TARGETS: Cleveland Guardians Offseason HINGES On Deals With St Louis Cardinals, Arizona Diamondbacks

TARGETS: Cleveland Guardians Offseason HINGES On Deals With St Louis Cardinals, Arizona Diamondbacks

The Guardians need to add a bat and shore up their bullpen this off season. The teams and names that are the best trade partners to do that might surprise you. 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 and Happy Holidays Thanksgiving. Thanks for hanging out with us for the next half hour on Lockdown Guardians, the only daily Cleveland Guardians podcast that covers your team from the majors, the minors, the draft, everything in between every single day. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network now the number one sports podcast network. I’m Justin Latta, one of your two co hosts for the last three years and counting. My friend and co host Jeff Ellis, who is off today and I’ve spent the last 18 years, believe it or not, covering the Guardians minor league system as a prospect writer and editor. On today’s show, I’ll dive into some of my old prospect lists and I’ll talk about what I’ve learned from prospect rankings and how my approach has changed and I’ll show you some of my biggest misses in rankings in the past. We’ll talk about how the Yankees are crying poor, how everything this offseason is setting up towards next year’s lockout and CBA fight. But it is Thanksgiving and it’s trade Talk Thursday, so we’re talking about the most likely trade partners for the Guardians this winter. Today’s episode of Lockdown Guardians brought to you by FanDuel right now, if you’re a new customer, you can bet just $5 and if your bet wins, you’ll get 300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download the app today before we get started to Also want to throw out a quick shout out to GH Ace Aussie who moved to Cleveland this past July and said he’s looking to baseball to help him feel closer to his new environment. He’s been a part of a daily routine with Lockdown Guardians since July. So welcome in GH Aussie and welcome to Cleveland and everybody comment on there and give them some good recommendations and GA Josh the youth can also email the show@lo guardianshow gmail.com if you’re looking for some more recommendations for Cleveland based things, whether it’s places to go, restaurants, other fun things, all Cleveland based things. I can give you some information there and I’m sure all of your fellow Guardians fans would love to help out too, so make them feel welcome to the area. So the winter Meetings are in two weeks and let’s be honest about that. We don’t see a ton of deals that happen there. They usually set up future deals in most cases, at least from the Guardians. I’m trying to think the last couple trades they’ve executed at the winter meetings, it’s mostly been. They had the Josh Bell signing that came with the Winter meetings a couple years ago. They made the Yandy Diaz trade to get Carlos Santana back in 2018 there. They just have not executed a lot of trades, the winter meetings. That doesn’t really surprise me. Most of their stuff gets set up for after. And I, I expect that to be the case this year too, because the market’s going to want to heat up first. You know, we saw Dylan Cease go to the Blue Jays for seven years. 210 million, which is insane through his age 36 season and just a ton, a ton of money there. But, you know, they’re coming off a World Series run and they’re a big market team, so why not? So I think the Guardians will do a lot of groundwork from the Winter Meetings. I think we’ll maybe hear about some, some areas they’re interested in. Maybe they’ll play around with a reliever in the Rule 5 draft. But I just don’t see them making a ton of big news outside of more questions about the gambling scandal, the Winter Meetings. But they do set up future deals there. A lot of teams do now. That’s generally how it works. So who do the Guardians have relationships with and who do they match up best with in a trade this off season? I do think the Guardians will make a notable trade this off season. I do think it’ll come on the acquisition side. They don’t have anything to sell. Now. I know people are going to say Stephen Kwan and if those deals are out there for Stephen Kwan, yes, they’re gonna listen. Yes, you’re gonna hear rumors. I just don’t buy the Guardians are gonna move him unless they really think that his value has cratered so much they’re willing to take a deal and get out from his last two years. They generally don’t do that. I think they’d rather let him rebuild his value this year and re approach that next offseason. I wouldn’t even think extension. I know some people have talked extension or asked me about an extension. It’s just not happening. He’s gonna bet on himself. The Guardians aren’t going to get him to buy in after a down year. So I expect nothing to happen on the Stephen Kwan front a bunch of news and rumors that won’t go anywhere honestly. But let’s start with the most obvious one. I think the Cardinals are the most obvious one because they’re already indicating the teams they’re gonna sell. Right? We pretty much know