DECLINED: Why the Cleveland Guardians Let John Means WALK and What It MEANS for Pitching Depth

DECLINED: Why the Cleveland Guardians Let John Means WALK and What It MEANS for Pitching Depth

The Guardians declined an option for some potentially affordable pitching depth. We’ll tell you what it means as the first important date of the offseason on the calendar passes you are locked on Guardians, your daily podcast on the Cleveland Guardians, part of the Locked On Podcast network your team every day. Hello friends, Guardians fans all around the world. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Lockdown Guardians. It is our favorite half hour of the day. We hope it’s yours as well. So next half hour we’re talking about your Cleveland Guardians, the only daily podcast that covers the Guardians from the majors, the minus the draft, everything between part of the Lockdown Podcast Network your team every day. I’m just glad of one of your two co hosts for the show and I haven’t for the last three years and counting. Before joining my friend and coach Jeff Ellis, who is off Today, I spent 18 years covering the Cleveland Guardians farm system as a prospect, writer and editor from Arizona to Columbus. Want to thank you for making Lock and Gardens your first listen today and every day wherever it is that you get. Podcasts and shout out to all the everyday, shout out to the insiders, shout outs to everybody in the club as well. Thank you for all for being here and supporting the show. We we finally have some news to talk about. So I know some of you have been sticking around, maybe some of you haven’t been, but it’s a good time to jump in because we have finally have some news to talk about on today’s show. Later in the show we’ll get into another clue about where to point the finger when it comes to Guardians offensive struggles and we’ll address some rumors that we’re ignoring for now. In a little bit we’ll talk about the state of the guardians 40 man roster after a series of moves on Thursday and what that means for their Rule 5 and non tender decisions. That’s coming up in less than two weeks. And leading off today’s Lockdown Guardians, the Guardians declined John Means option and that’s very telling about his comeback and the team’s view on pitching depth and their roster heading into 2026. Before we jump into all the newsy stuff, today’s Lockdown Guardian is brought to you by fanduel. Right now, if you’re a new customer, you can bet just $5 and if that bet wins, you’re going to get $300 on the bonus bets on the app to use download the Fan Duel app today. All right, so the Guardians didn’t feel like picking up John Means a six million dollar option. To me, that’s their way of saying that they kind of thought the depth, the kind of depth he would provide was not worth the price tag. I think that’s very telling where Means is at and his comeback in terms of what he can offer a major league team. The rehab was not good for him at all. And 6 million is a very reasonable price for pitching depth. Trust me, it really is. I think a lot of people would agree with that. And you’ve seen a lot of guys take less money to stay on their teams. You’ve seen a lot of guys get the qualifying offer because they think that those guys, I mean, Brandon Woodruff is gonna gather qualifying offer for 22 million, I think, and he might pick that up. I don’t know. It’s a very weird bet. And I know I had about six or seven insiders text me, well, hey, Alex Cobb got 18 million last year. Yes, yes, he did. Jeff and I have buried ourselves in that joke and it won’t go away. So thank you for, for keeping the bit alive. Alex Cobb did get that last year, and the guardians felt that even 6 million was too much for John Means. Just looking at John Means, this comeback, we’re gonna ignore the lower level stuff because we know that’s not really translatable. It’s just lower level. Whether it’s Arizona, whether it’s Lake county, where he pitched just looking at AAA. Okay. He had a 797 ERA in 20 and the third AAA innings and 812 fielding independent pitching. He struck out 15 and walked 10 and 20 innings. Now, obviously, control was the last thing to come back when it comes to pitching surgeries, especially Tommy John. And John means will be 33 in April. Struck out 16, almost 17. He walked 11%. Triple A hitters had a.934 OPS off of him. He got hit hard. He gave up a very high barrel rate. He didn’t strike anybody out. Walk rate was just very mediocre. The only thing he really did well in his rehab in AAA was he got some chases. 