Cleveland Sports Forum

Yeah, I realize they're not going to replace a bunch of positions all at once. They have to pick their spots and if they get a chance to trade, they have pitching to offer.

Of course, $$$ is always a big part of any transaction.

They have a ton of really good internal candidates for 2nd base. OF could get a real lift from George Valera in 2023. Naylor is younger than any of Zimmer Mercado and Johnson and has plenty of upside. Will he fully recover? Will he actually improve on his inconsistent career start? An OF of Naylor Straw and Valera could be at least Major League average [which far exceeds an OF of the other guys we have around] but certainly not a sure thing

Naturally Clase rated top rookie reliever by BA

RP Emmanuel Clase, Indians

Clase missed the 2020 season after he tested positive for the steroid Boldenone and received an 80-game suspension. He re-emerged this year as the Indians closer and posted a 1.79 ERA with 24 saves, both best among rookie relievers. His 0.95 WHIP was the lowest of any rookie with at least 60 innings pitched, and the combination of a 100-plus mph cutter and low-90s slider held opponents to a .195 average

Offseason agenda for the Cleveland Guardians to return to contention in 2022



ARLINGTON, TEXAS - OCTOBER 03: Jose Ramirez #11 of the Cleveland Indians is greeted by teammates after scoring a run in the third inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field on October 03, 2021 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)

By Zack Meisel 4h ago 37
CLEVELAND — As Cal Quantrill and Triston McKenzie carried Cleveland’s pitching staff during the height of summer, a sentiment spread throughout Cleveland’s clubhouse. When Shane Bieber and Aaron Civale returned from injury in September, the murmur evolved into a loud whisper.

Surprise, surprise: The starting rotation is once again the foundation for what Cleveland’s front office believes can be a playoff-caliber roster in 2022.

“There’s a lot of buzz about what we can have next year,” Zach Plesac told The Athletic.

It would be healthy for the organization — following a year marked by a seismic name change, a trade of the face of the franchise and a profoundly paltry payroll — if that buzz circulated throughout the fan base, too. For that to happen, though, the front office needs to ensure the 2022 club is a viable contender.

“We’re at a point where we’re seeking to build from where we are right now,” president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said Wednesday.

They can start by committing to a long-term extension with José Ramírez and/or Bieber. (We’ll tackle those items in more detail in the near future. It’s something the team will explore, as it should if it wants to capitalize on its upcoming Guardians merchandise sales.)

If the club makes a few aggressive and creative moves, the front office can have this team vying for a ticket to October. It’s far from an impossible task, but it will require commitment from ownership and shrewd maneuvering by the front office.

“We’ve got big plans for next year,” Quantrill said.

Fork over the prospect capital to acquire a legitimate outfielder
Cleveland has accumulated enough depth to be able to absorb such a hit to the farm system. This isn’t to suggest the team should ship out George Valera, Daniel Espino, Gabriel Arias and Tyler Freeman, but the organization is flush with middle infielders and starting pitchers, especially following Cleveland’s midseason trades and amateur draft haul, which included 19 pitchers among 21 selections. There’s already a middle-infield logjam at the major-league level, and that’s before Freeman, Arias and Brayan Rocchio crash the party in the next year or two.

The timing of such a move could prove tricky. The impending, daunting, nightmare-causing 40-man roster crunch has been a constant topic of conversation within the fourth-floor walls at 2401 Ontario Street. The club has a lengthy list of players in need of protection from the Rule 5 Draft. Those decisions must be finalized by Nov. 20. Cleveland could package some Rule 5-eligible prospects in a trade for an established outfielder, but other teams might be hesitant to execute such a deal before knowing the terms of the new collective bargaining agreement. The current deal expires Dec. 1.

Cleveland expressed interest in Pittsburgh’s Bryan Reynolds and Cincinnati’s Jesse Winker over the summer. (They were far from the only team to do so.) Arizona’s Ketel Marte, under control for three more years at a total of $26.4 million, would fit Cleveland’s criteria. These sorts of players, obviously, would not come cheap. And the team negotiating with Cleveland would hold the leverage. So, admittedly, this type of trade would be challenging to pull off, but that should not, and will not, deter the front office from pursuing someone of that caliber.