that. And they are rebuilding. And I expect a guy like obviously Brendan Donovan. We’ve talked about him ad nauseam. He is a guy that the Guardians covet. He’d be a player they absolutely are interested in. And he is very highly regarding the trade market. A lot of teams want him. He’s almost certainly going to be dealt and a lot of teams are in on him. Rob Sir Folio is, we’ve talked about this before too, is the Cardinals assistant general manager. He is an ex Guardians director of player development. That’s going to weigh heavily in there. He’s going to know the Guardians farm system they’re talking so he can give Heimbloom a lot of insight on that. And we know what the Cardinals want. We talked about this yesterday. The Cardinals want guys with high upside tools. They also want some good floor. I think Cleveland has a lot of that to offer them. We talked about Logan Allen yesterday. We talked about guys lower in the minors too. That could help. Beyond Brendan Donovan though, there’s two players on that roster I think that make a ton of sense for Cleveland. One of them to me is Lars Newt Bar. Now Lars New Bar I know everyone’s gonna say he has no power. Well, here’s the thing about Lars newbar. He had 13 home runs last year that would have led Guardians outfielders with 13 home runs. Okay. The year before that he had 12. The year before I hit 14 that’s led Guardians. The Guardians have not had more than that since the days of Michael Brantley. So their outfield upgrade is very, very low even in a down year. Lars Newbar at a 96 WRC plus is only 27. He’ll be. He’s 28 next year. He’s got two years of control and he could play center field. Now his his defense was down a little bit last year. It was a down year production wise for him. But there’s a lot of really good indicators on that savant page, right. He has 79th percentile exit dealer. We know they want exit deal in the hard hit rate 50 it’s 87th percentile. The bat speed is in the red, 16th percentile squared. Squaring up the ball up, which is what Jose Ramirez does. Well, Jose Ramirez doesn’t have great exit velocity and barrels but what he does well, he squares the ball up. 78th percentile for Lars Newport. He doesn’t chase. 87th percentile in chase rate, 73rd percentile and width, 8th percentile in walk. So this is a guy who stays in the zone, draws walks, has some juice in the bat and has big, big arm strength. He’s coming off a down year, but he’s got two years left. He might be in play for a lot of teams. This is the off season, I think, for the Guardians to go get a large nude bar. You push a guy like Valera or chase the lotter to the right field so you don’t have to necessarily play him in center field. I think new bar makes a ton of sense and he could come at a reasonable price. The Cardinals are getting calls on lefty Jojo Romero, who avoids hard contact and doesn’t get barreled up. Gets the ball on the ground. Not the greatest of control, but he’s tough on lefties and he only has one year left on his deal. He’s also someone who the Guardians could add to their pen. Last time these two teams made a trade, it was Richie Palacios in 2023. I don’t expect that’s not really their last big deal. The last big deal before that actually was Oscar Mercado coming to Cleveland in 2018 for Connor Capel and Jan Torres and I before that it was 2015 or 20. Yes, 2015. Brandon Moss for Rob Kaminsky. So I don’t expect. I expect there to be a deal here. But the Yan Torres thing, I remember hearing a lot of people about Jan Torres in 2018. What a bad deal that was. So the Cardinals are going to be talking every. Everybody. I expect a lot of rumors there. The Rockies, I think, are a very obvious fit now that Paul D. Podesta is their president of baseball operations. Obviously worked in Cleveland once upon a time for both the Indians and the Browns. He’s very good friends with Chris Antonetti. And these two teams have traded the last couple of years, right? We’ve had Nolan Jones for Juan Bredo and then Tyler Freeman for Nolan Jones. So these two teams have history. Jeff has mentioned Jimmy Hurgett, who’s got a unique arm angle I think would be a great fit for this bullpen. Two years left, he’s coming off a career best season. And the one thing Jeff always says, too is look for players who succeed where they shouldn’t. And Jimmy Heritage had a great season last year in Colorado, a place that’s very hard to pitch with their development their environment. So it’s a guy that would fit the Guardians bullpen very well with low cost. And I’ve we’ve both mentioned Ryan Feltner two a thousand times on the show and he didn’t get non tender like we thought. But we know he has traits that Cleveland really likes. He’s got relationships here, he’s from here, his brother works here. So these two teams have a history and I think that the Rockies are primed to go ahead and try to add players to the system. You know, D. Podesta’s got to learn their system, but he also probably knows what he likes and he’s going to listen to guys that he trusts. So I would think that they’re ripe to make some deals this offseason and reshape things as he sees fit. I’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4 other teams to get to. We’ve got the Yankees crying poor and we’ve got some of my worst misses in terms of prospects in the last decade. I’ll talk about that coming up next on the rest of today’s Lockdown Guardians NBA action is heating up, friends. There’s no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. 