Why Cleveland Guardians Should Have NO REGRETS About Drafting Travis Bazzana With Geoff Pontes of BA

Why Cleveland Guardians Should Have NO REGRETS About Drafting Travis Bazzana With Geoff Pontes of BA

The Guardians have added a lot to the last two drafts, but it was Nick Kurtz who won the Rookie of the year in 2025. Baseball America’s Jeff Potts will tell us if the Guardians have any regrets about their draft and if they change their approach. Tanner, Bobby, the Guardians and you’re listening to Locked On. Guardians. You are Locked On Guardians, your daily podcast on the Cleveland Guardians, part of the Locked On Podcast network. Your team every day. What is up? Guardians fans, thanks for hanging out with us. For the next half hour we unlock Done Guardians, the only daily podcast that covers your team every day from the majors, the minors, the draft and everything in between. Part of the Lockdown Podcast network now the number one sports podcast network. I’m Justin Latta, one of your two hosts here for the last three years and counting. My friend and coach Jeff Ellis and I’ve been writing about guardians prospects since 2007 as you mentioned. I’m Jeff Ellis. I’ve been here since Locked on expanded into baseball 1600 episodes ago. Before that I was National Writer at Scouting 247 focused on prospects and the draft. I want to thank you for making today’s episode your first listen today and everywhere it is you get podcast as well as a big shout out to all of our everydayers joining us during the off season. Still five days a week. Thank you all. Yes, couldn’t be here without you. And joining us today is our good friend and our most frequent guest, Jeff Potts for Baseball America. Always fun to talk ball with any time of year and always drops a ton of good knowledge you need to know about the Guardians and baseball every time he is on. Thanks for hanging out with us Jeff. Yeah guys, glad to be back. Been a little while since I was in the show. Had, you know. Yeah, you guys, we always have a good conversation ahead of time before we. Even jump on, right? Yeah, wish we could record those. We got a jam packed episode though on on draft and player development today we’ll ask Jeff to weigh in on the Guardians and if they’re too risk averse or if that’s just a league wide issue a little bit. We’ll debate if the Guardians have changed their player acquisition or development philosophy based on the 2025 draft. But we’re going to start off by looking at where the 2024 draft class is now and if the Guardians should have any regrets about the draft where they took Travis Bazzana number one overall in this episode of Lockdown. Guardians is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’ll get 300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download the FanDuel app today. Obviously, we’re not calling Travis Bazana a bad pick or a bus, but there is a sentiment out there that, hey, Nick Kurtz was great. And. And Jeff Ellis knows when the Guardians won the draft lottery, I was like, all right, merry Kurt Smith. This is the guy. He was always my guy. I came up with that. Did you come up? I did. Okay. Because I’m the Christmas. That’s true. I’m the Grinch. I don’t like Christmas. Somebody said I should get a Nick Kurtz pillow. I think that was one of the. Things that was Cheeks Malone. That would have been. That would have been creepy. But even I recognize, like, you can’t take him number one overall, but, you know, you’ve got Kurtz, and you’ve got Connor Griffin, who is your number one prospect now, and JJ Weatherholt had a really fantastic 2024. So, based on any of that, should the Guardians have any regrets about Travis Bazzani yet? No, I. I think, you know, two things can be true. They can still view Travis Bazana as a good pick, and I think they can also have regrets that they didn’t take Nick Kurtz or that people didn’t know that Connor Griffin was what Connor Griffin was going to be. Right. So. So I. I think they’re not alone necessarily in that position, because I think the two teams picking behind him is good. You know, Chase Burns was very good in the minors, came up to the majors, obviously struggle a little bit, you know, just in terms of strikes and some of that stuff, but it kind of rounded into form later, dealt with some injuries. Still probably don’t regret that pick. But I think you’d rather have Nick Kurtz right now if you’re the Reds. And certainly the Rockies would much rather have Nick Kurtz. But. But then again, maybe Charlie Condon would be Nick Kurtz if he went to the A’s, and Nick Kurtz would be Charlie Condon. You know, who’s to say in this alternate universe where Nick Kurtz is a Rocket? So, like, I think a lot of those teams probably regret that pick. I bet the White Sox