67th percentile in chases, 20, almost 29. But everything else was really bad. Guys were not swinging and missing. They were making a lot of contact in the zone. They were making. Taking a lot of swings in the zone. They weren’t swinging and missing. They were barreling everything. And we’ve talked a lot about the importance of barreling. And if you look at stuff plus numbers from him, if you’re into that kind of thing, which, this is like WRC plus, but for an individual pitch, where 100 is average.94 on the fastball. For the plus stuff it was an average of 90 miles an hour on the fastball. He had one above average pitch that graded out in his 20th third innings. Now it’s a small sample so we can be careful with those things and say that it was a 110 + stuff + for the change of it was it was a good pitch which the changeup’s always been his, his bread and butter. And it got a. Not a really good whiff rate or usage rate on it, but he used it a lot and it was okay. The whiff rate was 15 or so. It wasn’t that great actually. The whiff rate was higher in a slider, but the slider only had a 96 stuff plus rating and his knuckle curve was even worse. So the stuff overall wasn’t good. You know, when they did this with Matt Boyd in 2024A, he was coming off of one Tommy John surgery. Even though he had not been healthy most of his career. John Means has had basically one and a half healthy seasons. He’s coming off the second Tommy John and the rehab didn’t go well and the Guardians were not exactly hurting for depth the way they were in 2024 when Matt Boyd was making his comeback and Matt Boyd was pitching well. So that, you know, was easier to plug him in and see what happens this year. You know, by the time John Means got healthy, he was ready to join the rotation at the end of the year. And they kept going with the six man rotation because it was working very well. And they got to the end of the year, they were pushing to make A plus, make the playoffs, try to win the division and they didn’t use. That’s why we said earlier this week on the show that we didn’t think it was a guarantee they’d pick up John Means. His option. I thought it was maybe 50, 50 at best. And the price tag would suggest that, yeah, $6 million for pitching depth is really valuable. But what does that say about what John Means can bring to your team? At least the Guardians if they don’t believe that his abilities at this point are worth $6 million on this market. And you know, I know some people are going to try to spin it with about money and you know, we’ll see. I don’t blame anyone for jumping to that conclusion. And on your jump to conclusions, Matt, name the movie. But you know, given the Guardians Adam for death purposes in 2026 and they are, you know, 99.9%. Unlikely to ever have Luis Ortiz pitch for them ever again, and they won’t have been lively in 2026. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. Not picking up John means of $6 million, I think says a lot about his current abilities. This is. That’s a drop in the bucket for them, even. Even for the Guardians. And they could get this wrong. They could. They don’t make every decision perfectly, but they make better decisions than. More often than not when it comes to pitching. So I think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt on these decisions, at least when it comes to pitching. I don’t think this one worked out. And maybe he’ll go somewhere else and he’ll provide. Provide value. We’ll see what happens on the market. It’s not a great pitching market. Maybe somebody else gives him an opportunity to pitch and he looks good. I think there’s also a chance that he is cheaper than 6 million. The guardians very easily could have declined the option, decided, you know what, let’s negotiate with John Means and let’s bring him back for, you know, 3 million. You know, maybe they’re saying that what they saw, other teams have the same data, they have the same video. They don’t have maybe the intel on the health and how he was feeling when he was coming back, but he’d have to take a physical anyway. So maybe the Guardians think that when other teams get a chance to talk to him and look at the stuff, they’ll think, yeah, we’re not paying them 6 million either. So we’ll see what happens. Based on what we saw publicly last year from the data, what we know publicly, when I just stated, I don’t think you could sit there and say John Means was a worthy gamble to say, all right, Joey Cantillo or Slate Tacconi or Logan Allen or Parker Messick, this guy is gonna pitch above you, and one of you is not going to have a roster, a starting rotation spot, given how they. How good they all were, especially at the end of last season. You know, Messick was already slated to go to AAA anyway. I think what this does impact is their ability to kind of use starting pitching as a carrot for a bat in a trade, if they’re ever planning on doing that. Because if you brought John Means and you thought, okay, well, our 1 through 5 is. Is by B. Williams, Cantillo, Saccony, and then Beans, and we have Allen and Messick, we can dangle somebody for a bat. That definitely impacts this, whether or not they actually renegotiate with means to bring them back on a lesser contract because you know again he just didn’t fare that well last year