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When your first $5 bet wins, head over to FanDuel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. As always, want to thank you for making Lockdown Gardens your first listen tonight. Every day wherever you get podcasts, we are free everywhere on all the audio apps. And of course you can get us on YouTube as well. And even bigger, thank you to everybody who has made Locked on the number one sports podcast network. We do this every day talking about your Cleveland Guardians because you listen and you enjoy it and we appreciate that because much as Jeff and I love talking about Guardians baseball, it would just be us texting and talking. It wouldn’t be anything fun because you guys make it what it is. So we appreciate all of you keep up to date with all the episodes. You can hit the Bell on YouTube so you can get notified of reaction videos to when the Guardians finally do make an off season move. And you can also make sure you’re informed of when the latest episode goes up and auto download on all your audio platforms. So when you’re driving around to your holidays, you can listen to lockdown Guardians on the way. So hopefully you have, I don’t know, something interesting to say at the Thanksgiving table about the Guardians or you guys can just, you know, talk about how we suck. I don’t know, just download it and that really helps us a ton. Appreciate that. All right, so let’s continue on some teams. The Guardians might match up with this winner on Trade Talk Thanksgiving Thursday. I think the next one is the Braves and I’ve got two teams that might surprise you at the end too. So stick around for the two teams I think will surprise you. One of them is a blockbuster deal that I think makes sense for the Guardians if they can make it work. But the Braves are looking for shortstop help. They’re looking for middle infield help. The Guardians. This wouldn’t be a big sexy trade, but no, it wouldn’t involve Bartolo Cologne. But the Braves are looking for middle infield help. The Guardians, you know, could do some unclogging of their middle infield situation. I don’t know who they’re going with at shortstop next year, but the Braves could be very interested in guys like Gabriel Arias and Brian Rocchio. They want better defense at Short. They did get Mauricio De Bon recently, who’s got a good bat, but he’s not really a good defender at short. Arias would be better when they had a year ago. You know, they’ve got Nacho Alvarez, who isn’t that great, isn’t quite ready. So those guys could be of interest. Who could you get for them? I mean, the Braves have one year left with Aaron Bummer. If I were to trade Rokio, who’s got control, I would be asking for Aaron Bummer. At the very least, who’s a left you can slot in your bullpen for one more year. They don’t have a great farm system and you’re trading guys that are pretty low level town in terms of Roky Onarius. But you know Brett Sears is a very Guardians type arm from Nebraska. We’ve talked about him in the show in the past. A little bit older of a prospect but he’s good size, good durability, so strikes kind of pitcher guard the Guardians work well with and they could turn him into a back end rotation guy very, very easily. The last deal these two teams have made, believe it or not, is Chris Johnson coming to Cleveland for Nick Swisher and Michael Bourne way back in 2015. So over 10 years ago. These two don’t have great history, but maybe there’s a match there. The last three teams might surprise you. So the Astros are looking to cut some money. They want to add pitching, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to be going out getting frontline guys. Like maybe they’ll try to resign Franber Valdez, but they need depth. Their pitching staff is pretty taxed at the end. It’s pretty ugly. They have been talking about trading Jake Myers, their outfielder for a couple of months now and we’ve talked about Jesus Sanchez too. So these guys both are platoon bats. They both have two years left of club control. Sanchez is a lefty who has more power and isn’t a great outfielder but does have a big arm, so there is that. So he could fill the strong side of the platoon. Or Jake Myers is an interesting option too. Now Jake Myers not as high of a ceiling as Jesus Sanchez and normally he hits lefties very well. Last year he did struggle against lefties. There were some injuries going on there. Historically though, Jake Myers is a 110 WRC plus against lefties, 85 against righties. And if you’re not familiar, WRC plus kind of takes all of the offensive outcomes and tries to balance them, blend them into one number that you can understand. So 110 is 10 better than league average, which is 185 is 15 below league average because it’s 100. So Jake Myers I