit .230 with a .750 OPS in four seasons with the A's and has been right in line with that offensively in 2022.
Murphy, an above-average pitch framer, is also solid defensively, ranking second overall by FanGraphs among qualified catchers in the past season and a half. Murphy's addition would give the Guardians a multi-year starting option at catcher to pair with Naylor once he's ready.
Relief pitcher: David Bednar, Mychal Givens, David Robertson, Anthony Bass, Jorge Lopez, Michael Fulmer, Joe Jimenez, Andrew Chafin
The Guardians bullpen has largely beaten expectations, thanks to Emmanuel Clase's emergence as an All-Star and positive stretches from Trevor Stephan, Sam Hentges and Eli Morgan, although, the bullpen has been a bit shakier recently. Nick Sandlin has had control issues, and Bryan Shaw has been hit hard this season (3.35 career ERA with Cleveland, 5.45 this season).
If the Guardians are to make a push for the postseason, they could use a reliever. The problem? Every other contender could use a reliever, too. This is the time of year when teams bolster their bullpens. It's also the time of year struggling teams can get top dollar for those aforementioned relievers.
David Bednar might not be made available by the perennially rebuilding Pittsburgh Pirates, but if he is, he'd be the top reliever target on talent and value. Bednar is under club control through the 2026 season and since the beginning of last year has posted a 2.45 ERA with 138 strikeouts in 106⅓ innings.
If the Guardians could package the right mix of prospects to add Bednar, it'd instantly represent a long-term, landmark addition to the bullpen alongside Emmanuel Clase. The Guardians have been so above-average in developing pitching that they might not want to give up the prospect haul it'd take to land an outside reliever.
But if the Guardians aim to bring in a short-term upgrade to bolster the bullpen, Mychal Givens and David Robertson of the Cubs, Miami Marlins reliever Anthony Bass and a trio of Detroit Tigers (Michael Fulmer, Joe Jimenez and Andrew Chafin) would all fit the bill.
Starting pitcher: Luis Castillo, Frankie Montas, Pablo Lopez, Tyler Mahle, Martin Perez, Jose Quintana
The outlook of the Guardians rotation is quite different compared to what it was in spring training. Then, the club finally had a clear quintet of starting pitchers who were all healthy at the same time. Now, there are questions as to how the team handles that group.
Bieber is one of the few key players on the roster who is only under club control through the 2024 season, meaning his roster spot could at least be a consideration in trade talks. But a deal that jettisons Bieber out of Cleveland would be a signal of doom for the Guardians' postseason chances in 2022, so it would take an offer the Guardians can't refuse to get it done.
Bieber has mostly been effective, but his velocity dip has been well documented.
Triston McKenzie likely isn't going anywhere. Zach Plesac and Cal Quantrill are both under control through the 2025 season but have just been OK this season.
Aaron Civale has had a disastrous 2022 and is out until sometime in August, leaving the rotation as a whole as solid but unspectacular. When it comes to the starting rotation, the Guardians could potentially go either direction, though even if they can sell high on a starter, doing it in the offseason would make more sense.
Luis Castillo of the Cincinnati Reds, who earned his second All-Star selection this season, would be an impact addition who is under club control through next season. He'd bolster the rotation now in a significant way and afford the Guardians an easier time waiting for Espino to hit the majors.
The same goes for A's starter Frankie Montas, who, like Castillo, is 29 years old and under club control through next year. Pablo Lopez of the Miami Marlins would also be a frontline addition, and he won't hit free agency until a year later than Castillo and Montas. The price tags for all three would be high.
Cheaper and/or short-term options, if the Guardians don't want to depend on a struggling Civale and a developing Konnor Pilkington for the rest of the season, include the Reds' Tyler Mahle, Martin Perez of the Texas Rangers and Jose Quintana of the Pirates.
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Guardians at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/cleveland-guardians. Follow him on Twitter at @ByRyanLewis.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: The Guardians at the 2022 MLB trade deadline: Juan Soto? A reliever?
