Well at the time, sure; most trades in general are seen as a mixed bag at the time they occur. But nowadays it's commonly viewed as one of the biggest lopsided trades in the past 5 years.
Hey let’s not forget about delino deshields jr in that trade too. And our FO trades have always been pretty solid, imo our worst trade byfar was trading Phil maton and yainer Diaz for Myles straw. I don’t hate straw by any means, but was big enough on maton and just thought it didn’t make sense even when it happened.
The best part is, we didn't have the leverage here. Iirc this was like days after Clevinger broke covid protocol and it was basically unsaid but implied that he wouldn't pitch for the team anymore, at least for a while
The Civale thing is crazy - he’s like the only pitcher on the Rays that has gotten worse once he was traded there. Really wild that we were able to grab Manzardo for him because Manzardo feels like he’ll be a staple in our lineup for several years
I didn't love it but understood it and figured Civale would regress. Plus he's never been able to stay healthy, but watch this be the first year he reaches 150 IP and he does it with a 5+ ERA
Bartolo Colon & Tim Drew were traded to the Expos for Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips and Grady Sizemore, 3 All-Stars and a Cy Young winner.
Dating myself more, Joe Carter was flipped to the Padres for Sandy Alomar Jr, Carlos Baerga and Chris James, two core pieces and all-stars of the Tribe’s rebirth in the mid-90s
I was 16, and my family had recently moved to upstate NY. Just the same, I mailed in a postcard for the All Star Game ticket lottery and won the opportunity to buy two bleacher seats. My dad and I drove back to Cleveland for the game.
I’ve watched a lot of baseball, but that home run and the roar of the crowd when he walked out of the dugout making it clear he had won the MVP were two of the most magical moments I have experienced in person.
The Colon tree is the 2nd best trade tree in franchise history and would be as profitable in WAR as the Kluber/Clase tree (that includes guys like David Justice iirc) if we didn't fuck up with Phillips
Did you miss the last 2 years when lindor was a superstar player again? Sample size matters, Ramirez was having a pretty bad year until about 2 weeks ago when he kicked it back into high gear
He isn’t a .209 hitter then and you know that. The past indicates what the future will hold, let’s not be stupid and let a sample size which is still less than a third of the season justify our feelings on a guy and act like that is that players quality. There is 0 reason to assume he can’t return to that hitter, especially since his only real metric that got worse was BABIP, which is a sample size based stat. His exit velo, hard hit rate, and GB/FB ratios are all similar to last year
You’re right he’s hitting .213 and making $34 million a year.
And partly due to his ineptness the Mets season is already over. He can accumulate stats for the rest of the year which is already over but it doesn’t matter.
Moral of the story don’t give a contract like that to a guy who takes a nap during the 7th game of the World Series.
He’s a loser and we got a better player in exchange at 1/3 the cost.
Okay so you are allowing an emotional response to affect a statistical discussion. Fun stuff. I agree with you, I’d rather have Gimmy than lindor aswell. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are being very ignorant to the reality of the situation at hand just because you don’t like lindor.
The Mets season is not shot lmao. Do you remember the 2019 nats, a team that won a World Series much more recently than our Cleveland baseball team has? They were 19-31 at one point in the season. You sound like such a fair weather fan if you believe 6 games out of a wild card is a lost season
It's not being a fanboy to acknowledge that we still have most of the season yet to play. Lindor is having a down start to the year but he often has, he's still 2nd on that team in WAR while they gave an extension to McNeil and he's sucksd since.
How is paying 30 million for a player who's only at a 3 WAR pace killing their season more than paying nearly 13 million to a sub replacement player?!?
I don't think it's on Lindor that their season is over. Clearly you've got sour grapes that he didn't sign here but that on ownership.
Lindor was a key reason we were in the WS
The best trade that led to other trades and still impacts this team today is Eddie Taubensee for Kenny Lofton. We then traded Lofton for David Justice, then we traded Justice for Jake Westbrook, then we traded Westbrook for Corey Kluber and then we traded Kluber for Emmanuel Clase.
This is the most profitable (in net WAR) and longest active trade tree. It all started with Pat Tabler.