probably regret taking Hagen Smith at 6. You know, if you’re the Royals now, granted you have Bobby Witt Jr. But would you rather have Connor Griffin maybe as your third baseman or center fielder instead of Jack Caglanone? Probably. I don’t think the Cardinals probably regret the Weatherholt pick right here, maybe you could say Griffin. They probably would tell you that they would rather have Weatherholt. And Weatherhole, honestly, was the other option at one for the Guardian. So it would have been one of those two players. So I don’t think it was a wrong evaluation. But Nick Kurtz did something he’s never done before that stay healthy for an entire calendar year and stayed on a baseball field. And we saw what he could do. You know, it’s still a first baseman, it’s still a guy with some checkered injury history, and he’s still playing in a minor league baseball park for his home games. That probably boosts some of the numbers a little bit. I know Jeff talked about it before the show. Some of these rookies that, you know, have a big first year and then maybe it, you know, he. They come down to earth a little bit, not say that they’re, you know, he’s not, you know, 80 of what he was last year or 85 of that, but just maybe that’s kind of more of a ceiling kind of thing for Nick Kurtz. And we just saw it immediately. That said, Travis Bazzano, like, despite dealing with injuries for the first time in his career, had a really good year. You know, he was 39, better than the competition over his 26 game sample with AAA Columbus, 35, better at double A. And there was an injury in between that. Right. And. And the other thing I think I said to you guys off air is the underlying that cast data is phenomenal. And having talked with Travis many times about hitting, I can tell by looking at this. He’s probably fairly pleased with where a lot of his personal benchmarks on things like pull, air chase rate, swing rate, contact, the evs, the angles, hard hit, launch angles. All of that stuff is 55 to 60 grade, you know, just based on like a metric evaluation, not necessarily, you know, an eye test, scout evaluation. He’s still the same player that you took at number one, and he still had a lot of really good traits. And I think the other thing that I had mentioned, if he’s doing this, this what I’m seeing on the spreadsheet and what we’ve watched in games, if he’s doing that fully at Double A, moves up to AAA in June or July and then hits there, he might be in the major September 1st and, and might be penciled into this, this lineup next year. It wouldn’t shock me if he comes into the spring training, has a great camp, and pushes his way into the opening day lineup. It wouldn’t shock me, especially considering his age and some of the benefits that you get in terms of draft capital. If Bazano was to come up and, and win Rookie of the Year, right, And maybe it’ll be a, a brush of good luck. You know, maybe he avoids having to go head to head with Kurt’s having this monster year in 2025 as a rookie, and now they have an opportunity to actually, you know, have him in pro ball for a year, working the things he has to work on and, you know, get him some pro experience before he does come up in 2026. And then, you know, they get him up before that PPI date and is eligible to potentially get them a pick, you know, for, for winning Rookie of the Year and then, you know, potentially in the future qualifying for other awards. He’s still a plus hitter. Like, I, I have no doubts about that. He’s not going to play shortstop. Maybe he doesn’t have enough. As much defensive value as some other guys, but probably equal occurrence in terms of defensive value. He’s a first baseman, right? Yeah. So we’ll see. I mean, I, I still think it’s. I, I still think it’s a good pick. And there’s a, a reality here where in a year from now, we’re saying like, oh, yeah, he had a better year than Kurtz and he had a better year than JJ Weatherholt. I’m not willing to say Connor Griffin because I think that’s a, that’s a different animal. We typically only. We don’t. We. We don’t. We don’t have those in the United States. Typically, guys like Connor Griffin come from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela or Japan. Like, yeah, we don’t get these all. World athletes from the south that play baseball. These guys are usually like quarterbacks in the NFL, you know, or wide receivers or tight ends or something. Like, Connor Griffin should be in the sec. The fact that he ended up playing baseball is a testament to his dad. Baseball, softball coach, baseball coach, a little bit of both. So credit to him for keeping him in the right sport. Yeah, for sure. He’s gonna get paid like it too? Oh, I think so. Yeah. He might get an extent. He might