Force fringe guys and Triple-A prospects to make the roster
It’s one thing to have an open competition at a position or two. But this team needs more lineup certainty next spring than it ever had in 2021. The outfield needs a makeover. None of the late-season auditions proved fruitful. On the infield, Yu Chang and Andrés Giménez fared better in the second half after dismal starts, but they ought to be competing for opportunities in the spring, rather than have anything handed to them.

The team told Amed Rosario he’ll enter the offseason “at the front of the line” for the everyday shortstop gig. But they added that they’ll let him know if certain roster shuffling alters that plan, which would require him to learn some other positions. Second base seems primed to host a competition in the spring. Antonetti indicated Bobby Bradley will enter next season as the starting first baseman, but Josh Naylor and Nolan Jones, each recovering from lower leg surgery, could eventually factor into that equation.

It’s the outfield where the team has glaring weaknesses. And given some of the questions in the infield, it would seem prudent to repair the outfield and allow anyone remaining from the uninspiring Bradley Zimmer/Oscar Mercado/Harold Ramírez/Daniel Johnson quartet to battle for a backup spot. The same goes for Triple-A outfielders Oscar Gonzalez, Steven Kwan and Richie Palacios.


Will Roberto Pérez wear a different uniform in 2022? (Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)
Find a part-time catcher who can post an OPS above .600
The front office has until three days after the conclusion of the World Series to exercise or decline Roberto Pérez’s $7 million option for 2022. Pérez said last weekend in Texas he prefers to return to Cleveland, but admitted he had thought about the possibility that he was playing his final series with the franchise that drafted him with the 1,011th overall pick in 2008. He blossomed into a two-time Gold Glove winner who slugged 24 home runs in 2019 once he emerged from Yan Gomes’ shadow. Since then, however, his production at the plate has waned, and he has struggled to escape the injured list. Pérez was limited to about half of the 60-game slate in 2020 and to only 44 games this year.

Austin Hedges is likely to remain on the roster, with an estimated salary figure, via arbitration, of $4 million. He’s well-regarded both behind the plate and by the pitching staff — and that will remain the club’s focus when evaluating catchers — but he posted a .178/.220/.308 slash line. It would behoove the club to find a backstop complement who can offer a bit more at the plate. Maybe Pérez will maintain his health and once again showcase his power. He’ll be 33 in December, though. That doesn’t sound like the sort of gamble to which the team would want to commit $7 million.

Bryan Lavastida impressed the organization’s evaluators with a .289/.380/.456 slash line as he rose to Triple A from High A this season. (He also stole 16 bases.) One source said in August the team planned to work him some at first base. It’s possible that happens in instructional ball this month. Lavastida seems destined to start next season in the minors, but he could be an option at some point over the summer. He’ll benefit defensively from a full spring training with Hedges and Sandy Alomar Jr.

Go get a second outfielder in free agency
Myles Straw is the club’s only sure thing in the outfield. With Cleveland, he logged a .285/.362/.377 slash line and stole 13 bases in 14 attempts in 60 games. He registered a 104 OPS+, so he was an above-average hitter, a madman on the base paths and he ranked in the 98th percentile in Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric.

“We were so unsettled there at the beginning of the year,” manager Terry Francona said, “and from the day he came, all of a sudden, you knew who was going to be the center fielder and you knew when the ball was hit, you’re out.”

Now, the club needs dependability in the corner outfield spots. Trading for one outfielder would make plenty of sense. But the front office and ownership have vowed that the payroll will increase, that there’s financial flexibility after the payroll plummeted to $50 million in 2021. This is where to allocate that spending. The free-agent outfield market could include Michael Conforto, Mark Canha, Starling Marte, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, Tommy Pham and Chris Taylor. Regardless of whether Cleveland trades for an outfielder, the club could use someone to keep the seat warm for Valera in a couple of years. Conforto might be the most intriguing of the bunch, since he’s only 28. He chose a poor time to record his worst season, though. Taylor offers positional flexibility, which always intrigues Cleveland’s brass.

