CLEVELAND — The Guardians enter this winter yet again as a potential contender in the American League, although the conversation about them primarily concerns their payroll.
That is nothing new in Cleveland, but one element has added fuel to the fire — Jose Ramirez, and his career clock that is beginning to tick a bit louder.
No matter what you call it — a sweetheart deal, a hometown discount — when Ramirez signed a seven-year, $141 million extension before the 2022 season, there’s no doubt he gave Cleveland a gift in allowing its baseball franchise to keep a superstar talent in town much longer than would have been expected.
Ramirez is, unquestionably, one of the top 10 position players in baseball. He just finished third in MVP voting in his age-32 season, and he’s finished in the top six in MVP voting in seven of the last nine seasons.
The list of all players with more fWAR since the beginning of the 2017 season than Ramirez’s 51.0? Francisco Lindor, who is virtually in a neck-and-neck tie with Ramirez at 51.3 over nine seasons, and Aaron Judge at 61.6. That’s it. What if we shorten that time range to 2020? Again, Ramirez is third, just ahead of Lindor and behind only Juan Soto and Judge.
Ramirez is a legitimate star, he’s on track to be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, he’ll likely have a statue outside Progressive Field some day, and he helped provide a runway to add talent around him, aiding the organization in having the flexibility to bring on more salary through trades or free agency. There is a genuine argument that no player is more important to his team than Ramirez, whose loss to a significant injury would perhaps be the most detrimental absence in all of baseball.
Jose Ramirez discusses Guardians payroll habits
Although Ramirez gave the Guardians a discount with the 2022 extension, it doesn’t mean he’ll be in Cleveland forever, and it doesn’t mean he’d again offer that kind of a gift. Speaking on the Abriendo Sports podcast earlier this year, Ramirez publicly offered what could be described as some frustration with the lack of spending to bolster the roster. Of course, he knows the situation with the Guardians as a mid-market payroll team, but there is a balance to be found there.
“Cleveland is a small market. It’s not like the Dodgers or the Yankees,” Ramirez said in Spanish, which was later translated. “My agent, my family were upset because they knew I should be getting paid more and go somewhere else, but I chose to stay. There was a point where a team was planning a trade, and I was told by my agent I was gonna get paid a lot of money and needed to sign right away, but I told him I understood that there was a lot of money involved, [but] I wanted to stay in Cleveland.
“I really have a special place [in my heart] for Cleveland. They gave me the opportunity to play at just 16 years old and, even now, despite taking a pay cut, I’m comfortable in this city.”
This is where a sense of urgency needs to settle in when it comes to the Guardians while they still have Ramirez under contract. He just turned 33. He won’t be playing at his prime level forever. He’s under contract through the 2028 season, but it’s more complicated than that. It isn’t just that the Guardians only have three assured seasons left with Ramirez at third base. It’s that the 2027 season is shrouded in uncertainty, with many in the baseball world bracing for a potential lockout as labor relations seem to trend the wrong direction.
Some teams will ease their financial burdens when looking at 2027 in case of a lockout. The Guardians cannot afford to let Ramirez’s years in Cleveland slip through their fingers by being overly cautious. They potentially only have him for three seasons, and who knows what will happen in 2027.
“Yes, Jose is an important part of that, but we absolutely feel urgency and want to win a World Series,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said shortly after the Wild Card Series loss to the Tigers. “I’ve been doing this 27 years. I’m 0-for-27 for the final goal. Next year, we’re going to try to make it 1-for-28.”
Paul Skenes, Pirates offer blueprint for Guardians to avoid
To see the more extreme version of all this, the Guardians need only to look at Pittsburgh, a few hours away on I-80. It’s already frustrating enough for Pirates fans to know without a shadow of a doubt that Paul Skenes has virtually no chance of remaining in Pittsburgh beyond his six years of service time. That pill is hard enough to swallow for Pirates fans who have agonized through years and years of mediocrity and low payrolls, even compared to Cleveland.
What’s even worse, and what shouldn’t be acceptable at all, is that even with Skenes and a few other talented players on the roster, the Pirates still have virtually no chance of competing for a World Series because nobody has been brought in to support them.
The Guardians, at least, have a talented roster, albeit an underfunded one.
If the addition of Skenes — a world-dominating pitcher and a true generational talent who can alter a playoff race on his own — to the organization doesn’t mean an immediate and urgent increase in resources toward winning right now, then really, what’s the point of it all? The Pirates are so far away from truly contending that there have already been questions as to where Skenes should be traded, and for what prospects. But, then, what’s the end game? Maybe the Pirates finally get aggressive this winter, but what have they been waiting for?
And, in Detroit, there are questions as to whether the Tigers should deal Tarik Skubal, despite their immediate standing as contenders right now.
The Guardians are nowhere near being in the same boat as the Pirates, to be clear. But Pittsburgh might offer the blueprint for what Cleveland should be trying to avoid. These general principles of spending habits won’t be going anywhere, but they don’t need to be taken the most extreme degree, either.