coming back. We’ll see what they decide to do on that and we’ll see what other options are out there for them. As you know, we’ve seen a lot of the qualifying offers, the options. We still have the non tender deadline on the 21st so there could be more guys that are put in the market anyway. So the Guardians might take their chances on depth in the market and see what happens. Maybe they’ll renegotiate what John means, but I think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt on this choice. I think it says a lot about they know very well. I mean the public data wasn’t good. I can’t imagine the private was much better and what they knew Otherwise I think 6 million would have been a drop in the bucket for them. So they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt and they still need pitching depth so they should explore other options. We’re going to discuss those options in the minors, beyond the minors and what the 40 man roster looks like and how these moves impact it. Coming up on the rest of today’s Locked On Guardians, this episode of Lockdown Guardians brought to you by Prize Picks. Look, we have to make decisions every day. That’s just part of being an adult. But I don’t know about you, I think that when we make decisions, the right ones, we should get paid for it. And that’s what you can do over on Prize Pick. So you want to heat things up with the sports action as the weather gets colder and follow the NBA and the NFL. There’s really no better time to join. 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Price picks where it’s Keep up to date with all things Guardians this offseason by hitting the Bell on YouTube so you get notified whenever we’ve got a new episode of Locked in Guardians and you can auto download every good podcast. We’re free everywhere and you can keep the show in your feed no matter what’s going on, even during the holiday season. So you can be up to date and sound smart at the Thanksgiving table with all of your friends and family and tell them you listen to lockdown Guardians and debate that all right, so the most notable outrights coming from the rest of the moves. On Thursday we had Ben Lively who was outrighted and chose free agency. Colby Allard, Dom Nunez, Matt Crook and Will Wilson as well as Lively all outrighted off the roster and they had to re add because there’s no 60 man. There’s no injured list at all. In the off season they had to re add Andrew Walters and they decided to re add Will Brennan and Sam Henches. The question to me now is will they keep bread and will they keep punches? Those are all questions going forward too. Let’s really quickly talk about starting pitching and and this team because they decided that John Means, you know, was not really worth their $6 million for depth again. Maybe they’ll sign him to something a little bit cheaper or we’ll see what they decide to do. But right now your depth as far as starting pitching in the system is, you know, it’s Joey Cantillo and it’s I’m not joking. Tell us. Parker Messick, I think is is kind of your sixth guy right now. There’s still Doug Nikazi who was there and then you got Cal Stephen who came back last year after the injury when they traded for him for Shane Bieber. You’ve got Austin Peterson who is rule five eligible himself. Daniel Spino’s on the 40 man roster. Speaking of Daniel Spino, real quick sidebar here. He made the Arizona Fall League Fall Stars game that’s coming up next week. However, he won’t pitch. He is no longer on the Surprise Saguaro’s roster as far as I know. Like right now, talking to you right now, talking with you right now, I have not heard that it’s injury related, that it sounds like he is just going into normal off season mode so you can prepare for spring training. That could change. But that’s Just the information I have that I right now that this had nothing to do with an injury as far as him not being on the roster and pitching. But you know, I’m not guaranteeing that can’t change. So you have a speeder who I don’t think is a starting option personally. We’ll see. So they do need some depth, right? You have Cal, Stephen. We’ll see what happens with Peterson in the Rule 5. I do wonder if this makes it more likely they’ll add Peterson because what they could do is they could go ahead and bring back Ben Lively on a smaller deal again like they did a year ago and they non tendered him and brought him back. We know that Ben Lively is going to miss most, if not all 20, 26 because he had to have two arm surgeries. Tommy John and then there was other tendon injury, I think that one on his forearm or something. So he’s going to miss pretty much all 2026 if he’s an option. It’s late in the year so he doesn’t really even count his depth and they might sign him to a, a bridge deal where they rehab him for the year and see what happens the following year. The free agent class for starting pitching is ugly with a capital