Fortify the bullpen
Aside from 2018, when — record scratch, freeze frame, you’re probably wondering how I got into this situation — Alexi Ogando wound up pitching with the game on the line in the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium for a team with championship hopes, Cleveland’s front office has regularly unearthed enough reliable relievers to fill out its bullpen. (That May 4, 2018, loss was Ogando’s last major-league appearance, by the way.)

Emmanuel Clase pieced together a top-five relief season in all of baseball in 2021, with a 1.29 ERA and 471 pitches of at least 100 mph, more than twice as many as any other pitcher.

James Karinchak, Anthony Gose and Nick Sandlin are all wildly intriguing, but need to prove they can, respectively, find an effective delivery that can thrive without any sticky substances, consistently throw strikes and stay healthy. The rest of the bullpen group is a mystery. The team plans to keep Trevor Stephan and Sam Hentges in relief roles. They throw hard, but they’ll have to earn trust. Francisco Pérez could be an option, but he didn’t receive much of a look in September. Bryan Shaw and Blake Parker can become free agents. Nick Wittgren had a miserable season and could be a non-tender candidate. The 40-man spots occupied by Cam Hill, Kyle Nelson and Alex Young don’t exactly seem secure.

Teams routinely pluck dependable relievers out of thin air, as Cleveland did in acquiring Wittgren for Jordan Milbrath a few years ago. The club could use another similar trade this winter, and/or its usual work in discovering a helpful non-roster invitee or two. One internal name to monitor: Nick Mikolajchak, who will turn 24 next month. He owns a 2.09 ERA, with 13 K/9 since the club selected him in the 11th round in 2019.


Cleveland will have a new hitting coach in 2022 after dismissing Ty Van Burkleo. (Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
Change up the hitting instruction/messaging
I swear, this section was written before the news dropped Wednesday that Ty Van Burkleo won’t return as hitting coach in 2022. It’s impossible to determine exactly how much responsibility falls on the shoulders of an assistant coach, but Van Burkleo was the league’s longest-tenured hitting coach. The club could benefit from a new (and perhaps younger, given the state of the roster) voice.

It was damning enough when Chicago’s Lucas Giolito said in 2019 that he tossed Cleveland changeup after changeup because the hitters didn’t counter with any adjustments. That reflects directly on the hitting coaches, and it sparked a tense conversation between yours truly and Van Burkleo, in which he said, “I haven’t changed anything in seven years.” Cleveland’s young hitters didn’t exactly thrive in 2021, and they surely can’t afford to have a repeat next season with the team eyeing a postseason appointment.

Victor Rodriguez and Justin Toole are expected to remain on the coaching staff, but someone will join them on the hitting team. The front office insists it has made progress organizationally in its hitting development, and a host of prospects did excel at the plate this year (Rocchio, Freeman, Valera, Arias, Gonzalez, Kwan, Palacios, Jose Tena, Jhonkensy Noel), so maybe they’re onto something. They’ll need better translation at the major-league level, though.

Overall, Cleveland’s offense mustered a 93 wRC+, good for 19th in the league. The club ranked 27th in on-base percentage (.303) and 16th in slugging percentage (.407), thanks in part to José Ramírez and Franmil Reyes. No team in baseball fared worse against curveballs (.271 slugging percentage). Cleveland was no-hit on a major league-record three occasions, and was held hitless by the Rays in what was deemed a seven-inning “notable achievement.” Even if those no-hitters were one-hitters, it wouldn’t change the bottom line: The team needs more production from its crop of young position players.

The rest of the coaching staff is expected to remain in place, including Francona, who said he has a pivotal checkup on Monday. Barring any unforeseen developments, he said, he should pass that test and start dreaming about the spring training desert. Francona underwent hip replacement surgery in August and a significant toe operation in September. He expects to be on crutches until Thanksgiving.

