Guardians reportedly open to trading starting pitchers at deadline

With the demand for starting pitching at its annual peak, the Guardians are open to opportunistically dealing from their big league rotation, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale are the two names they’re most willing to consider, and Passan adds that while Cleveland will typically listen to offers for any player, the ask on top starter Shane Bieber would be “exorbitant.”

To be clear, Cleveland’s willingness to entertain offers on some controllable starters doesn’t by any means signal a white flag for the season. The Guardians have walked this fine line for years, dealing from deep and talented rotations to align with ownership’s payroll restrictions while leaning heavily on their uncanny ability to develop high-quality replacements. In the past three calendar years, we’ve seen Cleveland trade Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, Mike Clevinger and Carlos Carrasco — yet the Guardians still have a collective 4.05 rotation ERA and a trio of homegrown arms with ERAs of 3.75 or better.

The 27-year-old Plesac will be arbitration-eligible for the first time this winter and is controlled for three years beyond the current campaign. He’s made 18 starts and tallied 99 innings of 4.09 ERA ball, striking out a tepid 17% of his opponents against a more impressive 6.1% walk rate. Through 412 2/3 big league innings, he’s punched out 18.6% of the batters he’s faced, walked just 6.2% of them and kept 41.9% of batted balls against him on the ground — a bit shy of league average in that regard.

Plesac briefly looked as though he was blossoming into a more impactful starter with a strong run of eight starts in the shortened 2020 season, but he’s generally looked like a capable fourth starter outside that quick glimpse. There’s plenty of value in three-plus years of a solid mid- or back-of-the-rotation starter — particularly one who’s been durable. Plesac has been able to avoid any arm injuries of note to this point in his career, but the team couldn’t have been pleased last season when he broke his thumb while “aggressively ripping off his shirt” (manager Terry Francona’s words) following a poor start.

Civale, also 27, would be something of a buy-low candidate for other clubs. The right-hander looked to have cemented himself in Cleveland’s rotation after tossing 256 innings of 3.76 ERA ball from 2019-21, but he’s on the shelf right now with a wrist sprain and has had poor results when healthy enough to take the mound. Civale’s strikeout, walk and home-run rates are all right in line with his solid career averages, but he’s still sporting an ugly 6.17 ERA in 54 frames this season.

Part of those struggles stem from a bloated .350 average on balls in play — well higher than the career .275 mark he carried into the season. He’s also been hampered by a 59.1% strand rate that looks anomalous, particularly when compared to the 76.3% mark he posted from 2019-21. However, while those traits point to some poor luck, this season’s struggles can’t be blamed solely on those oddities. Civale is also yielding the highest average exit velocity, opponents’ barrel rate and opponents’ hard-hit rate of his career, and his already-modest fastball is down from an average of 91.5 mph (2019-21) to 90.7 mph in 2022.

As with Plesac, Civale is controlled for three years beyond the current season. The Guardians might be selling at his value’s all-time low if they were to move him right now, which makes a deal somewhat tough to imagine. With a strong finish to the season and/or a strong first-half showing in 2023, Civale’s trade value would be considerably higher than it presently is. Then again, if the front office is bearish on his chances of a turnaround, now would arguably be the time to act.

The mere mention of Bieber’s name in anything trade-adjacent will surely excite fans of other clubs and lead to speculation, but it’s unlikely a trade involving the 2020 Cy Young winner will actually come together. Bieber’s average fastball has dipped from 94.3 mph in that 2020 peak to a pedestrian 91.9 mph in 2022, and advocates for a trade might feel that since he hasn’t matched that brilliant Cy Young form, the Guardians ought to sell high.

However, even with a lesser fastball, Bieber has pitched to a 3.37 ERA with a 28.5% strikeout rate and 6.9% walk rate in 208 1/3 innings since Opening Day 2021. Perhaps he’s not quite the dominant ace he appeared to be a couple of years ago, but he’s still a well above-average starting pitcher with excellent command and at least average strikeout and ground-ball abilities.

It’s feasible, if not downright likely, that the always payroll-conscious Guardians eventually trade Bieber, as his salary will continue to climb throughout the arbitration process. He’s earning $6M this season, could jump north of $10M in 2023 and would receive another raise in 2024 before reaching free agency at the end of that season. They could always revisit a potential extension with the 27-year-old, hoping to pair him with the recently extended Jose Ramirez as a franchise cornerstone, but even if a long-term deal can’t be reached, a trade when Bieber is closer to free agency is likelier than a deal in the midst of a summer in which Cleveland finds itself just 2.5 games behind the division-leading Twins.

Given that proximity to the division lead, it’ll surely surprise many fans to hear that the Guardians are open to trading from the big league rotation at all. However, moving a starting pitcher like Plesac at peak value would allow them to further stockpile one of the best farm systems in the industry and/or add immediate major league help at another position of need. With Konnor Pilkington holding his own in the big leagues so far, righty Peyton Battenfield touting a 3.32 ERA in 108 1/3 Triple-A frames and a deep reservoir of pitching talent throughout its loaded farm system, Cleveland may feel it has the depth to weaken the back of its rotation. Speculatively, president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti could also pull off some sleight of hand by dealing Plesac for sizable prospect capital and/or big league help and then immediately replacing him with a rental (e.g. Jose Quintana) whose prospect cost would be lesser than that of the just-traded controllable starter.

With so many teams in the market for pitching, it’s only natural for the Guardians to listen to offers on some of their current starters. This is a page right out of the playbook from Antonetti and GM Mike Chernoff, and we’ve seen them execute similar scenarios nicely in the past. A trade of a Guardians starter shouldn’t be considered a given, but looking at the names they’ve shipped out over the past few years, it also shouldn’t come as a shock, either.