U. It’s, it’s one of the worst I’ve seen. Again, you’ve got Dylan Cease and Framer Valdez and, and Ranger Suarez but. And Zach Allen who’s coming off a terrible year and showed in Managa, who the Cubs also declined, which I thought was interesting. They decided to give him the qualifying offer. It’s just, it’s just not good in terms of depth. It’s not good. There’s good guys at the top and there’s a bunch of like four or fives out there. There was. There’s Merrill Kelly and Michael King is good, but there’s Meryl Kelly who’s a five. Eflin Latel who are, you know, four or five types. Verlander at this stage of his career is a four or five. Dustin May just hasn’t been proven. Molly was good last year. Tyler Molly for the Rangers. Soroka’s been terrible. Scherzer is not what he used to be. John Gray’s career might be over. Aaron Savali’s out there. Lucas Gillito’s out there. Adrian Hauser, like it’s pretty bad. If the Guardians didn’t think John means was worth 6 million, I don’t know what they’re gonna think about the rest of these guys. Like you’ve got, you know, Cody Pons who’s coming back from the KBO teams will be interested in, maybe they like Chris Paddock, I don’t know as a depth option. Griffin Canning was a guy that was on their radar last year. I thought they were going to sign Griffin Canning a year ago and he was good in limited time with the Mets last year. So maybe they go back to that well with him. Other than that it’s pretty bad. Like, like it’s, it’s Andrew Heaney and, and Tyler Anderson and Walker Bueller, Cal Quantrell, br Bring him back on a AAA deal. They’re going to need to bring somebody in and I think they will and they’ll most likely bring somebody in but I don’t think it’s going to be a major league deal. I’m pretty sure that all they’re going to do is bring in some veterans to pitch in AAA and, and see if maybe they’ll do a bridge deal. You know, we’ll see what happens. But I think that mostly it’s depth. I think they’re going to go with the rotation guys they have and see what happens with, you know, Messick and Nikhazi and Peterson and Cal Stephen. As far as the 40 man roster goes, there are 37 guys right now. So they decided to not move guys like Henches and Brennan who you know could have been on the fringes on a decision like this. They could have been on decision. So will Brennan’s back off the IL and you know they activated everybody because there is no injured list at this point. But all those guys are back off the injured list. The roster is at 37. I, you know, I could still see Zach Kent losing his spot at some point. Right. They don’t have any roster fodder left. So that’s important to note isn’t a fodder. I do think Will Brennan is a guy who winds up being a casualty when it comes to the 40 man roster situation next week when we get to Rule 5 decision day. I think Brennan’s a guy, I think they’ll hang on to henches. You know they paid henches all year in 2025 knowing he wasn’t going to pitch and he’s not going to get like a raise and arbitration. So they might as well just hang on to him because they already did it last year and he should pitch this year. So I do think that they’ll, they’ll just hang on to, to Sam Henches at this point. So the only guy left guys left on the roster are guys like Kent and Will Brennan. You know, everybody else on this roster is. There’s no longer fodder unless you. I, I should, I took the back. Nolan Jones I think is going to lose his roster spot. I just don’t see any way that he sticks around. And Franco Alaman, I don’t think they’ll dump him off the roster at this point, but I don’t think his roster spot is safe either. Depends on who they want to add. I do wonder if this makes it more likely for him to add Austin peterson to the 40 man. I, I don’t know. He was a slam dunk before but you know, maybe Peterson is more likely now than he was before this and looking up and down the roster like before about your mind. Gomez I think should be added to the 40, 40 man roster. So there, that’s a guy you got to put on. And then there’s Steven Perez in addition to Angel Hanau. And that’s, that’s most of the big guys. Obviously we talked about Cleo Watson yesterday. I know some people don’t agree with that, but maybe, maybe they’ll bump Will Brennan and keep Cleo Watson. We’ll see what happens. But they have options again. Brennan could go. Zach Kent could go. Franco Almond in theory could go. I think Nolan Jones could go. You know, one of Rodriguez or Noel could also be bumped. Honestly, they’re redundant and I’d rather keep Noel, as crazy as that sounds than Rodriguez. But those guys could all be bumped too, depending on how many people they want to add. So I wonder if not having Lively and not having John Means gives them more reason to hang on to Austin Peterson just for the depth purposes because it’s just Nikazi and Messick and AAA next year if everything goes well. The other thing I count for too is