7 trade targets from the Cleveland Guardians for the Colorado Rockies

The Cleveland Guardians are a team that is very close to the Colorado Rockies in more ways than one.

Both teams are/were known for their bromance on Twitter, both have shared a lot of personnel in the last 20+ years (former GM Dan O’Dowd, current GM Bill Schmidt, former manager Buddy Bell, current manager Bud Black, former pitcher/front office executive Jerry Dipoto, broadcaster Jack Corrigan, former broadcaster Duane Kuiper, former reliever Bryan Shaw, former starter Ubaldo Jiménez, and former reliever Rafael Betancourt are just a few people that were with both teams in one capacity or another), and both have had their fair share of playoff misery.

Cleveland hasn’t won a World Series since 1948, marking the longest current streak in baseball. Colorado has never won it in their franchise history.

Entering 2022 and their first season as the “Guardians,” Cleveland is not going to be a good team. They have a team that is, largely, a Triple-A team on offense and a pitching staff that has been traded or injured in the last three or so seasons. They also lost their “pitching guru” (assistant pitching coach Rueben Niebla) to the San Diego Padres, where he will be their pitching coach this season.

With the Tigers, White Sox, and Royals all developing and/or making big free agent signings, Cleveland, who is seemingly unwilling to spend more than a nickel or dime for players. They will have roughly $43 million on the books in 2022. The Rockies, by comparison, have $46.8 million dedicated to Charlie Blackmon, Germán Márquez, Antonio Senzatela, and C.J. Cron alone.

In other words, essentially, everyone is or should be fair game for the Guardians to trade. Cleveland often tends to trade their players later than they should have (e.g. Francisco Lindor, Mike Clevinger, Corey Kluber, the list can go on forever) so they probably won’t trade most of these players this offseason but, frankly, they should.