Cleveland Sports Forum

I assume money is coming the Gs way. Syndergaard was making $13m and Rosario was making $7.8

Starting pitching is always in high demand around the Trade Deadline, with contenders looking for that one arm who can make a difference in the postseason race or put them over the top in their hunt for a World Series championship. This year's crop of starting pitcher trade options could be fairly robust, especially if bubble teams such as the Padres and Mets join in on the sale. Here are the top 14 starting pitchers who have been floated as possible trade candidates this year, ranked based on their ability to help a rotation in 2023 and beyond. (All stats are through Tuesday.)
NOTE: A report surfaced Wednesday night that the Angels will not trade Shohei Ohtani, then hours later, the club added Lucas Giolito in a trade with the White Sox. We removed Ohtani from the rankings based on that report, as well as Giolito following the deal.

Absent from the list is Noah Syngaraad, which is not quite a surprise; he could however still rank as the 17th best starting pitching option at best.
All this tells us is that the market for Amed Rosario was pretty weak.

Number 7 on the Ohtani-less and Giolito-less list is

7) Aaron Civale, RHP, Guardians
Contract status: controllable through 2025

With Shane Bieber on the injured list, the Guardians could pivot and make Civale available as they pursue offensive help. The 28-year-old righty has recorded a 2.54 ERA and 3.61 FIP on the season, and as a bonus, he comes with two-plus years of team control.

Trade likelihood: Medium

Another potential headline for the big Trade would be:

Dodgers acquire Worst-Fielding Shortstop
Rid Selves of Worst Starting Pitcher

Which would you rather have ? Rosario or Syndergaad ?

FO converted the sunken cost of Rosario into a lottery ticket pitcher who may or may not be able to give the team 6 innings which is needed more than another shortstop.

Hopefully they trade one of Arias or Freeman and Civale for a controllable young outfielder. Maybe send Straw to a team that has a controllable reliever.

Cleveland fans. Rosario sucks ! Rosario got traded ! Did we get Ohtani ? Damn !

I bet the extension talk with Rosario was going on at the same time as talks with Gimenez ! Need to give someone a little more motivation and make Ramirez feel like there was an effort by the FO.

But after reading this in-depth breakdown from Fabian Ardaya and Zack Meisel, it starts to make a little more sense.

For the Dodgers, the Syndergaard gamble had gone poorly. His 7.16 ERA was a pretty good indication, actually, of how his season was going. He’d been on the IL since early June, and his quotes this year seemed more dejected than hopeful. To get an infielder who still hits lefties pretty well in exchange for that guy? Not bad.

But what about the Guardians? Why would they do this? It’s all in the article, but the short version is: they’ve had a ton of pitcher injuries, need innings and, with Rosario under-performing this year and set to hit free agency this winter, it’s not like they were going to get a ton in return anyway. Why not call “next” on the ice-cold Syndergaard Slot Machine and hope the Dodgers got all the bad spins out?

Guardians Prospective
@CleGuardPro
·
14m
#Guardians transactions

RHP Noah Syndergaard placed on the 15-day IL (Right Finger Blister) & reassigned to minor leagues.

The workout today with the coaches must not have gone well.

No loss, no gain. Best things about Amed are his hustle and his friendship with Ramirez.
His replacements will save us runs in the field and not likely to cost any runs at bat
Syn. will either be a better fill-in than Gaddis or will give Bieber and Quantrill and McKenzie company in the rehab room.

“The trade provides us with an opporunity to provide some playing time to Gabby Arias and Tyler Freeman at the major league level,” said Chris Antonetti, Guardians’ president of baseball operations. “Lastly, it creates a roster spot for us to recall Oscar Gonzalez, who has done a good job at (Class AAA) Columbus.”

Gonzalez opened the season with the Guardians, but was optioned to Columbus on May 6 after hitting .191 (14 for 73) with one homer and five RBI. The Guardians sent him south with instructions to control the strike zone better and swing at pitches he can handle.

The right-handed hitting Gonzalez hit .275 (72 for 262) with 11 homers and 58 RBI for the Clippers. He struck out 62 times and walked 16, but the Guardians weren’t really concerned about his number of walks. They wanted him to maintain his aggressive approach, and hit the pitches he could handle.

“Oscar did a nice job against lefties,” said Antonetti. Gonzalez hit .350 (21 for 60) with one homer and 10 RBI againt lefties at Columbus.

The trade of Rosario opens the shortstop position to Gabriel Arias, who was spending some of his time platooning with Will Brennan in right field. Gonzalez could replace Arias as the right-handed hitting part of that platoon. [Arias was replaced by Fry in that platoon a few weeks ago]

Last season Gonzalez hit .296 (107 for 362) for Cleveland. He hit 27 doubles, 11 homers and drove in 43 runs in 91 games.

rusty2 wrote: Thu Jul 27, 2023 1:55 pm The workout today with the coaches must not have gone well.

I guess this is wrong. He will not pitch for the coaches until tomorrow. They had planned to put him on the IL to open a spot for Oscar.

Throws for the coaches tomorrow.

Chris Antonetti explains why the Cleveland Guardians held onto Amed Rosario for so long.

TOMMY WILD19 MINUTES AGO

Gabriel Arias and Tyler Freeman are currently with the Big League club. Brayan Rocchio is raking at Triple-A. Jose Tena, Juan Brito, and Angel Martinez are making a name for themselves at Double-A with the Rubber Ducks.

All of those players are middle infielders who were being blocked by Amed Rosario who's manned shortstop for the last two and a half years.

There's no denying that Rosario had his positive moments with the Guardians. He hit .278/.314/.397 during his tenure and was continuously a reliable bat in the hot summer months. However, Rosario became a defensive liability and his bat was streaky at best in 2023.


A change felt inevitable, but why did the organization wait so long to hand the keys over to Arias and Freeman?

Chris Antonetti touched on this following the trade saying:

"It was a lot to balance. The baseline was, Amed's been a really great contributor for our team over the course of the last couple of seasons. Each of the last couple of years he's started off slowly and then found a way to regain his footing and really took off in the second half. I think we've seen some signs of that offensively, but maybe not quite to the level where it was in the past. Then defensively he was unable to make the progress that we were able to see him make. We'd continue to hope it would improve and we got to the point where we felt this made sense for us and now is the time to give (Gabriel) and Tyler some more opportunities."


It's a long answer, but it appears it's what was suspected all along. The team was waiting for Rosario to heat up on offense consistently and improve on defense, but neither of those things happened.

It's been a long time coming, but we're finally going to get to see what the young infielders have in them and Rosario can help the Dodgers reach yet another postseason.!

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rusty2 wrote: Thu Jul 27, 2023 1:54 pm Guardians Prospective
@CleGuardPro
·
14m
#Guardians transactions

RHP Noah Syndergaard placed on the 15-day IL (Right Finger Blister) & reassigned to minor leagues.

Mystery injury.

He's on the IL till the pitching geniuses in the minors can "fix" him.

Brayan Rocchio is raking at Triple-A.

To be specific, for the year
298/387/429 25 doubles 5 triples 3 homers. The previous 2 seasons his HR totals were 15 and 18
44 walks 49 strikeouts much improved ratio over last year 19 steals only caught 3 times

In July
379.468/545 in 66 AB 6 doubles 1 triple 1 homer 8 walks 7 K 3/4 in steals