The Indians did next to nothing during the meetings, but the Giants made a few interesting moves that I'll be writing on when I have things in order and of course, there is the Rule 5 draft that minor league buffs love so much with a few notables moving around as well.
Before we begin with the actual baseball talk though, the massive elephant in the room needs to be addressed with Rob Manfred and his "Making Baseball Garbage" plans and his negotiations with minor league baseball for their next contract that begins in 2021 and his plans to slash 42 teams (including the Hagerstown Suns and Frederick Keys) that includes the entire Appalachian and Pioneer leagues.
While I have no problems with some tweaking to the minors to ease some travel and certainly have no issues with telling places (like Hagerstown) that they either need to catch up and make their facilities modernized or lose their franchise, Manfred's ideas (mainly through the ideas of the Houston Astros head Jeff Luhnow, who seems to believe he's the greatest innovator of the game since the guy that discovered the special mud that was used to take the shine/slickness off the game used balls.) to devastate small cities and rural areas by removing their clubs are short-sighted from a game that is already struggling to attract and keep young fans.
The Astros contradict themselves when they whine about paying players that "don't have a chance to make the big leagues", yet cry that the New York Yankees have far too many players (over 200) and that's unfair too.
That's clearly wanting to have your cake and eat it too and the solution to this is pretty simple- Require each major league franchise to be involved with teams at five levels- AAA, AA, High A, Low A, and one short-season and if you don't wish to have two short-season teams, complex teams, Latin American teams, etc, you don't have to.
So if the Yankees want to staff nine teams ( those five, plus an additional short-season and the various developmental complex leagues) they can and if the Astros think that allowing those extra players to play is a wasted expense, they can simply not participate in more than the required leagues.
The Astros are filled with wonderful ideas, such as hiring coaches that never played professional baseball ( I'm not saying that you had to have played to coach, but they use so many coaches in the minors that didn't play that they must not value that highly), and value using a tablet and winning fantasy baseball leagues more than any teaching tool to note a few and that's before considering their scandal with cameras at the big league level and the Brandon Taubman moment during the playoffs.
A team that I rooted for a bit as a kid, the Astros have quickly zoomed to the elite level of teams that are easy to root against in the game today.
If MLB's argument is that some facilities need to be modernized and some leagues could use reorganizing for travel reasons ( a third AAA league that would be based in the Midwest and a shakeup in the low and high A leagues on the East Coast are reasonable and would make sense to make happen) I'm in agreement, but this hit job on the lowest level of the game because Jeff Luhnow (and his disciples that now run the Brewers and Orioles) believes that their bunch of "Andy Bernard's" think that they aren't worth their time developing at the cost of long-term damage to the game, perhaps the Ivy League isn't churning out the minds that they used to.
Transitioning to the actual game, I'm going to write about the Giants free agent signing, trade, and rule five draftee in another post and the Indians did little at the meetings, but there were a few names drafted of local interest.
Righthander pitcher Sterling Sharp was the first round draftee by the Miami Marlins from the Washington Nationals.
The former Hagerstown Sun and Harrisburg Senator will turn 25 in May and his 2019 season was shortened with an oblique problem suffered in late May.
The injury essentially ended his season other than three starts and nine innings between the Nationals Gulf Coast complex league team and their short-season team in the New York-Penn League, the Auburn Doubledays.
In those nine starts for Harrisburg, Sharp finished 5-3 with a 3.99 ERA, striking out 45 and walking 15, but should he make the Marlins roster and be held there for the entire 2019 season, Sharp is expected to be used in long relief.
Miami must keep Sharp on their roster for the entire season or offer him back to the Nationals for $50,000.
In the Triple-A phase of the draft, the Indians would lose three players and select two players.
The cost for selecting a player in this portion of the draft is $24,000 and unlike the major league half of the draft, the player does not have to be offered back, becomes permanent property upon being drafted and can be placed at any level of the minors that the new team chooses.
The newest members of the Cleveland system are both pitchers as lefthander Daniel Young was selected from Toronto and righthanded arm Jhon Peluffo was drafted from Baltimore.
Daniel Young was tremendous in the Eastern League for AA New Hampshire with an ERA of 1.79 and hitters hit only .204 against him, but he turns 26 in May and didn't pitch well after a late-season promotion to AAA Buffalo, allowing seven earned runs in eight innings of work.
Young will likely start with AAA Columbus.
I suppose Young could develop into a situational lefty, but with Rob Manfred planning on installing his three batter minimum for 2020, the situational lefty could be going the way of the Passenger Pigeon soon.
Jhon Peluffo is an interesting case as he looked headed for a short career after an awful season as a starter in 2018 before being converted to a reliever last season.
Peluffo pitched in 30 games at Low A Delmarva and three more for High A Frederick and notched a combined ERA of 2.49 and hitters hit only .174 against him.
Peluffo turns 23 in June and has only pitched eleven games above low A, so my guess is that he starts at High A Lynchburg.
The Indians lost a very interesting player when the Orioles selected outfielder Cristopher Cespedes with the second pick in the draft.
Cespedes hit .326 with six homers in the Arizona Rookie League last season and turns 22 in May.
The problem is Cespedes has never played above the Arizona Rookie League and will be a little old for low A ball, so we'll see if Cespedes is more than just a lottery ticket.
My guess is that Cespedes will be assigned to low A Delmarva.
The Indians lost another player to Baltimore in the second round when the Orioles grabbed second baseman Wilbis Santiago.
Santiago hit .315 and a homer in seventy-two games for high A Lynchburg in his first season above rookie league level.
Santiago turns 24 in January, so if he's more than an organizational soldier Santiago will need to move quickly.
Santiago will likely start at high A Frederick, although AA Bowie cannot be ruled out.
The final player that the Indians lost was catcher Jose Colina to Oakland.
Colina killed the ball for the AZL Indians finishing with a .369 average and eight homers in twenty-eight games, but like Cespedes has never played even short-season ball, was old for the league at twenty-one and the reason that the Indians had him, to begin with, was because the White Sox released him after the 2018 season.
The other two names of interest were both selected by the Chicago Cubs, who selected first baseman/outfielder Jerrick Suiter from the Pirates in the second round and infielder David Masters from Washington in the fourth round with what would be the final pick of the draft.
The soon to be 27-year-old Suiter hit .235 with four homers for AA Altoona, after spending a half-season in 2018 with AAA Indianapolis.
Suiter had looked to be a minor prospect after a good 2017 year with AA Altoona where he hit .285 with ten homers in one hundred games with the Curve, but hit just .204 with the Indians in sixty-seven games there.
Former Hagerstown Sun David Masters turns 27 in April and comes off a 2019 season that saw him hit above .241 for the first time in his career in hitting .260 with eleven homers for high A Potomac before a final month promotion to AA Harrisburg, where he hit .261 with a homer.
Masters had spent parts of five seasons with Potomac before being promoted to AA.
My guess is that Suiter will be assigned to AA Tennessee, while Masters could be sent to High A Myrtle Beach or AA Tennessee depending on those teams' particular needs.
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