Revisiting the Mike Clevinger trade…
I'm sure I made comments here at the time Cleveland traded Mike Clevinger to San Diego of my disappointment they chose quantity over quality. It turns out I was wrong and Cleveland got both. Clevinger should rejoin the Padres in the next week or two following Tommy John surgery and a knee sprain with the possibility that his long-awaited return comes in a rare Padres visit to Cleveland. So this seems like a good time see how the deal has played out:
August 31, 2020: Traded by the
Cleveland Indians with a player to be named later and
Greg Allen to the
San Diego Padres for
Joey Cantillo (minors),
Gabriel Arias,
Austin Hedges,
Owen Miller,
Josh Naylor and
Cal Quantrill. The
Cleveland Indians sent
Matt Waldron (minors) (November 9, 2020) to the
San Diego Padres to complete the trade.
The Padres' haul amounted to just Clevinger – Allen played one game for San Diego before he was traded for a minor leaguer who appears to have been released and Waldron is barely hanging on as organizational depth in AA. Clevinger pitched well for San Diego in the COVID-shortened 2020 stretch run, going 2-1, 2.84. He then started the team's first playoff game in 14 years, but walked 3 batters in the first inning before exiting with a torn UCL. As bad luck would have it, San Diego hasn't received any value from the trade since. Clevinger is now 31 and making $8M in his final year before free agency. Even before the injury, the odds were against him landing him landing a big free agent deal due his age (he didn't pitch as much in high school as most draftees and it took him until his mid-20s to reach the majors because of control issues). That was actually why the trade mildly surprised me, since I figured he might be one pitcher Cleveland could always afford.
Cal Quantrill seemed to be on Cleveland's radar as one those pitching projects they could take to the next level. After a few injuries to the starting rotation last year, Cleveland moved Quantrill into a starting role where he went 8-2, 3.12. In his first 3 starts of 2022, he's had some mixed luck with an unsustainably low .220 BAip against offsetting what's also an unsustainably low 3.4 K/9. In 180.1 career innings with Cleveland, he's accumulated 4.2 bWAR, which is the same as Clevinger provided in his last full season in Cleveland. Including this year, Quantrill is under team controll for four more seasons and would have made this a good trade for Cleveland if no one else was even involved.
Austin Hedges has been as advertised – he calls an excellent game, has an above average arm, and makes Roberto Perez look like a beast at the plate. I don't really know or trust the valuation of catching stats, so I just assume Hedges has been a wash or a bit below replacement level. Basically, he saved the Guardians $1M for a season by not resigning Perez and hopefully bridging the gap to Bryan Lavastida and a Maile-like veteran backup next year.
Within the next couple of years, prospect Bo Naylor might be in the discussion of Cleveland catchers. In the meantime, the Guardians are trying to figure out what they have in his older brother. It feels like Josh Naylor has been around forever, but he has just over 600 MLB at-bats now and is a couple months away from his 25th birthday. He wasn't a part of this deal I was interested in and I'm still not sure he's more than an part-time RF/1B and left-handed pinch-hitter. Cleveland has been overloaded with platoon players at the corners for most of the past decade. Naylor missed the second half of 2021 with a gruesome fractured and dislocated ankle injury, but has returned sooner than expected this year. He's also about the only Guardian who has been hitting this past week (.884 OPS in 8 games) after it looked like any future might be in doubt last year. I still don't know what to make of him. He'll get playing time in right field, but they have better athletes there. He's short and if he wasn't plodding before, he likely will be now, but Cleveland turned Carlos Santana into a pretty good first baseman and he was short and just as wide. More importantly, unless Owen Miller runs away with his current opportunity to be the first baseman, there's not much competition there for the foreseeable future.
Speaking of Miller… dude can roll out of bed and hit line drives. He got off to an abysmal start when he was promoted in 2021 and it snowballed, but he's currently batting .432 and leading the league with 7 doubles. I'm not sure he can really hit enough to be what you want at first base… he sort of wound up there by default after spending most of his pro career as a middle infielder. He has higher ceiling prospects coming up behind him, so he's not getting written onto the lineup card in ink for the next few years, but he might be one of those guys who gets an opportunity and doesn't let go.
One of those guys with a higher ceiling is Gabriel Arias, who's a consensus top 5 prospect in the system and posted an .802 OPS as a 21-year-old shortstop at AAA last year. His power is still developing, but he's not a slap-hitting scrappy middle infielder at 6'1", 217 lb, and projects as a 25+ HR hitter. He has the arm strength and agility to stay at shortstop long-term, which is good since they shouldn't need a third baseman for a while. The problem is his 55% swing rate suggests a below average OBP guy even if he's otherwise successful. It's going to be interesting to see how things shake out with all the middle infield prospects the Guardians have coming up. Arias is the odds on favorite for shortstop, while Gimenez has the first crack at second, but will have to hold off Tyler Freeman and then Brayan Rocchio and Jose Tena (and all those guys can play both positions)... and there's still Owen Miller.
Joey Cantillo is the longest shot from this trade to contribute in Cleveland. Fangraphs has him at #40 in the system. He missed most of last season to a non-arm injury, but is still a 22-year-old trying to establish himself in the AA rotation. He's soft-throwing changeup guy who profiles similar to Eli Morgan.