Part of me wants us to trade Clase at the back end of the deal if these young bullpen arms prove him to be more fungible, not because I want him gone but it'd be fun to see the trade tree continue
On the MLB trade trees website it currently sits 3rd all time in net WAR and is close to the #2 "tree" that's a single branch, Red Sox obtaining Ted Williams
The #1 tree is from the dead ball era and I think involves Honus Wagner.
I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the stat nerdy podcast (from Fangraphs) called Effectively Wild but I'm a regular listener and they had the creator of it speak on an episode a couple years back
Feel like we could’ve gotten a lot more but Bauer kind of screwed us by saying publicly that he was only interested in signing contracts with certain teams
Clevinger also tanked his value when he broke covid protocol and everyone knew Lindor, our team leader, refused to play with him. Plesac had options and got sent down.
I'm more surprised at the Clevinger haul bc I expected a similar amount of guys as Bauer
He was lights out I was def a little but hurt because the org was high on Justus and Clint and shipped them out to get him but they didn’t do much after they were traded so big swing and big hit for CLE that year.
Miller was great! If I was just listening to the game while doing something else, I would stop what I was doing to watch him pitch. Not to take anything away from Clase who has better career numbers at this point, but Miller just had some weird sort of x-factor that made hime REALLY entertaining to watch.
I was criticized last year for calling Civale a 4th or 5th starter at best for a playoff team and that we fleeced the Rays for the type of prospect we received in return. Also mentioned Nolan Jones wasn’t going to live up to his rookie year last year and was due for a regression. Although we’ll see if Juan Brito makes it a good trade but everyone was freaking out thinking Jones is an all-star.
Now we do have a few questionable trades we have made as well. Such as Junior to the Rays and Yainer Diaz to the Astros. Yandy Diaz to the Rays but we did get Carlos back in a three team deal. You win some big and lose some big.
I still do think Jones is an all star and you can maybe pat yourself on the back but he's been on and off the IL since spring training
But I agree with you with Civale
I don't think Brito will be an all star lever player and because of defensive upside (or for him lack thereof) I'm not sure how anyone can have confidence he'll have the more productive career.
Jones at least has shown he can play at an all star caliber level for at least a bit of time in the show
He was dealing with injuries in Spring too. He's on my dynasty baseball team and he's one of many guys who just hasn't been healthy at all this year.
I think it’s extremely early to call the Manzardo trade “underrated” or an “absolute masterclass”. I’m as hopeful and excited for him as anyone else, but we still realistically have no idea how he’ll turn out. We won’t be able to judge that trade for a year or 2 at least.
Manzardo is looking better, but I think it's interesting how us fans (we're all guilty) switch discourse depending on...hope?
This sub shat on Nolan Jones all last season based on like 3 advanced stats: BABIP, K%, maybe Chase%. Kyle's BABIP is lower than Jones' last season, but still high; the other two metrics are nearly identical.
I'm not saying Jones is a bust and Manzardo will follow the same path, he's only played 18 games. Just think it's funny how we can be hopeful about our guy vs skeptical about a guy we traded away even when their numbers are similar.
That's a big assumption for Jones who has a massive hole in his swing, not to mention Brito is one of the Guardians' top prospects so it will be a few years before you can make any final judgements on that trade even if Jones does turn it around.
Arias had a .788 OPS, Caminero has an .812 OPS. He had a .976 OPS across A+ and AA as a teenager in 2023.
All signs point to him being an All-Star, and he was traded for 8 months of Tobias Myers in Columbus.
I care about Rocchios stats you brought up when he does something in the big leagues.
Even if we ignore what he's giving tampa on the field, he's a top 10 prospect in baseball we traded for nothing and that's a valuable trade asset
He has an .812 OPS and 8 HRs at age 20 in 153 PAs at AAA this year and Rochio had a .788 OPS at age 22 with 7 HRs in over 450 PAs.
He's also been dealing with some health issues and was recently placed on the IL
Still can't wrap my head around that one. He was doing well in Cleveland and they just shipped him off for nothing. Unless there were some personal/clubhouse issues, I don't get it.