think is an interesting fit. Now he doesn’t really do a ton of things the Guardians really do, like offensively at least at this point. He doesn’t chase, he doesn’t whiff. He does square the ball up a little bit, but he’s a good runner and he’s got really good offensive D or outfield defense at this point and he still hit 13 home runs two years ago, which again would be one of the better numbers in the Guardians in quite some time. And as a fourth outfielder or a platoon guy, being younger, only having two years of control, somebody you don’t got to use to block anybody else. And I don’t think it would cost a ton to get like you could again. This is another Logan Allen type trade to the Astros I would be interested in. The last time these two have traded was Yener Diaz and Phil Naton going to the Astros for Miles Straw. So, yeah, definitely want to trade for Jake Myers because that will work out fantastic. The next two teams are interesting fits, so the next one would be kind of a big deal. I saw this today. The brewers are possibly looking to cut some money after Corbin Burton, not Corbin Burns, after Brandon Woodruff accepted the qualifying offer. Now the idea is that maybe they would try to get Woodruff signed on a shorter term deal and, and knock down the qualifying offer to a lower annual average value. We’ll see what happens. But I did see some suggestions today that the brewers could look to trade Trevor McGill, who was their part time closer a year ago with Avenue or rebate. He’s got two years of control left now. He has about $4 million in arb, which isn’t that expensive, but he’s coming off a career year, so that’s going to make him expensive on the trade market. But when you figure it’s just two years and he won’t really make a ton more than Emmanuel Classe was going to make for the Guardians, if you trade for him money wise, it fits pretty well in the void there. And you can move Kate Smith back to the setup role where he doesn’t make as much money and he’s more valuable to you. There’s going to be a ton of competition from the trade market, but these are two teams that think very similar. They build very similarly, they spend very similarly, which is not much. So there’s a fit there, I think, but it’s going to be a lot of competition if they’re interested in taking offers from McGill as a money cut. The brewers, you know, I don’t know what they’d be looking for, truthfully, that would be a hard fit, but that’s somebody the Guardians I think should be in on. The last trade these two teams made was Owen Miller to the brewers for cash. Before that it was J.C. mahinta for David Fry. So the Guardians do have some good history with the Brewers. The last team I’m gonna get to is the blockbuster of the off season. I think it’s going to be the hardest one. And I didn’t really believe this team was going to be part of the trade discussion, but I’m seeing it more and more. Like first I saw this team in this player from guys I don’t trust. Like I’ve seen John Morosi ton, you know, putting a lot of conversation about this guy who again, John Morose is an on field reporter because he’s bilingual. It’s been in the business a long time. Respect him. But a lot of the rumors you see him talk about or a lot of the trade talk you see him talk about on on social media is fabricated. It’s just, well, this could be a good idea. Well, we’ll talk about it because he’s got to generate headlines for MLB network. And that’s not 100 unlike what we do here, to be honest. Sometimes we take the news and we spin it towards Cleveland to see how it could impact Cleveland. So we do put some of that news on Cleveland a little bit, but we always do it grounded in realism if it makes sense, if we think there’s a connection. But I saw an ESPN survey that talked about the most likely trade candidates this off season. Not named Tarek Scuba, who I don’t think is getting traded, honestly. But there was a surprising name that came back from MLB executives on that list that I that started to make me believe a little bit more that this trade could be possible. Let’s talk about that team and that player on the rest of today’s lockdown. Guardians next. NFL season is back. And honestly, there’s nothing better than being in the stadium surrounded by by fans cheering on your team with all your friends, everybody else, let’s be honest, buying tickets for any event is a pain. You’ve got login screens, prices to jump at checkout and all kinds of prices that are going up throughout all your purchasing power. So that’s why I use Game Time. It’s the app that gives the advantage back to fans like you and I. It’s fast, easy, and it’s backed by the game time guarantee. You’re always going to get 100 authentic tickets delivered on time at the best price. All fees are always included. So the price you see is the price you pay when you use that setting on Game Time. It’s the holiday season tickets to sporting events. They’re expensive. You want to find the best deal. You want to try to find concert tickets, anything like that for, you know, stocking stuffers or big items this holiday season. Check out the prices on Game Time, download the