“The hip was actually a piece of cake,” he said. “Toe was a little stubborn. They put eight pins in and a rod. It’s not something you necessarily want to look at before you go eat dinner.”

It is more than a little disappointing that not a lot is being expected from Nolan Jones in 2022. This should have been the season he completed his minor league and got his feet wet in the majors, likely unsuccessfully, but at least getting that first exposure. Instead before his injury shut him down for the final few weeks he suffered through a terrible first half in AAA and made some decent progress later on.
But Jones did make one significant step forward with AVG OBP and SLG all roughly equal vs LH and vs RH pitchers.

Indians: Terry Francona coming back with a new hitting coach should improve things
by Chad Porto 13 hours ago Follow @ChadNerdCorp



One doctor’s appointment for Terry Francona will set expectations for 2022.

The Indians will go into 2022 with a new name, but the team is hoping there won’t be too much change for the season. Terry Francona has made progress with his return to the dugout after missing most of 2021 due to hip and foot injuries that limited his mobility and resulted in surgeries. In his own words to ESPN the injuries “wore him down”. A single doctor’s appointment will apparently determine if Francona will be able to return to the diamond without any assistance and manage the way he wants.

The lack of mobility and the pain from the injuries was what sidelined him basically, forcing him to use a scooter to get around the clubhouse and endure extreme pain by just walking out to take out a pitcher. Due to the surgeries, he had to get, bench coach DeMarlo Hale filled in for the remainder of the season

Most of the coaching staff is expected back but one name won’t be, their hitting coach Ty Van Burkleo. This isn’t surprising as the Indians suffered the indignity of being no-hit by an opposing pitcher three different times.
Terry Francona has to nail the new hitting coach

The Indians have a good team, they really do. The problem is that most of the talent is either overproducing or underproducing at the plate. Usually the latter. We know from the historical significance that a good hitting coach can change everything with a struggling squad. Paul Hoynes of Cleveland.com pointed out as much, citing the improvement Jim Thome had after Charlie Manuel came on board the team in 1994. He also pointed out how Gio Urshela has benefited from Yankees Triple-A hitting coach Phil Plantier.

The Indians are in desperate need of a good hitting coach because a few players are in dire need of a good hitting coach. We saw Owen Miller improve in the last six weeks of the season, hitting around .250 over that stretch but a better hitting coach may have had him hitting closer to his stats in Triple-A before he was called up.

The 2022 squad should be a team ready to make noise assuming everyone is healthy and if they can get a hitting coach that connects with the squad enough to improve those struggling, then this team could rocket back into contention very fast.

It seems like the last 2 games Rick Manning kept saying that the players were "Hitting the other way" and he commented that he hopes it continues. I totally agree! seeing the shift putting 3 infielders on one side with the other side of the infield mostly open begs to ask how can any hitter really think they can beat the shift by hitting into it. I know chicks "Dig the long ball" but getting runners on base often causes the pitcher to lose focus. Get'm on, Get'm over, Get'm in!

UD - this may be somewhat related from the blog I have been posting:

Cleveland Indians 2021 derailment factor: Ty Van Burkleo

Cleveland already addressed this particular dumpster fire on October 6 when the team announced that hitting coach Ty Van Burkleo would not return as part of the coaching staff in 2022. Van Burkleo, 58, was somehow the longest tenured hitting coach in baseball with seven seasons in the Tribe dugout. It would appear from the outside looking in that Cleveland’s player development department has a hitting regiment in place that they really like, in which a significant amount of the team’s promising position players outperformed their offensive scouting grades and climbed to higher ranks of the farm system than some imagined possible in 2021.