when you get the spring training pitchers get hurt, someone in spring training might get hurt and you’re going to need that, you’re going to need those extra pieces. So that’s why they’re going to bring in depth guys. That’s why I think it makes sense. I mean yes, they’ll have Stephen who isn’t roll five eligible, but they could use him in 2026 anyway. But that’s why it might make sense to hang on to guys like an Austin Peterson and Jormon Gomez who’s not necessarily ready. And there’s Dylan Delucia too, I failed to mention, you know, who could see some Rule 5 love too. I’m not sure I, I buy him as high as There are two guys I mentioned, but we’ll see. I think it’s an interesting situation. They definitely still need more pitching depth. All right. We have some rumors out there that I think are pretty safe to ignore at this point. We have some free agents to cross off the Guardians list already. I’ll tell you who in just a minute. The NBA is back and the Cavs are fun. That’s how I know it’s back. And there’s no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel. They are the official sports betting partner of the NBA. 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Play your game with Fandom, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. You can also join the Lockdown Guardians Insiders club if you’re in need of more Guardians talk beyond the show and we know you’re not getting it too many other places these days. There’s a couple good podcasts out there, obviously our friends over at the the Selling Godcast. It’s one of their places you can get some Guardians talk, but you can follow Jeff and I on social media. Jeff MV draft. You could find me at Jail Baseball Jail Underscore Baseball so you can join the Lockdown Guardians Insiders Club. We text with the Insiders every day about the Guardians, News rumors, monthly video chats. We get mailbag questions from the insiders and we deliver some bonus written content as well. You can sign up at joinsubtext.com/slock Guardians and if we buy any of those rumors that we’re seeing out there we’re hearing, the insiders will let you know first with a text before we record a show. And for us, it really depends on who the reports, who reports what and what the context is. And that’s why it’s even worth talking about if it is. The first thing we’ll note here is that the quote, the Angels are quote, unquote, shopping Taylor Ward and Joe Adele. Now that comes from John Morosi, who as a sideline reporter and a bilingual speaker and a game guy, I like him a lot. But as a news type person in baseball, not anywhere near the top of my go to list. You know, you can believe what you want to believe and think what you want to think about this stuff. And I’m not saying you don’t want to get excited about the possibility of trading for those guys because they could help the Guardians offensively. But given that it’s coming from John Morosi and he’s saying shopping, I don’t buy it. Again, we talked about shopping earlier in the week. I don’t know that teams are necessarily shopping guys in general because maybe you have some guys who are trying to move off your roster. But Taylor Warden, Joe Adele helped the Angels last year. They were good players. For them, they have been good. I mean, we’d say the war has been good for them. Joe Odell has finally, after all these years, finally found a way to be productive on the field. So I don’t buy that they’re shopping them. Maybe they’re taking calls. I don’t got shopping. Again, I said those are two different things. Taking calls is one thing. The Guardians listening in on on everybody but Tanner Bybey and Jose Ramirez. And at one point the closer who will not be named, not anymore, those are taking calls. That’s not actively shopping. So I hate the definition, but we talked about Ward a ton in the past. I know Jeff and I both like Taylor Ward. He’d be a great fit for this team. And we talked about Joe Odell on yesterday’s show and go back and check that one out a little bit. Jeff, you know, brought up some data on him that why he’s so poor defensively and he basically is a dh. But it is what it is. I don’t believe the Angels are shopping those two guys considering the source and the GM situation we mentioned yesterday. Perry Mason has one year left on his deal. They hired a manager for one year. Those two are tied together. So those guys are both fighting for their jobs. If they’re Trading Taylor Ward and Joe Adele. They’re not going to get better next year. It’s not going to help them. They can’t trade hitting for pitching. Their pitching’s bad, but they’re. They don’t have any hitters to step up behind them either. So unless Art Moreno wants to cut money. But even then, I don’t see it like, it’s not like Taylor Ward and Joy L are making that much money. So I don’t buy those rumors. I know people have asked us about them and, you know, I wish it was true because those guys could both