The Major League trade deadline is less than a week away. The MLB playoffs start two months later. How the Cleveland front office handles the trade opportunities over the next few days will have a big impact on the Wahoos’ title opportunities come October.
The big dilemma for Indians’ team president Chris Antonetti is how much of his club’s future should he risk to improve the chances for a run at the title.
A great deadline deal can bring that key piece to push a club to greatness. A bad trade can gut the farm system and eventually leave the major league club as a barren wasteland void of cornerstone players.
Every major league front office values it’s prized minor league prospects. The successful front offices know the true value of those prospects for now and the future.
Cleveland has had a long history of valuing prospects over opportunity. We have traded away plenty of stars (Bartolo Colon, Cliff Lee, C.C. Sabathia, Victor Martinez) to get prospects good (Lee, Carlos Carrasco, Justin Masterson, Grady Sizemore, Michael Brantley) and bad (Matt LaPorta, Andy Marte, Jason Knapp). Cleveland has also tended to pass on opportunities to trade sexy prospects for star MLB’ers (not giving up Jared Wright for Pedro Martinez).
Here is a look back at 35 years of Cleveland 1st round picks:
2015 Brady Aiken LHP– 2016 Arizona Rookie League 0-3, 6.38 ERA
2014 Bradley Zimmer OF–2016 Double A Akron: .253 BA, 14 HR, 33 SB
2013 Clint Frazier OF– 2016 Double A Akron: .276 BA, 13 HR
2012 Tyler Naquin OF– 2016 Indians: .321 BA, 12 HR
2011 Francisco Lindor SS– 2016 Indians: .303 BA, 12 HR
2010 Drew Pomeranz LHP– with Red Sox; MLB career (6 years): 22-32, 3.73 ERA
2009 Alex White RHP– out of baseball after 2012; MLB career (2 years): 5-13, 6.03 ERA
2008 Lonnie Chisenhall 3B–2016 Indians: .303 BA, 6 HR; MLB career (6 years) .263 BA, 49 HR
2007 Beau Mills 3B–out of baseball after 2012, no MLB
2005 Trevor Crowe CF– out of baseball after 2013; MLB career (4 years): 818 AB, .240 BA, 4 HR
2004 Jeremy Sowers LHP– out of baseball after 2009; MLB career (4 years): 18-30, 5.18 ERA
2003 Michael Aubrey 1B– out of baseball after 2011; MLB career (2 years): 135 AB, .259 BA, 6 HR
2003 Bradley Snyder OF– MLB career (3 years): 66 AB, .167 BA, 2 HR
2002 Jeremy Guthrie RHP– MLB career (12 seasons); 91-108, 4.37 ERA
2001 Alan Horne RHP– no MLB
2000 Corey Smith SS– no MLB
Here is how the first rounders from 1980-1999 panned out:
3 All-Stars: C.C. Sabathia, Manny Ramirez, Charles Nagy
3 solid major leaguers: Greg Swindell, Paul Shuey, Kelly Gruber
2 super-hyped MLB rookies whose potential eventually faded away: Jared Wright, Corey Snyder
2 MLB contributors: Dave Clark, Mark Lewis, Kelly Gruber
2 short MLB careers: Tim Drew, Calvin Murray
7 had little or no MLB time.
That list shows that the odds of a 1st rounder paying off is a coin toss. Is the risk possibly losing a future star worth bumping up your title chances a few percentages?
Consider these numbers:
1: the number of Tribe play-off games since 2007
68: the number of years since our last World Series Championship
1,300,000: the number of fans at the recent Cavs championship parade
Memo to Chris Antonetti:
LET IT RIDE!
The author is a contributor for timesreporter.com as well as clesports.com
Follow on twitter: @macaljancic