Welcome again to another installment of my new favorite series! The MLB Winter Meetings start this week and the rumors and whispers are bound to get louder as we go through the week, but we are here for you. Sure, the Guardians were never in play for someone like Jacob deGrom who signed a mega-deal with the Texas Rangers, but there was a new player requesting a trade that should spark the interest of Cleveland baseball fans: Bryan Reynolds.
BREAKING: Bryan Reynolds has requested a trade from the Pirates, @JMackeyPG reports https://t.co/jLMjogFX0p
— Post-Gazette Sports (@PGSportsNow) December 3, 2022
Reynolds signed a two year, $13.5m deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates last year to avoid some of his controllable years, and in 2023 he is due $6,750,000 in 2023, but after that is his Arb 2 and Arb 3 years. Reynolds wants a new deal, a long term extension with the Pirates and the offer they have made, the details of which we barely know but would make Reynolds the highest paid Pirate in team history meaning that it was more than the $70m that Ke’Bryan Hayes signed for. That obviously was not enough for Reynolds, whatever that money was, and thusly he has asked for a move away from the Slightly Southeast Guardians.1 Pittsburgh maintains that Reynolds request will not be heard and that it “has no bearing” on their plan for Reynolds as he is signed through this season, but that’s common language from a team that just got the cold slap in the face of an agent’s memo that their player wants to be the subject of the next #KenRosenbomb tweet.
So firstly, why Reynolds? 2022 was a slight down year for Reynolds but he is perfectly what Cleveland does and needs in their outfield. A career line of .281/.361/.481, 9.8% BB rate, 21.7% K rate, and a sure bet for 20+ home runs every year, Reynolds is uber consistent and he’s only 27. He sacrificed a little bit of contact in 2022 (74.2% Contact% in 2022 as opposed to 77.8% in 2021) and got three more taters and lost 40 and 45 points in average and on-base percentage, respectively. He’s mostly been used at a centerfielder in Pittsburgh, but would be patrolling right field in Cleveland as one of the few better defenders in CF already lives in Cleveland.
So again, the title of our series: what would it take to acquire? Well, I could just copypasta the Sean Murphy piece here; one of Brayan Rocchio and/or George Valera, one of Gavin Williams and/or Daniel Espino, and some high quality flotsam, but that isn’t cool. The Pirates have a decent middle infield depth at the major leagues and high minors, so Rocchio seems to be removed. The best ranked outfield prospect for Pittsburgh would be 25-year-old Matt Frazier, who is in Double A, so Valera would seem to be a necessity for the NL Central organization. Cal Mitchell is the only outfielder of note, so Valera would match up with Hayes and shortstop Oneil Cruz to be one of the better younger cores in the league.
Roasny Contreras and Mitch Keller are the top two starters in the bigs so they seem to be yet another team that would enjoy poaching some value from the Guardians. Reynolds’s age, team control, and eventual price tag seem to warrant fewer and/or lower valued assets than Murphy, which could mean that the trade only requires one of the top five players in the system.2 That could make a trade resemble something like Valera and Tanner Bibee, or Williams and Will Benson, another major league-ish center fielder that could or would take over the spot Reynolds vacates. With Pittsburgh in a “we aren’t trading Reynolds” stance at the moment, it’s hard to get a read on what they might like in return.
What it boils down to in Cleveland: the team has the prospect firepower to go out and acquire both Sean Murphy and Bryan Reynolds and have it not hurt too too much. Reynolds should probably only cost two of the top tiered players, and even if it ends up being Tyler Freeman or Gabriel Arias and others, that is the best case scenario. So I’ll mark it down as this: George Valera and Tanner Bibee for one Bryan Reynolds. Like the Murphy deal, it probably hurts fans to see that value go out, but Reynolds is a really good major league hitter, and the Guards have the ability to acquire him. Reynolds moves to right field, Josh Naylor stays at 1B and Oscar Gonzalez slides to the bench and becomes the everyday designated hitter, which if you have watched him in right, makes sense. The future is the future and the future is always bright until it’s not, so why not go for the player that has never had a wRC+ under 125 in a full regular season. Let’s do iti