help, especially Taylor Ward. But I just don’t buy the Angels are in that situation. All right. Murakami the second. Murakami the infielder from Japan. I’ve seen a couple places here, too. I said I’ve seen. Again, Jim Bowden mentioned that he could be a fit for Cleveland. Well, Jim Bowden doesn’t know who’s coming to Cleveland. Tim Bowden know where anybody’s going. He doesn’t know he’s coming to Cleveland for sure. So I don’t buy that. And I know I’ve seen other people say that. There are some Japanese reports saying that Cleveland could be in. The only reason I don’t buy it A is because it’s not a position fit. He’s a first slash third baseman. They don’t need a third baseman. And teams are asking him if he would be willing to dh. Cleveland doesn’t really need a dh. He can’t believe place second. You can’t really play outfield. So I don’t, I don’t see a position fit. I don’t buy the sources. And the Guardians don’t really play in the market in Japan. Now should they? That’s a different question. You know, I don’t want to sit here and say, well, they don’t do that. So they won’t do it because if that was the case, they wouldn’t have drafted Chase Lavalette and Nolan Schubart. You know, they, they took a different approach in the draft last year and, and it’s worth considering an approach change considering their offensive struggles. Right? They, they probably should. But if I’m going based on who the sources are, the market, the history, the positional fit, I, I’m not buying any interest like he’s a good hitter, but none of, none of the things add up at this point. Maybe, maybe the Guardians will change their approach. You know, maybe they will do something different again. It might be worth them doing that because what’s. What they’ve been doing hasn’t been working. But at this point in time, I don’t think that’s something really worth thinking about, talking about unless we see more concrete evidence. All right, let’s get to this before we get out of here. So former Guardians assistant heading coach Victor Rodriguez has been hired by the Houston Astros. Things are not as good as they were in Houston. I’m not sure Victor Rodriguez is planning to make like a Doug funny and bang on any trash cans. You can finish the lyrics yourself or if he carries any buzzers. But the Astros, you know, typically have been a better hitting organization than Cleveland. That’s very easy to say. And before he went to Houston, he was with the Padres and they also hit. Well, they had a hard time with power this year, but they’ve typically been a pretty good offensive club. They’ve had good offensive players. And we know that Rodriguez came from Boston before Cleveland when they were replacing Ty Van Berkeleyo. He came here as an assistant. So Victor Rodriguez, Chris Villeka, and then Jason Esposito, who we’ve talked about before, is with the Vanderbilt Commodores now is as one of their hitting gurus and assistant coaches. All three of those guys have been hired elsewhere despite the fact that Cleveland’s offense has been mediocre to terrible at best to me. Let me ask you this. Does that suggest that coaching isn’t the issue here and it’s the talent? And it’s possible those guys aren’t good hires? Maybe they’re not. You know, the Reds offense was not good this year. The Padres offense struggled this year. And the Astros offense has kind of gone in the wrong direction, too. But they’ve also lost. You know, Alex Bregman, your an Alvarez was hurt. George Springer’s not there anymore. Carlos Gray came back later on the year. They’ve lost a lot of their big offensive pieces. They traded Kyle Tucker. But I tend to think, you know, when we talk about the nature versus nurture debate here with all this, I think it falls on the side of the abilities. I really do, because why else would these guys be getting hired somewhere else? Now, again, results may not be great where they’ve been, but the. The Padres have been good offensively. But guess what they’ve had in. In Victor Rodriguez’s time there. They’ve had Juan Stto and they’ve had Fernando Tatis and they’ve had Manny Machado and Jay Cronenre, who’s been pretty good. They had Jackson Merrill, who’s pretty good. But all those guys were really well developed talents. They traded to get Soto, but they signed Machado. But they also developed Fernando Tatis, they developed Jake Cronenworth, they developed Jackson Merrill. Those guys are pretty good hitters. And Houston has also had good hitters. The Red Sox have had good hitters. So the common denominator here may or may not be the coaching. It may be the talent. And that’s kind of where I’ve always know sided on this whole thing in terms of the Guardians hitting issues. Like everyone’s like, oh, you know, fight, fire the hidden coach. Fire this guy, he’s not good. The Guardians have gone through multiple hitting coaches. They people wanted Ty Van Berkeley are gone. When they weren’t good, they. They