It seemed consistently, and this year was no exception, that top offensive talent would perform extremely well in Triple-A, then die on the vine in the majors. Look no further than Owen Miller this season, who could not be stopped in Columbus, slashing .297/.374/.489 in 48 games in Triple-A, including hitting .408 in May, but managed just a .204/.342/.309 line in 60 games with Cleveland. It wasn’t just the youngsters either, as the offense has underperformed each season since 2017 under Van Burkleo’s tutelage. Here are Cleveland’s team batting average statistics and league rank under each of Van Burkleo’s seasons:

2013) .255 (13th)
2014) .253 (13th)
2015) .256 (11th)
2016) .262 (6th)
2017) .263 (5th)
2018) .259 (2nd)
2019) .250 (15th)
2020) .228 (23rd)
2021) .238 (21st)

There are outliers to every list, and this one isn’t special, but Van Burkleo was phenomenal at just how inept he could guide an offense to be, and there have been red flags for several seasons leading up to his termination. In 2021 the Cleveland Indians were no-hit a major league record three times in one season, four with the asterisk of a seven-inning doubleheader performance down in Tampa Bay.

Back in May of 2019, Lucas Giolito of the White Sox commented to the Chicago Sun Times after a dominant outing against the Indians that he and his catcher James McCann noticed Cleveland hitters could not, and would not, adjust to his changeup, which sparked a conversation between Van Burkleo and The Athletic’s Zack Meisel in which Van Burkleo stated “I haven’t changed anything in seven years.”

Van Burkelo will not be missed, especially by this writer who has been calling for his head for over three seasons, and it’s apparent the team wants to move in a new, likely younger, direction with the prospects on the verge of breaking into the majors. He has been one of the most consistent plagues of the Indians for several seasons, and I look forward to finding out who will guide the young bats moving forward.

Cleveland Indians 2021 derailment factor : Payroll

Yes, here we are once again to harp on the payroll decisions of a mid-market team, something that will always be a factor for Cleveland. And at the same time, spending money does not always equal winning in baseball, but in a sport with no cap rules or, to my dismay, even salary minimums, it can be a contributing factor in a team’s performance each season. To further my point about money not equating to wins, the New York Mets ($112.5M), the Philadelphia Phillies ($147.5M), and San Diego Padres ($162.5M) all missed the postseason despite having top-10 payrolls in baseball.

However, teams who spend with a purpose (Tampa Bay, Houston, San Francisco and Milwaukee to name a few) can invest intelligently to bolster their chances each season. This is something Cleveland did not do intentionally in 2021, with an incredibly young roster and plans to spend for 2022 to make the first season as the Cleveland Guardians competitive both for morale of the core and for new merchandise sales. Cleveland had the third lowest payroll on opening day, ahead of only Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but what it does line Cleveland up to do is exactly what Tampa Bay and other AL rivals excel at; find valuable depth to spend on.

The Indians took a long look at a lot of their young talent in 2021, and likely used that time and those evaluations to determine their plans for the Rule 5 Draft, their free agent targets and possible trades the team can and will explore during winter meetings (barring the new CBA deal, of course.) In a previous post about rebuilding the possible roster of the Indians for 2021, Cleveland’s average payroll since 2016 was found to be roughly $86.5M, something Cleveland undershot this year by nearly $40M.

Cleveland will have the payroll this offseason to bolster the roster, both with possible extensions for Shane Bieber and Jose Ramirez, and to take their shots at potentially high value free agents, especially in the outfield and bullpen. Short term, it was a rough season to watch, but the payroll should be a much less sore subject entering 2022 as Cleveland looks to re-open their championship window.

Translation to this is that the team all along planned this as a "retrenching" year to look at young players.

The starting pitching injuries, in that sense, was a blessing since Quantrill and Dr Sticks got to stick in the rotation through their struggles and go long term.

As we know certain position players also got long term looks.

So do guys like Owen Miller, Bradley Zimmer etc benefit from the change in hitting philosophy at the big league level?

Next season payroll gets rebooted. Tito has been rebooted. The rotation is set. Should be interesting.

One last note - it's on Tito that the hitting coach was kept on that long. We do know he tends to be overly loyal at times. And up until recently we had veteran hitters who were somewhat set in their ways - in a good way.

Once Brantley left though.......

Now there is a whole new wave. Good move ditching the previous hitting coach/philosophy.

I believe Tito has been de-booted.