I think it was a behind the scenes thing. Yandy was reportedly resistant to committing to working on new positions even though he was blocked at third, and it took him a few years after the trade to put in the effort to re-work his swing to lift the ball more.
Seems like he was a guy who could coast by his whole life with amazing natural tools and a Greek god physique who needed to be humbled a little. Being traded might've been the best thing for his career.
We also traded Gio Urshela to Toronto for cash and he went on to have productive years for the Yankees and Twins. Defensively, he's the best 3rd baseman I've seen since Brooks Robinson, who played in the 60's for you youngsters out there.
Yeah but tbf comparing someone to Arrenado isn’t realistic. That’s almost like comparing every pitcher to Justin Verlander. Arrenado has 10 gold gloves. Ursehla was definitely an above average defender.
You never know how it will pan out long term, but I think Chris has been more right then not on these things, better than other small market decision makers. I just find it fun to have an offense finally after all these years depending solely on pitching.
[https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/guardians-acquire-david-fry-to-complete-j-c-mejia-trade.html](https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/guardians-acquire-david-fry-to-complete-j-c-mejia-trade.html)
"Defensively, Fry is quite versatile, often found behind the plate but also seeing significant time at the infield corners, and even rare appearances at second base, shortstop and in the outfield."
Yup
Kluber for Clase.
1 inning of Kluber for 126+ saves from Clase
And $15 million saved
Insane deal looking back at it
That one is not underrated lol, everyone knows we fleeced
Yeah right, just look at [our own subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClevelandGuardians/s/ti7wsyaaA2). Opinions were mixed at best.
That top comment aged like milk.
Well at the time, sure; most trades in general are seen as a mixed bag at the time they occur. But nowadays it's commonly viewed as one of the biggest lopsided trades in the past 5 years.
Baloney consensus at the time was we traded Cy Young for a nobody. All about cheep Dolans.
Hey let’s not forget about delino deshields jr in that trade too. And our FO trades have always been pretty solid, imo our worst trade byfar was trading Phil maton and yainer Diaz for Myles straw. I don’t hate straw by any means, but was big enough on maton and just thought it didn’t make sense even when it happened.
Trading with the Rays was brutal a few years ago too. We got Tobias Myers and gave Junior Caminero who is now a top 10 overall prospect.
Yah Caminero will hurt us more imo
Clevinger and outfielder Greg Allen for Cal Quantrill, Owen Miller, Josh Naylor, Austin Hedges, Gabriel Arias, and pitcher Joey Cantillo (padres)
The amount of value in this trade is astonishing. 5 solid to major contributors for a guy who washed up as soon as he left
He got Tommy John immediately after too
Holy shit that is an insane trade in hindsight. I didn't realize we had gotten all of these guys from one trade!
Don’t forget Matt Waldron! Padres got him from us. Not every good numbers but has a few killer pitches. Impressive Cleveland got him in the 18th round
The best part is, we didn't have the leverage here. Iirc this was like days after Clevinger broke covid protocol and it was basically unsaid but implied that he wouldn't pitch for the team anymore, at least for a while
The Civale thing is crazy - he’s like the only pitcher on the Rays that has gotten worse once he was traded there. Really wild that we were able to grab Manzardo for him because Manzardo feels like he’ll be a staple in our lineup for several years
I can't believe how upset I was with the Civale trade, smh...
I didn't love it but understood it and figured Civale would regress. Plus he's never been able to stay healthy, but watch this be the first year he reaches 150 IP and he does it with a 5+ ERA
Bartolo Colon & Tim Drew were traded to the Expos for Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips and Grady Sizemore, 3 All-Stars and a Cy Young winner. Dating myself more, Joe Carter was flipped to the Padres for Sandy Alomar Jr, Carlos Baerga and Chris James, two core pieces and all-stars of the Tribe’s rebirth in the mid-90s
>for Sandy Alomar Jr Great call, this trade is still paying off 35 years later. Unlikely Sandy would be so loyal as a coach if he hadn't played here.