fired him. They brought in Chris Fla, who by the way was an outside hire. Everybody said don’t promote him within. Okay. They brought in Chris Fla from the Cubs organization. The offense took on the guards ball identity when they brought Chris Flake in. Do you buy that? Chris Vika didn’t want the team to hit home runs and he wanted him to dink and dunk and slash and bloop their way and run their way to infield hits and forcing errors and wild pitches. Probably not. I think he would rather have the team hit the crap out of the baseball. And I know it didn’t work in Cincinnati, but Cincinnati’s lineup also was pretty disappointing too, behind Ali De La Cruz. And even he had his moments. But that was mostly because he got worn down this year. And then Chris Felika got hired by the Reds with Terry Francona going there. Terry Francona loves his guy. It’s not really a shock there. So Chris Flaca left for that and the Guardians brought in Grant Fink and they didn’t do well this year offensively. You know, they’ve gone through four hitting coaches in the last 10 years and their offense outside of, you know, six. And what, what do the good offenses have have in common versus the bad offenses? What do they contrast well in 2016 they were good offense because you had Carlos Santana really good. Jose broke out. Lindor was here. Mike Napoli had a really good year. Kipis had a really good year. Lonnie Chisal and Brandon Guyer made a great platoon. Okay. All those guys really worked out for you. Tyler Naquin had the only good year of his career. At least productive year of his career. They had really good options. 2017, you brought it Edwin and Carnacion and you had Jay Bruce. Later in the year, Michael Brantley came back and Jose took off even more. You know all those things added up. They were a better offense because they had better talent. And since then the Guardians have been mediocre to bad despite the fact they’ve had two hitting coach. I think Van Berkeley was still the coach in 17 and 8 or 16 and 17, but they’ve gotten rid of him since. And they brought in Valenca, that didn’t go well. And even though everyone to fire Van Berclio and then they brought in Vallejo and that didn’t go well. And now he, they made the playoffs, now he’s in Cincinnati and now with Grand Fink they don’t like it either. The coaches have been this is the same thing I say with the Browns all the time. The Browns, they keep bringing in new GMs, they keep bringing in new coaches over the years. They keep bringing in new quarterbacks and we keep seeing the same cycle of garbage. And the fact that factory of sadness as we said yesterday about center field for Cleveland, same thing over and over. The common denominator and and for the Browns is Jimmy Haslam. The common nominated for the Guardians and their offensive woes is their own talent development. It’s not coaching. Let me know what you think though in the comments and then on this issue. I know we’ve had some questions before about it in a mailbag episode, but given, given how these guys are getting hired somewhere else, I tend to think it’s, it’s, it’s the talent development. All right. On Monday, Jeff will be back with you solo. He’ll catch you up on the Weekend Update news that will happen over the weekend. He wants to know since people have really been enjoying his history segments. Draft or trade history? Wants to know. Let us know in the comments or I’ll do a poll if he should do on Monday a draft history or a free agent or trade history segment on Monday. Maybe we should do that for every segment. A weekly listener poll. Let me know what you think of that too. Until then, want you to make sure you have a good warm and safe weekend. And in the meantime, go go Guardians. Go drumming on my band show.

Cleveland Guardians declined John Means’ $6 million option. What questions does that raise about his ability, their pitching depth and roster strategy for 2026? Will management target other outside depth arms in a thin free agent market? These decisions would impact Guardians’ upcoming Rule 5 and non-tender decisions loom large as starting pitching depth options are thin.
Justin Lada explores the ripple effects of these roster moves, debates the offensive struggles tied to player development versus coaching, and breaks down rumors around potential trades and international signings. Will the Guardians aggressively pursue new bats, or double down on developing homegrown talent? We also debate Victor Rodriguez’s hiring by the Astros and take deeper look into Cleveland’s ongoing offensive challenges and the true cause.

00:00 Guardians News, Rumors & Updates
05:37 John Means’ Uncertain Future
07:35 Guardians’ Decision on John Means
14:05 Ben Lively’s 2026 Absence Likely
18:42 Roster Changes and Depth Concerns
25:46 Guardians Approach and Astros Update

26:54 Cleveland’s Coaching or Talent Issue?
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