As for blaming the crumby offense on the hitting coach, well maybe. Perhaps the big upswing in Naquin's performance after he left is revealing. And Jordan Luplow did hit a grand slam. Then again Jake Bauers was still Jake Bauers. And Lindor didn't quite set the world on fire for the Mets. Anyway I have nothing against the move.

After Eddie Rosario's key hit last night for Atlanta I am pretty sure we can agree he's having WAY more fun after Cleveland.

He jumped in and started for this team all the way until now. (vs. righties)

I sure did like him and thought it would be great for us but he didnt seem like he wanted to be in Cleveland. Too bad!

UD - and was it the hitting coach being the reason? We will never know.

But we do know that something was going on for him to be dismissed.

And we do know Eddie Rosario was a hitter....before Cleveland....and after.

The Cleveland Guardians’ winter blueprint: Navigating 7 stages of offseason decisions


ST PETERSBURG, FLORIDA - JULY 07: Roberto Perez #55 of the Cleveland Indians reacts to striking out to Ryan Sherriff of the Tampa Bay Rays in the seventh inning of game one of a doubleheader at Tropicana Field on July 07, 2021 in St Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)

By Zack Meisel Oct 13, 2021 29

CLEVELAND — There’s plenty of planning taking place inside the fourth-floor walls at the Progressive Field offices. Once the World Series wraps in a few weeks, the offseason commotion will commence.

Cleveland’s winter blueprint contains seven stages, full of roster decisions, negotiations, deadlines and uncertainty.
Stage 1: The immediate decisions

The first order of business, which carries a deadline of five days after the conclusion of the World Series, is to exercise or decline a pair of contract options for 2022.

José Ramírez’s club option is worth $12 million. There’s a better chance the team will change its name to the Cleveland Modells than there is of declining that option.

Roberto Pérez, on the other hand, is less likely to be retained at his rate of $7 million. His deal includes a $450,000 buyout. That wouldn’t necessarily close the door on Pérez’s return (at a lower price). In any event, the club needs a healthy (and perhaps not offensively inept) catcher to pair with Austin Hedges.

“We’re hopeful that (Pérez) can take advantage of the offseason,” Chris Antonetti said, “and put himself in a position to impact the team moving forward next year.”

Ah, so will Pérez, in fact, be retained?

“We haven’t made that decision,” Antonetti countered.

For the first five days of the offseason, teams can negotiate only with their own free agents. In Cleveland, that’s Bryan Shaw, Blake Parker and Wilson Ramos, who is recovering from significant knee surgery. It’s in this early phase of the offseason when teams must decide whether to extend a qualifying offer to any of their free agents. Players have 10 days to accept or decline. Last year, the one-year deal was worth $18.9 million. None of Cleveland’s free agents will receive one.

One other item on the agenda for the earlier part of the offseason: finding Ty Van Burkleo’s replacement. The team is pursuing someone, as Antonetti described it, with “a diverse set of skills and experiences, that can find ways to help connect players and help them continue to improve and prepare for games and ultimately succeed at the major-league level. There’s no magic formula for that, but we look at it much like we do on the pitching side, as a team approach.”
Stage 2: Planting the seeds for a significant trade

One industry source suggested teams might be hesitant to commit to any major moves until a new collective bargaining agreement is completed. That looming cumulonimbus, coupled with the team’s 40-man roster crunch, could make the next few months especially challenging to navigate in Cleveland. (More on those topics in a moment.)

Since the summer months, the front office has fixated on consolidating its prospect capital in an attempt to land an established outfielder in a trade. In an ideal world for Cleveland, such a swap would probably take place before 40-man rosters must be set in late November. That would help reduce the number of prospects the club needs to protect from being selected in the Rule 5 Draft. Cleveland initiated such trade dialogue over the summer, and Antonetti and Mike Chernoff can resume those discussions around the time of the annual GM meetings in Carlsbad, Calif., in the second week of November.