games map, create an account use code locked at MLB that’s going to get you $20 off your first purchase. Again, terms apply. That’s promo code. L O C K E D O N M L B for $20 off swipe tab ticket Go download Game Time today. If you need more baseball talk, especially Guardians Baseball talk in the winter, we know where you’re not getting it, let’s be honest. But you can get it here and you can follow Jeff@Jeff MLB MLB Draft everywhere. You can follow me at Jail Underscore Baseball or JL Baseball on most social media platforms. You can also join the Lockdown Guardians Insiders club too. We’re just talking about guys, new people who moved to Cleveland for the first time. They’re looking to get connected with the city and watching and listening to baseball talk over at the Insiders Group with Lockdown Guardians. We text with our community very every day, drop rumors, news. We answer questions. We ask for mailbag questions which will be next week. We do monthly video chats which will be next week too. And we also give them some bonus content from time to time, whether it’s videos or some written content. That is joinsubtext.com Locked in Guardians to tap in over there. We’d love to have you great gift for the holiday season. Maybe if you want somebody who is really into more Guardians talk and really this is the biggest part of it of this show today I saw ESPN survey that came back from a couple MLB execs. So these are people in the industry and they have motive to say certain things too in these surveys. But a couple of them came back saying that Kettle Marte trade from the Diamondbacks seems likely. They think that there’s a very good chance. I’ve seen, you know, oh it’s 5050 and all this other stuff if that’ll be executives are saying they think it’s there’s a chance. I could see it happening other places. I haven’t seen it quite as much but I’m starting to see it more places. That would be the blockbuster of the winter. I think he’d be the best player traded this winter, especially if Tarek Scubal isn’t traded. The Diamondbacks need a lot of pitching help. You know, Corbin Burns is not going to pitch for most of the season because of Tommy John surgery. Ryan Nelson, their number one right now, had a nice year last year. They’ve got Brandon Fought who was struggling last year. They’re paying a lot of money to Eduardo Rodriguez to suck. It’s not a good rotation and it’s not a good farm system either. So it’s ironic they gave the Guardian slate Zaconian a pick last year for Josh Naylor, which was their last trade. So we know there’s history there. I don’t think you’re trading Slade Saccony back to the Diamondbacks to get Kettle Marte. He could use a change of scenery now. He’s 32. I believe he’ll play his age 32 season next year all over. Let me double check on that just to make sure I have that right. He’ll be. He is 32 now. Does that mean he’s 32 next year? He’s. Yeah, he’ll be 32 all of next season. Doesn’t turn 33 till October. His contract has him locked up until age 37. That’s a little concerning the next two years, though. Kettle Marte only makes $15 million and $12 million. So combined 27 million over his age 32 and 33 seasons. Pretty reasonable. It does. It is backload and it jumps into the 20s after that, which is obviously his. His later years, which is a little concerning. There’s a player option in 2031 for 11 and a half million. That’s his age 37 season. So that’s. That’s definitely an issue. Diamondbacks could use that contract to get a young pitcher or free up the space to sign a free agent pitcher. You know, I had a lot of people ask me about Kettle Marte in the past. I have a hard time believing you’re gonna pry Kettle Marte to Cleveland from them without giving up Gavin Williams. I just don’t see it. Kettle, you know, he’s. He’s the only guy in the rotation that’s going to command somebody like a Kettle Marte. You could try to sell them on the idea of Joey Cantillo, but here’s the thing. Joey Cantillo is going to turn 26 next month. He’s had one full season, the majors. The 95 innings he pitched this season are the most he’s pitched since 2023. It was a great year, no doubt. He had a fantastic season. His ERA was low. His fit matched. He actually had his control at a fairly solid rate. He missed some bats. The data there, I think, is just really good for him. So, you know, I’m excited for where Joey Cantello is going. I would love to try to headline a Kettle Marte package around Joey Cantillo, but I don’t think the Diamondbacks are buying Joey Cantillo as the centerpiece to a trade for Kettle Marte to replace, you know, their number. He. I mean, he goes into the rotation, he’s 100, the best player, best pitcher in their rotation. There’s no doubt about that. He would be the best pitcher in the rotation. He’s better than Ryan Nelson. He’s better than Eduardo Rodriguez. He probably is on the same plane as Brandon5, who’s pitched more innings but is not as good. I would love to get Kettle Marte. Maybe you could if you. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I would trade Gavin Williams for his age, 27 or 26. 