get an extension in like January, February, like, if, if, if that front office can get nutting to spend some money. There’s a chance that, like, Griffin signs the extension, like the Cheerio extension this off season. I don’t think you’re out of the draft pick compensation, though. I think the extra years for them and locking him up is probably more important. Yeah, especially considering he was a high school pick and doesn’t make as much sense for a college pick. And then to be fair, Bazana was the healthier guy in height in college too. Like he was the guy who played every game, played in the cave, all that stuff. Like, so now we’re gonna go from the other end of the spectrum. You just said like, wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up on the opening day roster. So we’re gonna have people go from always a bus to oh well, Geoff Pontes is gonna be the open day roster. So if he’s not now, we’re all going to be really mad. So we’ll continue to chat about that. We’ll talk about the Guardians 2025 draft and see if they made any changes based off of that in a second. The NBA is spicy. It’s heating up. We know in Cleveland because the Cavs just had a difficult match with the Houston Rockets. There’s no better place to get in on NBA action that FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. If you missed the start of the game like you probably wanted to for the Cavs and Rockets on Wednesday night and you want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who’s going to score next, the fourth quarter comebacks as the Cavs were attempting to do on Wednesday. You can combine those live bets into same game parlays for a bigger shot at a bigger payout. I like to take the risk and I like to be responsible about it, but I take the risk as well. The Cavs, they’re back in action against the Pacers on Friday. The Browns, they are hosting or playing the Raiders on Sunday. I would stay away from that one. We got Thursday Night Football tonight against the Houston Texans and the Buffalo Bills. No CJ Stroud for Houston, so we’ll see what happens there. Right now if you head over to Fandom, you’re a new customer. When you put down a five dollar bet and it wins, you’re gonna get 300 in bonus bets. So head over to fandom.com to play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. As always, want to thank you for making Lockdown Guardians your first listen to the everyday wherever you get podcast. Even bigger. Thank you to everybody who has made Lockdown the number one sports podcast network. Could not be here without all of you. They’re the reason we’re number one somehow. Keep up to date with all things Guardians this offseason. Hitting the Bell on YouTube. So you get all of the episodes sent right to your phone, as well as any reaction videos to Things like the Rule 5 protection or auto download the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. So you can take us with us on walks with your dog to the gym, driving, shoveling snow. Hopefully that won’t be happening anytime soon, but keep your show on your feed no matter what during the holiday season. Also, make sure to check out Geoff Pontes’s work at Baseball America as well. Highly, highly recommended. I get the magazine, I get the Prospect annual. I read everything over there. So I consume this product myself and I endorse it 100. I would put a sign in my yard for that. How about that? I’m not a big. There you go. Yeah, that’s, that would be my first one ever. I’ll do that. I appreciate it. Not if, not if Travis was on, is not on the opening day roster because as Jeff predicted, so we’re gonna hold him to that. We’re gonna come back in, in March and say, well, it didn’t happen then we’ll never have Jeff back on again. Well, if he’s up by the PPI date, which is like 18 days in, does that count still? Yes. 100% sure. We’ll, we’ll take, we’ll take the potential period window. Like, I, I think that’s a possibility, you know, and I think, like, you have the opportunity to get that, to get that draft pick, you got to take it. So I just think it’s funny because, like I said, I think, I think we’re going to go from, People are going to listen to this. I think we’re going to go from people who are, like, hating on the pick to saying, well, now they’re really excited if he could be on the opening day roster. And that changes things. And I, I just think that that change, the velocity of change is going to be hilarious. I, I think it’s, it’s funny because people’s memories are short, but they’re not short enough that they forget what happened, like, two months ago, like the end of the baseball season and how they felt like that stuck with them. Still, that doesn’t go away until, like, the holidays happen in January and like, NFL