The league’s award winners, by the way, will be revealed that same week. José Ramírez should finish somewhere between third and seventh in the AL MVP voting. Emmanuel Clase’s name should surface on at least a few AL Rookie of the Year ballots. Perhaps Cal Quantrill will snag a fifth-place tally or two for the AL Cy Young Award.
Stage 3: The 40-man roster decisions

This is when months of evaluation and deliberation will reach a boiling point. Teams must set their 40-man roster decisions by Nov. 19. Cleveland’s front office has a lot to sort through before that date.

It’s not just adding Rule 5-eligible prospects to the roster. It’s also a matter of severing ties with certain players already occupying spots to create space (perhaps Alex Young or Kyle Nelson or Cam Hill or any of the club’s outfielders not named Myles Straw). There is a slew of prospects who require protection — Tyler Freeman, George Valera and Brayan Rocchio, to name a few — but the team must still carry 26 major leaguers, plus some major-league-ready reinforcements, on that 40-man roster, so the list can’t be full of players yet to escape A-ball.

The Rule 5 Draft unfolds on the Thursday, the final day, of MLB’s annual Winter Meetings, tentatively scheduled for Dec. 5-9 in Orlando. Of course, whether that circus actually takes place is up in the air, in large part because of the uncertainty surrounding the CBA, which expires Dec. 1.


Stage 4: Prepare for the unknown

It’s not just the timing of the CBA situation; it’s the massive pile of issues that need to be addressed. No one knows what the rules will be, which makes it difficult to proceed through the offseason. Could a change in the revenue-sharing setup alter the way certain teams operate? Could the arbitration rules receive a revision? Could free-agency protocols evolve? Will there be a salary floor? What about a universal designated hitter?

These could all influence the way teams approach the winter, but no one will have the answers until the middle of the offseason. So, as one source said, expect a deliberate pace to the offseason until there’s some clarity. The CBA cloud figures to hover over every single offseason conversation.

Will Nick Wittgren return in 2022? (Frank Jansky / Getty Images)

Stage 5: Non-tender decisions

The Guardians will have at least six players eligible for arbitration: Shane Bieber, Franmil Reyes, Amed Rosario, Austin Hedges, Bradley Zimmer and Nick Wittgren. Quantrill — and, albeit less likely, Josh Naylor and Harold Ramírez — could also qualify as a Super Two player based on the league’s service-time cutoff. Teams must determine by the beginning of December whether they’ll tender a contract to each arbitration-eligible player. Here’s how MLB Trade Rumors estimates each player’s 2022 salary:

Shane Bieber
$4.8 million (first year of arbitration)

Franmil Reyes
$4.4 million (first year)

Amed Rosario
$5 million (second year)

Austin Hedges

$3.8 million (final year)

Bradley Zimmer

$1.5 million (first year)


Nick Wittgren

$2.8 million (second year)


Cal Quantrill
$2.8 million (first year … maybe)

Wittgren, who endured a rough 2021 season, is a candidate to be non-tendered, which would make him a free agent. Zimmer could fall into that category as well. If the team is going to non-tender any players, it might just cut ties with them before the 40-man roster deadline to clear a spot for a prospect.

Teams have until mid-January to exchange salary arbitration figures, though they can strike an agreement on a 2022 salary at any point before an eventual February hearing.
Stage 6: The meat of the offseason

Once the league and union settle on a new basic agreement, teams will have a better handle on what offseason maneuvering makes sense. So, expect the bulk of trades and free agency to be completed later in the winter. The Guardians won’t be first in line to dole out stacks of cash to any prized free agents, but the organization’s decision-makers insist they have some wiggle room to upgrade the lineup.

This is when they can survey the market for middle-tier outfielders, for example. They have massive, long-standing question marks in the corners. They could benefit from increased production at catcher, first base and second base, too. And though the bullpen offers plenty of 99 mph promise, it’s lacking in proven commodities.
Stage 7: Extension candidates

Cleveland’s front office typically schedules its conversations about contract extensions for the early part of spring training. Bieber and José Ramírez are obvious candidates. Reyes could also be an option. This could be the final step in the offseason plan, and an important one as the club attempts to sell new Guardians merchandise.

“We expect to pursue both internal investments as well as external ones,” Antonetti said.