27, 28 seasons now. He is a free agent at the end of 2029. So you’ve got him for six, seven and maybe eight. I’d probably say maybe two more years. If you view it that way. Maybe you get a bat. The problem is you’re getting Kettle Marte at the end of his career instead of the same match. If these two were closer in age, I’d be more interested. Although I will say Kettle Marte, the last two years, his bat speed has gone up. It’s. It’s. And that’s a. Usually a good indicator of how a guy ages. His bat speed is going up the last two years. That’s really good. I’m really impressed with that. Hits lefties as well as righties. He doesn’t have major home road splits. Actually, he’s better on the road, which is good because Arizona is a friendly hitting environment. There’s a lot of good traits there. Maybe. Maybe you convinced Arizona to give you prospects on top of that. It’s not a good farm system. Like, could you get Ryan walshmid for Kettle Marte and Gavin Williams? I don’t think so, but I would. That’s what I would ask for. I don’t know if the Guardians really have a package centered around Cantillo you can give them. Unless you’re trading in Bazana, which, you know, that might get it done. But that’s a lot to give up. It’s a lot. These two could be a fit. I keep an eye on this one. All right, let’s wrap up today’s show. I want to quickly talk about one’s theory. Jeff kind of had this. The Yankees are going out and say they don’t make any money. And you got the Pirates who are saying the Marlins who think they’re going to pretend to spend. I don’t buy that. You’ve got rich teams that are crying poor. You got poor teams that are pretending to spend. This is 100. The owners trying to come together to create cap behavior. You’ve got one team at the top that says they can’t make enough money to sustain where they’re usually spending. You got teams at the bottom who are trying to come up from bottom feeding spending because they’re trying to convince the Players association that, see, we’re already operating on a cap and a and a floor. They’re already trying to create that narrative. The Yankees say they don’t make money. Surely Cleveland wouldn’t. Right? We wouldn’t believe that if the Yankees didn’t. But I don’t think that’s true. We don’t know yet what the Guardians money is going to be from espn, the new deal plus, you know, NBC and Peacock coming in. But Cleveland should get a better idea sooner on the money than they did a year ago, and it should be more money than they got previously because MLB was only going to make up the difference between what they were losing from fanduel and Bally’s. So it could be close. And then I want to talk prospects here at the end of the show, too. You know, Jeff and I have been evaluating prospects right about Cleveland prospects since 2007. My only lists right now that I can get access to goes back to 2016 because of Archive deleting, all that kind of stuff. But I’ve learned a lot of things since then. I’m gonna go back to some of my lists here and they’re pretty, pretty ugly. So back in 2016, I had Bradley Zimmer third on my list. Obviously it didn’t work out very well, but I bought a lot of the minor league production numbers system. Also wasn’t very that good. Wasn’t very good. But I was a big believer in Bradley Center. Very naive. I had Greg Allen that year at number eight. I was a big believer in Greg Allen being the future leadoff hitter again. Another guy I bought my league production on who just didn’t have a good approach, as I thought, and made weak contact. I had Luis oviedo at number seven and 18. Let me know if you remember him at all. This was a guy where I thought he had really good stuff and was young, but he regressed in a big way. When you don’t know about people’s personality and work ethic. He had injuries, he had weight concerns. Those are just things that, you know, if you don’t really pay close enough attention or at least don’t learn to, you miss those Things. Daniel Johnson, my hat, my mid season updates in 2019. I have a number two. I really believe Daniel Johnson was going to be a big time outfielder for this, this club. I thought all the mileage production was, was really trending in that way. But it turns out his swing was not ideal for the major leagues. He didn’t have enough bat speed and his approach wasn’t very good. And then at best he was going to be a platoon bat and he didn’t even get there. Cody Morris, you know, I had him high on a lot of lists back in the day. I think for that miss was just health. But you know what the best indicator of previous or future injury is? Previous injury. I did not learn my lesson with Cody Morris because he kept getting hurt and getting hurt back in college. Love the arm, love the stuff. The injuries just never let him do it. Carlos Vargas was really high on my list back in those days. He’s, you know, a middle reliever now for the Mariners. Guy throws 100 with a really, with a good slider. The problem is his fastball shape. This is where I learned about fastball shapes. Velocity doesn’t mean anything if your fastball’s flat. And it taught me how pitches move or play off each other. His fastball shape was poor, so it really brought down the