Although we don’t have teams’ full financial records, it’s probably safe to say the Guardians won’t be near the middle of the pack anytime soon like they were for a brief stint in 2016-2017. But being this far south of $100 million? The Guardians are projected to carry an Opening Day payroll of about $70 million if Emmanuel Clase’s deal is taken off the books, or roughly $30 million below where they’ve operated the past few seasons. And that might end up even being generous.
Now would certainly qualify as a sub-optimal time to see that kind of a cut. Even if the Guardians only remained around $100 million, they’d still be flirting with a bottom-five payroll, but it’s at least something that can be sold to the clubhouse. That’d be with around $30 million being added compared to where they stand now, whether through long-term extensions — paging Steven Kwan — or free agent additions, like a reliever to replace Clase if he’s in fact off the team, or someone to bolster a lineup that badly needs it.
Guardians payroll has room to grow in 2026
To this day, Guardians CEO and owner Paul Dolan probably has not gotten the credit he deserved for the way Cleveland spent money between 2016 and 2017. The trade for Andrew Miller was aggressive in multiple respects. It not only cost Cleveland dearly via a valuable prospect package, it also added $9.5 million in payroll for two and a half seasons. Beyond that, Cleveland signed Edwin Encarnacion to a three-year, $60 million deal — the largest free agent contract in franchise history — along with Boone Logan for $6.5 million. Those deals sent the payroll soaring above $140 million for the first time.
However, it can also be said the Guardians retreated in the payroll department far too quickly, while they still were prime contenders. And it’s warranted to point out that although Encarnacion’s deal was the largest contract they had ever handed out, and that’s a positive for the fan base, it wasn’t exactly a high bar to clear, which is a problem for multiple teams.
Still, for at least a year, Cleveland rose up the payroll rankings to an unsustainable height. There was absolutely no way they’d spend money like that for very long — and really, there’s nothing wrong with that. The business of baseball is cyclical for most teams. It is the way of things, and it is mostly inevitable.
The issue wasn’t just that the Guardians cut payroll. It was the timing, and that they had a golden opportunity to end their World Series drought with Lindor, Ramirez, Corey Kluber, Michael Brantley, Carlos Carrasco, Jason Kipnis, Cody Allen, Andrew Miller and many others in the fold.
They were one pitch, one hit, one lucky break away from winning the World Series in 2016, but came up short. They had early, disappointing postseason exits in 2017 and 2018 despite talented rosters. Repeated payroll cuts finally caught up to them in 2019 when they missed the playoffs because of pitching injuries that couldn’t be overcome. Then COVID hit, Francisco Lindor was sent to the New York Mets and additional paycuts followed.
The Guardians cannot allow that to happen again while the iron is hot.
When evaluating a franchise’s spending habits, it’s important to separate the front office and the owner’s suite. Those in the front office have a finite amount of resources with which to build the roster. They’ll spend money to bolster the team if they have it. In this regard, considering the consistent success, Antonetti and general manager Mike Chernoff are probably as good as anyone in the business at what they do.
They haven’t had the luxuries of filling holes on the roster by spending money like many other teams, and they’ve had to replenish proven talent for younger players carrying more risk time and time again, and yet they’ve managed to be one of the most consistent teams in the league since 2016. A little help on the free agency front would go a long way, but they can’t offer those available players promises and vibes.
Antonetti has adamantly stated ownership has “poured back all the revenue that we’ve generated back into the operation.” The room exists to spend away, and that’s just to get back to their 2023/2024 levels.
Guardians among league leaders in consistent success under Chris Antonetti, Mike Chernoff
Antonetti and Chernoff have built a strong track record of success with one of baseball’s lowest payrolls. Stephen Vogt has won AL Manager of the Year two years in a row. At least for now, the Guardians have a chance to support their superstar third baseman, a front office that has done more with less than any other team in baseball, a manager who has averaged 90 wins and a roster that also probably deserves a great deal of credit for winning back-to-back division titles and coming within three wins of the World Series in 2024 despite some shortcomings on paper.
Speaking of 2024, it was frustrating enough for Guardians fans to watch their team come that close to a trip to the World Series only to see virtually no veteran additions to the club for 2025. The subsequent offseason could perhaps be forgiven in the name of leaning into a youth movement in which everything was going right Then. Andres Gimenez was traded, freeing up $22 million a year by the end of his contract, Josh Naylor was dealt in his final season of control and the Guardians were able to offload Myles Straw’s contract.
If the subtracted payroll isn’t taken advantage of, then it’s difficult to look at it as little more than a salary dump rather than frugal maneuvering. Those are all positive moves in a vacuum, but they’re also dependent on the corresponding action. And, to date, the only action in terms payroll spending has been to hit the snooze button.
Antonetti, Chernoff, Vogt and the Guardians have continued to win despite the odds — and resources of many other teams — stacked against them. They’ve been a likable underdog, and a team many others don’t want to play in October. With Ramirez as the star on a tremendously advantageous contract, perhaps the next step is for them to be given a little more support while that momentum lasts.