playoffs, and then their minds are just erased and then they forget everything that happened two months ago. So, like, you know, I, I, I think it’s funny because I, I think a lot of it just comes down to those three players, really. Right. Like, it comes down to what Kurtz did, which I don’t even think the A’s thought he was gonna do that. Frankly, Connor Griffin, which if you look at the swing at the time of him getting drafted versus the swing that he had in December this year, way different. You couldn’t bet on that, that that was going to get as cleaned up as quickly as it did. And all of a sudden it was going to be like, is this Fernando Tatis Jr. Like, is that, you know, and then, and then JJ Weatherholt. But like I said, like, there are Stiller players. Weatherholtz maybe a little bit better defender, has a little bit, maybe more raw power, but they’re not that different. Like it. If they had similar production next year, it wouldn’t be shocking. Especially when, you know, Weatherholt’s having to hit in St. Louis vs. Bazana having to hit in Cleveland, I don’t think that would be that much of a shock either. Like, I don’t think he’s that far behind. He missed a couple of months with some oblique injuries and those are tricky. Like, those are tricky injuries. They’re not, it’s, you know, it’s not like a broken bone where you kind of know how it’s going to heal and they can kind of monitor that. Like, those are rest injuries, you know, and it limits you from things that you can do in terms of training and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it’s, it’s an injury that has like, you know, a four week tail one way or the other in terms of when it’s actually healed. Yeah. And of course the, the other side of it’s going to be now if he’s not up, then we’re going to get the. Well, it’s because they’re cheap or they’re manipulating service time. So that’s what we’ll get now instead of. So, you know, it’s, you can’t win for losing, as my father would say. But yeah, no, it’s, it’s. He’s still a bit. Bottom line, it’s an exciting prospect amongst many exciting prospects. I think a lot of people this year disagreed with us. You know, we, we were a little more concerned with Jason Lavalette, but a lot of people considered him a very exciting prospect in Cleveland because his team has been desperate for power. And then they took Dylan Schubart who’s just, you know, exit velocities and size and a, a hulk out there. It did feel a little bit different. What, I mean, what were you seeing? What do you think? Do you, do you think it was just the they took who was there on the board and took some big swings. Or do you think it was interesting? Because both of those guys are. I’m gonna get it wrong is what they. They might K a lot, but they don’t chase a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think they kind of fit into more of that profile of like, the three true outcome type of hitters, which is not something Cleveland has gone after because their sluggers tend to be like, free swingers. Right. Like the guys they’ve had in the system that had, you know, 70 grade raw power, they’ve always been like, high chase guys, like, you know, Big Chris and, you know, Gonzalez and like, all those kind of guys. Right. So they haven’t really had these. This style of player. I can see what the upside is of, like, hey, we really lack contact quality in our system. Well, let’s fix that by taking the guys with, you know, two of the best contact quality in the draft. I think Laviolette has upside. I think it was a weird year. He dealt with some injuries. You know, Schloss run into Texas from Texas A and M and having to deal with the change of the coaching staff and like, we don’t know what the player development behind the scenes was. Like, all that kind of stuff with. With A M. I may be able to give him a little bit of a mulligan on some of the struggles that he had. I think it falls in line with, like, the Chase, the Lauder pick, where there’s a guy that, talent wise, might be top 10 with some question marks based on stuff that happened. It was injuries. In Delauder’s case, it was inconsistent performance. In La Violette’s case that kind of fell off that perch for whatever reason and falls into the lap a little bit. I think it kind of falls in line with that same mentality. But, you know, if you can get the player that. I think a lot of people thought this guy was going into a sophomore year and you can get some of that athleticism back that looked like it was sapped down a little bit. And you get that center fielder with 70 raw power, really good swing decisions, and you can get it to, like, 45 contact because he’s kind of been there before. It’s not like he’s always been a 30, you know, grade contact guy. It’s