shape of his slider and the effectiveness of his slider. Those two pitches needed to be a little better apart or at least shape wise to work off each other. That’s kind of where I learned about how much that matters. I had Tyler Freeman, number two in 2021. I was really high on the head tool for Tyler Freeman. One of the first, these next two guys. The first two times I started to learn that hit tool doesn’t really mean contact, doesn’t mean production. There’s a lot that goes into it. That’s why you hear Jeff and I talk all the time about impact quality and approach matters so much. Tyler Freeman, poor approach approach to the plate, poor impact quality. I just bought in and he was going to be like a Luisa Rice type and that’s not what he is. And that’s, you know, that’s the guys you, that’s the, the 99 percentile outcome for guys like that. You’re hoping Freeman is, is Luisa Rise and he wasn’t. That’s why those guys are unicorns. Maybe I thought he was hoping he’d be Stephen Kwan, but he didn’t have Stephen Kwan’s approach. One of my bigger misses for sure was Will Brennan. I had Will Brennan at number 11. In 2023, I, I bought into his approach. I bought into the hit tool there. I thought he had enough production there to be a doubles hitter who could play a good outfield and, and get on base. But again, this is a guy I learned about Chase rates, the guy who could make a lot of contact with poor pitches in the minors but couldn’t lay off that, you know, borderline pitches in the majors and just had a hard time with fastballs in the majors. Shockingly, 2023 was the best list I’ve ever had despite that, and I think a lot of that has to do with the improvement of the organization. But 2023, my list was by far the best I’ve ever had. I had a speeder number one. You know, we thought he was going to be healthy, but I had Bobby Williams number two and three. I had Bo Naylor at four. All those guys have been major league production producers. I had Rokio at 5, who, you know, has turned into at least a major leaguer. I had Valer at 6 at Logan Allen, 7, Arnold Martinez, a Cody Morris, 9, Chase the Lotter, 10. All the guys in my top 10, minus Espino because of injuries, have been in the majors, have produced at different times, obviously with Morris kind of being bad and I have Brennan Arius 11 and 12. Arias has been good, but I had I over over those guys. I had Cantillo at 14, Noel at 15, I had Juan Burrito at 17 at Hunter Gaddis 22, Tim Heron 23, and I had an hour and Messick down in the low 20s. So I missed on a lot of those guys not being higher because I had other guys higher than them. Like, like I said, Morris and I had Justin Campbell and Curry and Petey Halpin. So those are, you know, kind of lessons learned about what, what kind of prospects produce major league value, what guys have tools that work at major leagues, what approaches, what pitches. That’s kind of what I’ve learned. All right, that’s going to do it for this week. We are off on Friday because of Thanksgiving, so I hope you all have a very safe and fun holiday with your friends and family. We’ll be back on December 1st, believe it or not. Our next episode to catch you up with any news for the weekend, don’t expect much because of the holidays and that’s how Cleveland usually works. This week we’ll do winter meetings previews, we will do a mailbag, all kind of fun stuff coming up as we continue into the winter with baseball coverage for the Guardians. Comment below and let me know what’s your favorite Thanksgiving side dishes, your favorite tradition? Do you like turkey? Do you not like turkey? Some people hate turkey at Thanksgiving. And let me know what prospect you missed on, too, if you, if you’re into that kind of thing. And then let me know what you think about some of the trade proposals we come up with today. Thank you all for listening all the time and appreciate all your support. And in the meantime, again, have a safe and happy holiday and go, go Guardians, go.

The Cleveland Guardians need to seek game-changing roster upgrades as MLB offseason gets moving. Could Lars Nootbaar or Ketel Marte be the surprise additions that improve the lineup? Could the Guardians get creative to solve their offensive problems and shore up their bullpen, with the Cardinals, Rockies, Braves, Astros, Brewers, and Diamondbacks all emerging as intriguing trade partners?
Justin Lada analyzes how Brendan Donovan and JoJo Romero fit Cleveland’s needs, why Rockies reliever Jimmy Herget could be a hidden gem, and whether Gavin Williams should headline a Marte package. The show also covers Justin’s lessons learned from previous prospect rankings and biggest misses, as well as how the league is gearing up for next year’s CBA negotiations with the Yankees crying poor.

00:00 Guardians Talk: Trades & Prospects
04:02 Steven Kwan Trade Speculation
09:32 Rockies Primed for Offseason Deals
15:03 Jake Meyers: Potential Guardians Fit
16:50 Brewers Consider Megill Trade?
23:54 Diamondbacks’ Marte Trade Dilemma
27:51 MLB Finances and Cleveland Outlook
32:38 Lessons Learned From Past Prospect Rankings

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