The trade deadline for Major League Baseball is Aug. 1, and unless something out of the blue happens, don’t expect the Guardians’ roster to look much different on Aug. 2 than it does today.
It isn’t that President of Baseball Operations doesn’t want to make the Guardians better. The problem is his arms are tied because the arms of his most tradable commodity aren’t working.
No team is going to give up a valuable player for Shane Bieber (elbow) knowing Bieber can’t pitch until Sept. 10 at the earliest, and even then there is no way to project how effective he will be.
Triston McKenzie is also out with an elbow injury until at least September. Plus, he is under club control through 2026, so trading him for a rental bat makes so sense from the Guardians’ standpoint. And if they were to trade him for a slugger with team control, center fielder Luis Robert of the White Sox for example (not that the White Sox are shopping Robert), the Guardians couldn’t afford him.
McKenzie’s rehab took a step in a positive direction on July 28 when he was given the go-ahead to start playing catch.
“He was pretty excited,” Guardians manager Terry Francona told reporters in Chicago. “I think all went well.”
So McKenzie is in the Guardians plans for the future, not as a trade candidate.
Aaron Civalie is tradable, but if the Guardians shipped him to another team it would mean they are sellers instead of buyers. Civale fought through an oblique injury early in the season and has been steady since returning. He is 4-2 and has pitched 71 innings in 12 starts. He is averaging 5.9 innings per start. Rookies Tanner Biebee (5.6 innings), Logan Allen (5.3) and Gavin Williams (5.4 innings) are having their workloads monitored so they aren’t gassed with two weeks left in the season.
• Trading shortstop Amed Rosario to the Dodgers for pitcher Noah Syndergaard as the Guardians did on Jan. 26 isn’t going to change the balance of power in the AL Central.
Syndergaard hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since June 7 because he is dealing with a blister on a finger of his right (throwing) hand. He is expected to start July 31 when the Guardians open a three-game series with the Astros in Houston.
Anything Syndergaard, a shadow of the pitcher that was 13-4 for the Mets in 2018, can give manager Terry Francona is a bonus. Syndergaard gave up seven home runs over 23 innings in his five most recent starts for the Dodgers. As good as the Guardians are at developing pitchers, they will need more than five days to fix what is wrong with “Thor,” assuming his issues can be fixed. But at least now Xzavion Curry can return to the bullpen instead of being a three-inning opener as he was July 28 when the Guardians lost, 3-0, to the White Sox in Chicago.
The bigger question revolves around how Gabriel Arias and Tyler Freeman will produce at the plate as they take over for Rosario at shortstop. Both are better defenders. The Guardians kept hoping Rosario would improve in the field, but it never happened.
“We continued to hope it would improve, but in the end, we got to the point where we felt this made sense for us, and now is the right time to give Gabby and Tyler some more opportunities,” Antonetti said on a Zoom call. “We also wanted to be respectful to Amed. We recognized his place on our team as a veteran leader and his expectations of himself and transitioning to a lesser role would have an impact on him and the team, and we were very mindful about doing that.”
Rosario has made 11 errors. He has a minus-15 rating in a category labeled Outs Above Average by baseballsavant.com. That is the lowest ranking of all Major League shortstops and tied for last with first baseman Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies among all ranked defenders.
• Baseball-reference.com is a handy research tool, but sometimes using it is a sobering reminder of how time flies.
The headshots of 12 random players appear each time the website is visited. I clicked on the picture of Ken “The Hawk” Harrelson and was dismayed to learn he will turn 82 years old on Sept. 4.
Harrelson’s career began in 1963 with the Kansas City Athletics. He played in 149 games with Cleveland in 1969 and then was with the Tribe for 17 games in 1970 and 52 games in 1971 to end his career. It doesn’t seem like 52 years have passed since he last played with the Indians.
I didn’t know that
… until I read my Snapple bottle cap.
Cows produce more milk when they listen to music. … Asparagus can grow up to seven inches in a day. … The average dog can understand more than 150 words. … A person blinks more than four million times a year. … Powerful earthquakes can make the earth spin faster. … The bullfrog is the only animal that never sleeps.