not like this is, you know, Spencer Jones or somebody like that where you’re really, really concerned with the contact. Like, at that rate. It’s in the concerning bucket. It’s not in the, oh, my God, this guy might hit 190 bucket. Joey Gallo. Yeah. Is what I think like Spencer Jones is. Schubart might be a little bit more that, like Hits 190 bucket, but he also has big juice as well. Maybe more ev than anybody in that system. Hits the ball really, really hard. He stings it. He’s a Midwest kid, you know, orchard length. St. Mary’s guy from, from Michigan, Detroit, Michigan area. So like, you know, I, I don’t dislike either pick, but there’s a lot of risk, you know, and it’s not in line what they’ve done before. It’s almost like they went from the most risk adverse profiles as hitters of like these contact guys that kind of didn’t have a ton of upside and sort of played up the middle, but they were more like 50 grade center fielders and short stops that were moving to second base. Like they had a lot of those guys in all the acquisition windows too. Right. Like it was international, it was high school guys, it was college. They had a ton of those guys and they went to like the extreme opposite profile of like the guy who lacked contact. But if you get this to a 45 or 50 grade contact, oh my God, look out. This could be, you know, a 40 home run bat. Like they got two guys like that, so. And one of them potentially can play center field, probably more right field. I, I mean, like, I don’t dislike the picks because I think they’re upside picks. And I tend to like when teams chase after upside, whether that’s with pitching or whether that’s with, you know, hitting that maybe has this flaw. But if you can kind of just fix it enough, the upside is, you know, a plus player, like a plus everyday guy. It’s kind of funny that nobody told them like it’s a, it’s a smart franchise, but nobody ever told them you might want to have a more diverse portfolio. Like that’s just very, very odd that nobody ever, ever. Yeah, well, it’s kind of like going with all the guys who couldn’t hit for power but had the nice swing and saying we’ll add power. Now going the other way, well, we could fix power, maybe we can fix swing. Yeah, we’re gonna try the other way now. You know, they have enough guys that hit for contact. Maybe they got plenty of guys in the clubhouse that can give them some pointers. I don’t, you know, I don’t know. Yeah, but. I think they’ve gotten a little bit more exciting in terms of the types of players they’ve gone after over the last couple of years. Like even the high school pitchers that they went after in the 24 draft, there’s a lot of exciting, you know, there’s a lot of excitement around those guys. Like big, big high spin breaking balls, guys that throw hard in high school. Those aren’t necessarily the types of players that the Guardians were. Were taken, you know. Yeah, six, seven years prior. Right. It was a lot of college stuff. It was a lot of very model centric looking drafts and they’ve seemed to start to pivot away from that a little bit, which is good. I think model centric drafts are boring and bad. I think that’s how you end up with systems like the Cubs with like, hey, we got like a bunch of guys with, you know, good contact and swing decisions and good EVs, but they’re all first baseman and left fielders. Like, you end up with a. That, you know, or like Cleveland. All right, we’ll talk more about risks in a second. We’ll talk about risk averse and the Guardians. We just established the Guardians took more risks in 2025. So now we’ll debate if that’s a change in approach or an anomaly or if the Guardians are still too risk averse in just a second. If you need more Guardians baseball or just baseball talk in general to warm you up during the winter. I know we all do here these days. Can follow Jeff Ellis at Jeff MLB draft, myself everywhere at jail underscore baseball or JL baseball. You can follow Geoff Pontes at Geoff Pontes ba. That’s Jeff spelled a different way the other way. Geoff Ponce VA Everywhere else. Or. Or like his cousin Blaze Pontes. You can join the lockdown Guardians. I know. It’s like this club. My phonetic. My phonetic cousin Cody Potts is coming over from. From. Oh yeah, it’s pretty good too. Kbo, I think. Yeah, it was a kbo. It’s not. Yeah, Anthony K. Is coming over from npb. That’s who the American is. It’s coming back. All right, so he says it correctly. Cody Ponce. Right. Blaze Pontes says it incorrectly. But I’ve noticed this with. So I’m. I’m Portuguese and I’ve noticed this with Portuguese last names in the west coast is they jack them all up. They make them sound. They pronounce them like his, like Hispanic surnames. And like we don’t say syllables. We don’t