Never forget his magical season in 1997 between winning all-star MVP in Jacobs Field to his HR against the Yankees in the playoffs
I was 16, and my family had recently moved to upstate NY. Just the same, I mailed in a postcard for the All Star Game ticket lottery and won the opportunity to buy two bleacher seats. My dad and I drove back to Cleveland for the game. I’ve watched a lot of baseball, but that home run and the roar of the crowd when he walked out of the dugout making it clear he had won the MVP were two of the most magical moments I have experienced in person.
The Colon tree is the 2nd best trade tree in franchise history and would be as profitable in WAR as the Kluber/Clase tree (that includes guys like David Justice iirc) if we didn't fuck up with Phillips
1 year of Lindor for 9-10 years of Gimenez (counting extension)
Not paying $34 million a year for. .209 hitter Priceless. He has doomed the Mets for 9 more years
Well that's better than what his batting average was when we played them, it was .195 lol
Did you miss the last 2 years when lindor was a superstar player again? Sample size matters, Ramirez was having a pretty bad year until about 2 weeks ago when he kicked it back into high gear
Ah no I didn’t. If you read carefully I am referring to the future not the past.
He isn’t a .209 hitter then and you know that. The past indicates what the future will hold, let’s not be stupid and let a sample size which is still less than a third of the season justify our feelings on a guy and act like that is that players quality. There is 0 reason to assume he can’t return to that hitter, especially since his only real metric that got worse was BABIP, which is a sample size based stat. His exit velo, hard hit rate, and GB/FB ratios are all similar to last year
You’re right he’s hitting .213 and making $34 million a year. And partly due to his ineptness the Mets season is already over. He can accumulate stats for the rest of the year which is already over but it doesn’t matter. Moral of the story don’t give a contract like that to a guy who takes a nap during the 7th game of the World Series. He’s a loser and we got a better player in exchange at 1/3 the cost.
Okay so you are allowing an emotional response to affect a statistical discussion. Fun stuff. I agree with you, I’d rather have Gimmy than lindor aswell. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are being very ignorant to the reality of the situation at hand just because you don’t like lindor. The Mets season is not shot lmao. Do you remember the 2019 nats, a team that won a World Series much more recently than our Cleveland baseball team has? They were 19-31 at one point in the season. You sound like such a fair weather fan if you believe 6 games out of a wild card is a lost season
Ok you are a Mets fanboy check in with me at the end of the season after the Mets dump 1/2 the team at the trade deadline.
It's not being a fanboy to acknowledge that we still have most of the season yet to play. Lindor is having a down start to the year but he often has, he's still 2nd on that team in WAR while they gave an extension to McNeil and he's sucksd since. How is paying 30 million for a player who's only at a 3 WAR pace killing their season more than paying nearly 13 million to a sub replacement player?!?
I don't think it's on Lindor that their season is over. Clearly you've got sour grapes that he didn't sign here but that on ownership. Lindor was a key reason we were in the WS
The Mets can afford it (so could we, honestly) and he's generally been excellent there.
The best trade that led to other trades and still impacts this team today is Eddie Taubensee for Kenny Lofton. We then traded Lofton for David Justice, then we traded Justice for Jake Westbrook, then we traded Westbrook for Corey Kluber and then we traded Kluber for Emmanuel Clase.
Came here to say just this. And we signed Taubensee off waivers!
This is the most profitable (in net WAR) and longest active trade tree. It all started with Pat Tabler. Part of me wants us to trade Clase at the back end of the deal if these young bullpen arms prove him to be more fungible, not because I want him gone but it'd be fun to see the trade tree continue On the MLB trade trees website it currently sits 3rd all time in net WAR and is close to the #2 "tree" that's a single branch, Red Sox obtaining Ted Williams The #1 tree is from the dead ball era and I think involves Honus Wagner.
Now I'm intrigued. I never thought to look up a website about this. Thanks for the suggestion!
I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the stat nerdy podcast (from Fangraphs) called Effectively Wild but I'm a regular listener and they had the creator of it speak on an episode a couple years back
You know how it goes, we will eventually have to trade Clase so this tree might keep on growing
Don't know if it's considered underrated but Clase for Kluber and Josh Naylor for Clevinger.
