Cleveland Guardians ADD MORE Relief Depth in Justin Bruihl; DFA Jhonkensy Noel

Cleveland Guardians ADD MORE Relief Depth in Justin Bruihl; DFA Jhonkensy Noel

The Guardians continue to stuff their stockings with relievers and it cost them the ultimate present under the tree who’s turned into a pumpkin or a lump of coal if you want to go that direction. The Guardians added Justin Brew to their bullpen on Wednesday in a trade for cash with the Toronto Blue Jays. Burle was designated for assignment by the Blue Jays a couple of days ago. Has been around minor league baseball for a couple of years now. He’s 28. He’s been with the Pirates in the majors, the Dodgers, uh obviously with Toronto. He’s been the miners of the Reds as well. So, he’s been kicked around a little bit. A lefty who doesn’t throw hard, but Stuff Plus has always liked uh BR’s stuff. It’s been sinker, slider, a little bit of cutter. He’s always graded out very well though, over 100. And again, 100’s average. So, anytime you’re above 100, your pitches is really good by that model. Does a decent job at missing bats. Not a great bat miss. Um, a guy who can throw strikes, does have some walks, but not a ton. So generally this is a pretty good gauge of where you’re at with pitchers. You’re looking at guys who have strong strikeout to walk ratios which Brew is a little above a run-of-the-mill. And then the stuff plus models also like him even though it’s been limited opportunities. He really hasn’t pitched more than about 28 innings in the majors per year. So he’s been mostly a depth reliever throughout his career. Uh he doesn’t have any options left, but he only has one full year of service time. So, he’s going to come with a lot of control, but he’s not optionable in terms of a guy you can set up and down in Columbus. So, my guess is he’s not going to be a guy who Cleveland is going to necessarily have in their bullpen on opening day. I think they’re going to hope he’s a guy that can get through waiverss and pass his death, but he’ll come to camp obviously um as a major league option or maybe they replace him on the 40 before then, hope he clears waiverss the next time. Um really low arm angle. It’s dropped a lot over the years. always associate arm angles dropping with injury. Usually when they’re higher, uh it’s a normal slot and they drop usually that’s a sign of an injury. That happened to Cory Kuber throughout his career. So I don’t know if that’s the case for Brule, but he’s an interesting look and you know gives them a lefty depth they don’t have in the minors obviously outside of you know guys that are not even on the 40man roster. So we’ll see what happens there. And obviously John Kenzan Noel is the um sacrificial lamb for this move. The Guardians are in need of power. They’re in need of some balance in their lineup with the right-hander. And they were still willing to move on from Noel, which tells you everything they need to know is that his swing decisions, his aggressiveness, his inability to stop chasing was just not fixable at this point for them. Uh he was out of options. I know some people have said, “Why not Rodriguez or somebody else?” Well, he Rodriguez has options. I don’t think he’s any good either, but he has options. They can keep using him as depth. and they decided that Noel, you know, they had enough chances and um it just his issues with the bat are not fixable at this point. We’ll see if somebody picks them up.