enunciate that much. We swallow our syllables. All right. Of course it sounds like mumbled Spanish. All right, So I think people, it’s Ponce, you know, it means bridge. So my name is like technically Jeff Bridges. So I’m. I am actually the dude on the biggest. All right. I like that my name, My name translates to Jeff Bridges. All right. Look at that. All right, we had Jeff. We could say we had Jeff Bridges on the show. Very confused, but that would be a bucket list for me too. I mean, having you on is great, but having the dude on the show would be. Can we put him in our thumbnail and just confuse people? Yeah, just do that, people. It’s not technically wrong. It’s not false advertising. Yeah, it’s not. It’s clickbait is what it is. It’s clickbait. People get mad at us for that. All right, so you just mentioned kind of before that the Guardians kind of shifted direction. So you think that was more of a shift than a, an anomaly in terms of, you know that because. Well, I guess that’s not really a shift because you just mentioned like Chase the Lauder. That’s what they do in the first round. They take Brady Aiken, they take Daniel Espino, they take Chase the Lotter. They take Jace Lobulette. Schubart was a bit of a difference, but they still took, you know, Luke Hill. They still took their normal types after that. So their first round is consistently risky. And then after that they go into conservative mode, I would say. So maybe it wasn’t as much of an approach change as it was the same thing with a different type of player. But do you think, do you think overall they’ve been too risk averse? Like, we’ve had a lot of quants, Freeman, Zohobby, but then we’ve had, you know, Alphonse and Rosario, we’ve had Jace La Villette, Schubart, like, and Cleo Watson, you know, is kind of a risk too. Like, do you think they’re trending a little more in that direction? Do they need to trend more in that direction? Yeah. How could we call a team that has Khalil Watson on the 40 man roster risk averse? Right. They. They took a chance on him when nobody else wanted to and they’ve now reaped the rewards. He’s turned into a pretty decent player. Yeah, I mean, I think overall it’s still a function of the market and it’s a function of the type of revenue that the Guardians are going to generate versus other teams that maybe can take bigger risks. You know, I think that they can take risks with pitchers. Right. In terms of the draft, I think with hitters and we see this kind of with like the Rays too and some of these other teams, if they, if they miss on bats, it kind of hurts them a little bit more because the guys that are going to make impact, the kind of bats that you need to be able to take shots on in the first round and, and nail right like you got to find some, some 60s, you got to find some, you know, some, some potential all stars in the draft or you know, in the international market when you’re a smaller market team, like you’re not going to sign that guy for a five year, 150 million dollar contract. You’re just not you, you know, you’re not even going to sign like a Josh Naylor deal like we just saw him get with Seattle. So you kind of got to develop those guys and then you got to make the decision to trade them out two years out so you can kind of keep the thing going. It’s one of the unfortunate things I think because there’s teams that are risk averse that draft like this or operate like this that are in much bigger markets. Baltimore operates like this. It drives me crazy. I think the Cubs operate like this. It’s one of the super frustrating things about the Cubs is like the particularly they’re drafting. It’s very model heavy. It’s very risk averse. You know, look who’s in the front office. Yeah, I mean, exactly. You know, and I think like teams like this are, a lot of teams like this are run this way. I think that the Blue Jays were run this way for the longest time and obviously there’s some consistency between the Cleveland and the Toronto front office over the last couple years. Toronto started to go away from that style of drafting and they took more risky players. Argentamala was considered more risky. Treus Savage was considered more risky. There were teams that were off of Treus Savage because of the medicals. I heard after that pick it was panned by every other team and I couldn’t figure it out because I’m like, I’ve watched this guy out duel. Chase Burns pitching against the better lineup in Wake Forest and he was one of the best college pitchers that I’ve watched over the last five years outside of Paul Skeens or whatever. How is this a bad pick? When it dropped down to him, we thought it was, he was a value and was like oh no, the injury risk, blah blah blah. Taken on some of that kind of risk. Whether it’s profile risk, whether it’s injury risk, there’s all different knocks on These profiles, I think you have to kind of go outside of that risk averse, model based philosophy to really win. You know, I even think on how like Toronto builds their team, like they go out and they do spend some money in free agency, like they actually do take more shots than a lot of other teams do. The Dodgers aren’t. There’s maybe three teams in the sport that can replicate what the Dodgers do. The Yankees, the Red Sox, maybe the Phillies can do that. Mets, yeah, I guess the Mets, you know, but it’s the Mets. They’re always just such a mess. I can remember. Financially. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that that’s what they want to do. They want to have the same sort of operation that Dodgers have. But the Dodgers have so much money to invest in scouting and player development and in R D and they can go and spend a ton of money in the international market and then they can take on the penalties. And the other thing that the Dodgers at this point can do because of all those resources, they can then negotiate your player that’s going to Cleveland and say, hey, if you take $400,000 more, you can sign with us. And I don’t know if you’re gonna get 1.2 or 1.6. Would you rather be a Dodgers or a guardians prospect? Right. Would you rather work with those player development and all the other, you know, amenities that come with being a Dodgers player? Yeah, you probably would. You know, maybe you wouldn’t like it. You know, it depends on your situation. Most baseball players in America grow up with a lot of money. But yeah, I mean, I think that there’s some other things at play here that make it harder. And maybe I’m not articulating this in, in the most eloquent way, but like, I think there’s some other elements just with like as much as we, we want to say, oh, every team can spend a ton of money, there are limited budgets. Like when we do see some sort of revenue dollars or some estimates on what revenue dollars are, Cleveland’s a lot lower than some of these other big teams and like just a product of the market. And you know, the fact that they haven’t won big, you know, maybe if they win a World Series, things change. But you know, it’s, it’s not like Fenway park where, you know, there’s nothing else to do in Boston in the middle of the summer and everybody’s hanging out in that section of the city and doing stuff. You know, it’s not like that. So I don’t know you know, I, I wonder if it’s a solvable problem, and I think it’s something that’s just always lurking behind the scenes that they got to navigate. They got a hit on a higher percentage of their draft picks for things to work and for them to even be what they’ve been, which is a playoff team winning division titles. They got, you know, they maybe have to take, you know, the 10 risk player versus the 40 risk player more often than not for this all to work and to have the depth, etc. Yeah, I think you have to. Like, I, I, like we always say, like, it’s, it’s great to have a lot of bites at the apple. Right. Because I don’t want to spend my summer watching the Chicago White Sox. Right. I don’t want to, I don’t want to do that. And the Royals won a World Series in 2015, but until, you know, last season, they were pretty much trash after that. I don’t want to spend my summer doing that either. So, like, I, I appreciate the approach that, hey, we’re gonna win. I know nobody liked Jerry depot’s thing of 54 of games over, you know, a stretch of five years, whatever, but like Milwaukee and Cleveland, they’re consistently 85 to 91 teams. They make the playoffs, they win divisions. And I know a lot of people are like, well, that’s great and all, but I want a World Series. And I do, too. So I think, like, I appreciate that approach, but I do think, like, a lot of what’s going to hold them back from getting over the edge is probably taking a few more risks than they already do. That’s, that’s what, that’s. Because like you said, you’re not going to match the Dodgers, you’re not going to match the, the Yankees or the Red Sox. And the way to beat them is you’re going to have, maybe you have to take a few more risks in order to reach that level and trust that you’re. The rest of your infrastructure holds and you make the right decisions to, to balance those things out. Yeah, I mean, it feels like their approach has always been like, quantity over quality. Right. Like, that’s what we’ve seen in trades and everything else. And it feels like maybe it’s. And that’s been successful in a lot of ways, but like, it hasn’t gotten them quite there. It feels like maybe you need to mix it up a bit more. Kind of. Some of what we’re hearing to a degree, it’s like, you know, you still want to do quantity Sometimes it’s great, but maybe occasionally go for. And we’ve seen a little bit more of that. Right. Like things like getting Morgan for Rosario a year ago, the one to one deal was something we had really never seen from this org. So there’s some shifting, I think we see. Yeah. Manzardo and. And the Savali deal. That sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That worked out okay for them. All right. So last year. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he. And I think he’ll be better in 2025 or 2026 as well. I think there’s a lot of upside still. And he was in that profile better against lefties than people realize he was. I mean, yeah, he had a great stretch to start the year and then kind of cooled off and then picked things back up. But it was literally his first full year in the majors. Like, for what he did for his first full year, like, I. I would say that that worked out pretty well. I mean, he wasn’t what we expected, but he ended up being pretty good. And I believe he had a higher WOBA against lefties than definitely Vinnie Pasquintino. And I want to say the other one was maybe Michael Bush. So it was not terrible when those guys were so great. I do like Pascantino. He’s a fun Twitter follow. I will say for what Twitter is these days. He’s hilarious. I have a weird history of not liking Royals players, but he is a. A gem that I’m forced to love. I will say he is. He’s. He’s a lot of fun. Just a great personality. Fun to follow. Yes. Yeah. Well, it is the holiday season. If you’ve got a baseball fan in your life, I highly recommend a subscription to Baseball America. If you are looking for gifts for somebody out there. Can’t recommend that enough. And if it’s. If you think it’s a terrible idea, you can come back and ask me for the money. I’ll pay for it because I highly. I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I think it’s a great thing. Maybe I’ll even buy one and give it away this year to a listener. We’ll see. Maybe we’ll run some kind of contest and we’ll see what we can do with that. I don’t know. I got. I got some ideas on things I want to do. I’ll be back with you tomorrow. Jeff Ellis gets the day off. Jeff Potts never gets a day off because he’s either bowling or doing baseball podcasts. But we’ll talk more about trades. Trades trades transactions. We didn’t get to do trade talk Thursday, but we will do fantasy Friday, and we’ll do, you know, Brandon Lowe. What’s up, Brandon Nemo. I’ll talk about Adoles, Garcia, Tyler o’. Neill. And if you got some names you want to talk about in the trade realm, let me know and I will chat all about them. And how Rob Manfred cost Major League Baseball millions of dollars in TV revenue. I’ll talk about that tomorrow, too. As always, thank you all for joining us. Rate and review. Do all the things you know you need to do and go. Go. Guardians. Go. It’s a leak.

Cleveland Guardians fans are still asking: Did the team miss out by drafting Travis Bazzana over 2025 AL Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz? Justin Lada, Jeff Ellis, and Baseball America’s Geoff Pontes break down the ripple effects of the Guardians’ recent draft classes. From Bazzana’s promising metrics and rapid Triple-A rise to Kurtz’s breakout season, the crew debates whether Cleveland should have regrets—and if a change in drafting philosophy is underway. The show dives into the Guardians’ newfound willingness to target high-upside, riskier players like Jace LaViolette and Nolan Schubart, the organization’s historical focus on contact hitters, and how salary constraints impact player development strategy. Geoff Pontes offers insider perspective on prospects to watch, evolving MLB front office approaches, and what Cleveland must do to bridge the gap with juggernauts like the Dodgers. Will the Guardians’ new draft risks finally pay off?

00:00 Guardians Draft and Development Debate
06:03 Travis Bazzana’s Path to MLB
13:34 Unexpected Player Developments
16:02 Cleveland’s Shift in Draft Strategy
18:42 Risky Shift in Player Profile
21:32 Guardians: Risk Debate 2025
24:49 Guardians’ Risk-Taking Strategy
29:28 Baseball Economics and Market Factors
31:16 Winning vs. World Series Ambition

Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!
Gametime
Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.

FanDuel
Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA and NFL seasons are here, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.

FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…
🎧 https://lockedonpodcasts.com/podcasts/locked-on-guardians/

Locked On MLB League-Wide: Every Team, Prospects & More
🎧 https://lockedonpodcasts.com/leagues/mlb/

#Guardians #ClevelandGuardians #MLB