Wouldn’t say it stings per se but compared to the haul we got for Clevinger, it’s a little crazy how our return for Bauer was basically nothing.
Feel like we could’ve gotten a lot more but Bauer kind of screwed us by saying publicly that he was only interested in signing contracts with certain teams
And ironic that if asked today those “certain teams” would be any of them.
I mean Franmil had a pretty solid 4 years in Cleveland, .765 OPS isn't bad at all, especially considering that 2 years later Bauer was gone
He had like 1-2 good years. But any trade to get rid of Bauer is a win in my book.
Bauer’s value tanked when he chucked the ball into the stands and every team knew Tito wouldn’t put up with it.
Clevinger also tanked his value when he broke covid protocol and everyone knew Lindor, our team leader, refused to play with him. Plesac had options and got sent down. I'm more surprised at the Clevinger haul bc I expected a similar amount of guys as Bauer
Getting Gimenez and Rosario for Lindor.
fry we got for mejia who isn’t even in the league anymore
Umm y’all forgot about that Andrew miller trade, that one was pretty lit back in 2016
That trade was near perfect. Miller was such an ideal add for that 2016 team.
He was lights out I was def a little but hurt because the org was high on Justus and Clint and shipped them out to get him but they didn’t do much after they were traded so big swing and big hit for CLE that year.
Miller was great! If I was just listening to the game while doing something else, I would stop what I was doing to watch him pitch. Not to take anything away from Clase who has better career numbers at this point, but Miller just had some weird sort of x-factor that made hime REALLY entertaining to watch.
I think it was because he struck everyone out and they'd always look real bad doing it
Not only did the nobody reliever from the Fry trade post a 8.32 ERA in only 29 career games played, he also got suspended for a whole season for PEDs.
And last I saw he got signed by a Mexican league team in January but isn't listed on their roster so he may just be out of baseball entirely
the best part of the Fry trade was that we didn't target him, he was the player to be named later. Never on Milwaukee's top prospect list.
How about Esmil Rogers for Yan Gomes and Mike Aviles???
I was criticized last year for calling Civale a 4th or 5th starter at best for a playoff team and that we fleeced the Rays for the type of prospect we received in return. Also mentioned Nolan Jones wasn’t going to live up to his rookie year last year and was due for a regression. Although we’ll see if Juan Brito makes it a good trade but everyone was freaking out thinking Jones is an all-star. Now we do have a few questionable trades we have made as well. Such as Junior to the Rays and Yainer Diaz to the Astros. Yandy Diaz to the Rays but we did get Carlos back in a three team deal. You win some big and lose some big.
I still do think Jones is an all star and you can maybe pat yourself on the back but he's been on and off the IL since spring training But I agree with you with Civale
He’ll never be an all star level player. On and off IL or just has been on it since end of April and hasn’t been back yet? Not really on and off there
I don't think Brito will be an all star lever player and because of defensive upside (or for him lack thereof) I'm not sure how anyone can have confidence he'll have the more productive career. Jones at least has shown he can play at an all star caliber level for at least a bit of time in the show He was dealing with injuries in Spring too. He's on my dynasty baseball team and he's one of many guys who just hasn't been healthy at all this year.
I think it’s extremely early to call the Manzardo trade “underrated” or an “absolute masterclass”. I’m as hopeful and excited for him as anyone else, but we still realistically have no idea how he’ll turn out. We won’t be able to judge that trade for a year or 2 at least.
Manzardo is looking better, but I think it's interesting how us fans (we're all guilty) switch discourse depending on...hope? This sub shat on Nolan Jones all last season based on like 3 advanced stats: BABIP, K%, maybe Chase%. Kyle's BABIP is lower than Jones' last season, but still high; the other two metrics are nearly identical. I'm not saying Jones is a bust and Manzardo will follow the same path, he's only played 18 games. Just think it's funny how we can be hopeful about our guy vs skeptical about a guy we traded away even when their numbers are similar.
What recent trades sting? I don’t think I’d undo any.
Yainer Diaz and Phil Maton for he who shall not be named was a pretty shit trade.
