Logan Gilbert vs. Cal Quantrill, 1:05pm on MLB.TV’s Cleveland feed, and available on 710am in Seattle
The M’s have, quite rightly, been pilloried by a segment of the fanbase for choosing not to spend in free agency this offseason. Their payroll may be a touch higher than last year, but not by much. They remain miles away from the competitive balance tax, which is how they’ve operated since the CBT became a thing. It’s frustrating, but the addition of Jesse Winker softens that a bit. This is a chance for the M’s to compete, and while the year isn’t over, and Jerry Dipoto’s pointed to mid-year acquisitions as something they’ll try and swing, it can sting to see a team that’s nominally desperate to compete sit on their hands and put out a good but inexpensive team, particularly after a few years of budget savings during their step-back (complicated a bit by the pandemic, I know). But what do we make of the Cleveland Guardians, set to run out a payroll of about $35 million despite remaining on the fringes of playoff participation?
It’s easy to say it’s whataboutism or that Cleveland being stingy and dumb doesn’t make it okay for the M’s to be scared out of the free agency arena. But more than that, I think *this* level of refusing to try completely obliterates MLB owners’ arguments that the CBT does what it’s supposed to. That’s a huge reason we just had a 99-day lockout, after all. The CBT probably *has* reduced spending at the top. We continuously see teams within a hair’s breadth of the CBT. This restraint on a team going hog wild on spending was supposed to make spending more even amongst teams. Instead, tanking or whatever you call what Cleveland is doing (“relying 100% on in-org pitching development?” “Competing with both hands and one leg tied behind their back?”) has resulted in stagnation or even declines at the *bottom* of the expenditure scale while the CBT ticks slowly upwards. In other words, the gap between the highest and lowest payroll has *grown* during the CBT era. It simply isn’t doing what it was designed to do, and it’s time to at least acknowledge that fact.
The Guardians slashed payroll from 2019-2020 and haven’t brought it back up. They did this despite winning a pennant a few years before, and maintaining a team poised to compete in a comparatively weak AL Central. Thanks to the development group that turned guys like Shane Bieber, Justin Clevinger, and Corey Kluber into stars, they just decided to trade off their offensive pieces and even much of their pitching depth, betting on another great draw from their prospect pool. This strategy has gone pretty much how you’d think, with the team struggling on offense (many of their top younger bats might debuted last year, or will this year) and being mostly solid in run prevention. They weren’t able to turn a new crop into Cy Young winners like Bieber/Kluber, and Clevinger now pitches for San Diego, but Cal Quantrill was one of their successes last year (and the primary return for Clevinger).
Quantrill is more of a pitch-to-contact, weak-contact kind of a guy, though it’s worth remembering that so many of the Guardians’ best pitchers came up that way originally. He throws a sinker at 94, a cutter in the high-80s, a change, and two breaking balls. He’s also got a four-seamer, giving him 6 pitches he threw at least 100 times in half a year last year. He’s not overpowering, nothing in his movement profile differs from league average, and his control – while good – isn’t anything remarkable. What’s going on? To this point, Quantrill has yielded a lot of weak contact, and perhaps gotten a bit lucky with the harder contact he’s yielded (to his credit, he hasn’t given up a lot of very hard hit balls, though again, his results aren’t too far off league averages).
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Suarez, 3B
6: Crawford, SS
7: Toro, DH
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Murphy, C
SP: Logan Gilbert
The M’s added to their bullpen depth today by signing veteran righty and noted slider maven Sergio Romo to a big league deal (1yr, $2M). Don’t think that changes the projections too much, but depth is depth, and his leadership and experience could help out. The ‘pen was surprisingly experienced for a group of waiver-wire pick-ups last year, but this year’s group has even more experience.
It’s been cool to see Mike Ford in camp, and not just because, sadly, the team probably needs more 1B depth than Evan White can realistically provide. Ford was a Yankee farmhand that the M’s got in the Rule 5 draft back in December of 2017. He played the spring of 2018 with the M’s, but they ultimately passed on him, and he went back to the Yankees, whom he’d left due to their annual 40-man roster crunch. He’d gotten on the M’s radar due to absurdly good OBPs, but was available due to below 1B-standard power. A huge year in AAA in 2019 and injuries in the Bronx got him an extended trial for the Yankees, and he absolutely mashed, putting up a 134 wRC+ in 50 games. 2020 was something of a disaster for him (and so many of the rest of us), and he spent last year playing in the minors for three different orgs.
I bring him up because he’s likely to be a good player in Tacoma, but also to talk about what player development is *for*. The Yankees are probably the best example of a team that treats the Competitive Balance Tax as a salary cap, and Brian Cashman’s job for the past CBA has been to spend enough to create a year-in, year-out winner *without* exceeding it. He’s done so by building an enviable player development group, one that’s done wonders in pitching especially, turning international free agents and unheralded draft picks into hard-throwing prospects. Because they’re the Yankees, they know for a fact that not all of these prospects can be counted on to contribute to the big league club. There’s value in player development even if it doesn’t translate into wins (and *cheap* wins) for the major league team: the Yankees have been able to work the trade market so well (just last year they picked up Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo) because other orgs want Yankee pitchers. Mike Ford was an afterthought – an undrafted player out of noted baseball powerhouse Princeton – but he developed into someone with at least fringe MLB skills who made his minor league clubs better.
I’m not one to advocate for just trading away prospects. I believe there actually IS such a thing as a pitching prospect, and that the M’s have some. But I think in thinking about the 2022 M’s in particular, there’s been kind of an either/or thinking about player development and prospects. Because the M’s have such a good farm system, and because their pitching depth is so clustered right around the big league level, there’s a sense that utilizing free agency can be wasted – you bring in a good pitcher, but you simultaneously block a good pitcher. On the other hand, the M’s have been burned so many times, many fans want the team to cash in their highly-esteemed prospects for something a bit more of a certainty. There’s room for everything. The M’s likely *need* some of everything. Developing a Brandon Williamson has *alread* been a huge success for the M’s, just as the Yankees development of, let’s say, Glen Otto was a success. I’d love to see the M’s become *in this respect* the Yankees of the west. Build a lasting PD juggernaut and you simultaneously fix your big league depth, you get more value out of every trade you make, and of course you might develop the next big superstar. After Julio Rodriguez, who legitimately IS the next big superstar.