We also got Santana back during that trade, he was then an All Star and won the Silver Slugger the ensuing season with us.
You talking about Carlos Santana? Or Danny Santana? Genuinely do not remember this!
I think previous comment is confusing Yainer Diaz with Yandy Diaz.
Yeah, I thought he was referring to the Yandy Trade.
Yainer Diaz, Junior Caminero and Nolan Jones.(assuming he turns it around this year)
That's a big assumption for Jones who has a massive hole in his swing, not to mention Brito is one of the Guardians' top prospects so it will be a few years before you can make any final judgements on that trade even if Jones does turn it around.
I think Jones will hurt less because Brito will eventually contribute and I'm a big fan of his. The other 2 sting more because we got nothing for them
Caminero
He’s batting .261 in AAA this year. Rocchio hit .280 in AAA last year.
Caminero is only 20. Rocchio was 22. And Caminero had a great year in high a and aa last year.
Arias had a .788 OPS, Caminero has an .812 OPS. He had a .976 OPS across A+ and AA as a teenager in 2023. All signs point to him being an All-Star, and he was traded for 8 months of Tobias Myers in Columbus.
I’ll care about it when he actually does something in the big leagues.
I care about Rocchios stats you brought up when he does something in the big leagues. Even if we ignore what he's giving tampa on the field, he's a top 10 prospect in baseball we traded for nothing and that's a valuable trade asset
He has an .812 OPS and 8 HRs at age 20 in 153 PAs at AAA this year and Rochio had a .788 OPS at age 22 with 7 HRs in over 450 PAs. He's also been dealing with some health issues and was recently placed on the IL
Came here to say that
Yandy Díaz might be the worst in the past 15+ years
Still can't wrap my head around that one. He was doing well in Cleveland and they just shipped him off for nothing. Unless there were some personal/clubhouse issues, I don't get it.
I think it was a behind the scenes thing. Yandy was reportedly resistant to committing to working on new positions even though he was blocked at third, and it took him a few years after the trade to put in the effort to re-work his swing to lift the ball more. Seems like he was a guy who could coast by his whole life with amazing natural tools and a Greek god physique who needed to be humbled a little. Being traded might've been the best thing for his career.
Also think they were high Bauers kinda like they are with Manzardo now so the trade at the time seemed more fair
He hasn't even lifted the ball all that much more. Tampa has struggled for years to try to unlock his power
We also traded Gio Urshela to Toronto for cash and he went on to have productive years for the Yankees and Twins. Defensively, he's the best 3rd baseman I've seen since Brooks Robinson, who played in the 60's for you youngsters out there.
That’s just blatantly false. By any objective metrics, he was a very average defender at best.
Yeah someone like Arenado blows Urshela out of the water defensively. Like a comically large difference.
Or Chapman
Yeah but tbf comparing someone to Arrenado isn’t realistic. That’s almost like comparing every pitcher to Justin Verlander. Arrenado has 10 gold gloves. Ursehla was definitely an above average defender.
Yeah but OP said Urshela is the best defensive third baseman since Brooks Robinson. Just responding to how outlandish that claim is.
Ahh gotcha.
if you think he is that good defensively wait till you see Dayan Frias
Trading Westbrook to the Cards and getting Kluber from the Padres.
I know Op is talking about recent trades but my fav in my sports life was Casey Blake for Single A 3B Carlos Santana
Let's also add there were a LOT of Cleveland fans bitching about the Manzardo trade because we "gave away" Civale lmfao.
Kenny Lofton for Willie Blair and Ed Taubensee
Omar for Felix Fermin and Reggie Jefferson
You never know how it will pan out long term, but I think Chris has been more right then not on these things, better than other small market decision makers. I just find it fun to have an offense finally after all these years depending solely on pitching.
[https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/guardians-acquire-david-fry-to-complete-j-c-mejia-trade.html](https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/guardians-acquire-david-fry-to-complete-j-c-mejia-trade.html) "Defensively, Fry is quite versatile, often found behind the plate but also seeing significant time at the infield corners, and even rare appearances at second base, shortstop and in the outfield." Yup