Guardians jump on MLB's latest deferred money trend

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1:15Welcome back to the Cleveland baseball talk podcast. I'm Joe Noga joined by Paul Hoynes. Still locked in our houses. Still still pretty cold outside. But the hot stove fires keep burning with these offseason rankings that tend to roll out here after the first of the year. The last few years we've watched MLB network ranked different players at different positions. Guardians players making the top 10. We've seen a Jose Ramirez, the manual class A, Cade Smith, Stephen Kwan, all ranked very highly. Among some of these top 10 lists earlier last week, Jose Ramirez checking in. I believe number five among third baseman. No, he was number five on the top 100 players list. Total players all baseball, which was his highest ranking ever. Remains to be seen where he ranks among the third baseman. But I think it's going to be pretty high this year. Last night, the network came out with their rankings of left fielders and a little bit of a surprise,

2:17a little bit of a shock. Stephen Kwan left unranked by MLB network among the top 10 left fielders right now. But would you think of that kind of snub for Kwan, a four-time gold Glover and a two-time all-star? Yeah, that was a surprise. I mean, he's always fair. It seems to me he's always faired pretty well in these rankings. I guess, you know, a ranking is a ranking, you know, that it really doesn't, you know, that's some, you know, a machine's opinion or the, whatever, you know, it's opinion. And we see Kwan every day. We know what kind of player he is. But it's interesting that you find 10 left fielders that are better than him. And, you know, he had a solid season. He played 156 games at 272, tied a career high with 21 stolen bases. I mean, scored 81 runs. I don't know, 705 OPS. I guess that could have been higher for a lead-off hitter. But still, what, 60 strikeouts, 55 walks, 330 on base percentage. I mean, this is,

3:25you know, this is a guy that, you know, just is a contact hitter. And he probably gets hurt because he's not hitting home runs. Joe, you hit 11 this past season, 56 RBIs. Yeah. And that really, if that's the only knock on him that he doesn't hit the ball out of the ballpark as often as, as some of these guys, you know, you don't want to see that make him change his approach at the plate. We've seen the power come with growth over the last four years, which is a natural sort of thing. So, if it naturally happens, but we don't want, you don't want to see Stephen Kwan change his approach because some ranking doesn't put him high enough because he doesn't hit home runs. You don't want that to change things on the field for him. And you hope that's not going to be the case. Kwan, like you said, had been ranked pretty high by this MLB network. They call it the shredder. It's that they're sort of calculus and how they put all the stats together. And then their panelists all pick their top tens. And this is how they rank it. So according to the shredder, Kwan was the number two left fielder after his rookie season in 2022

4:29of going into 2023. He was ranked number two. He was unranked going into 2024. He was the number eight left fielder going into 2025. And then again, this year, going into 2026 ranked. Yeah, I just, in my mind, like you said, we see him every day and we've seen him play left field. If that was the only metric that they were using, how you play left field, I think Stephen Kwan would have to be one or two. And there's no question about that. But, you know, this takes into account all your rate stats, all of your home run totals, your RBI, your run scored and everything. And it sort of matches it all together and spits out a result. According to the shredder, their top 10 for the heading into the 2026 season. If I go from 10 to one, Brandon Marsh, Jackson Cheerio, Kyle Stowers, Yordon Alvarez, who had been the number one left fielder for the last three consecutive years, even though, you know, he plays a handful of games

5:30a year in left field because he's mostly a DH. Number six was Ian Hap, James Wood, you know, exciting young Claire for the nationals, Riley Green, who we see all the time in Detroit, Cody Belinger in left field at Yankee Stadium. And then the top two. And I'm going to take issue with this the top two. Number two, Roman Anthony of the Red Sox and number one, Jared Durand of the Red Sox. Hoynesy, how do you have two left fielders wanted to on the same team? Make it make sense. Yeah. I don't know. I guess, you know, Anthony, you know, hot young prospects, you know, this is rookie year, but he got hurt at the end of the season, exciting young player. But one of those guys, I mean, Durand doesn't derand play center field as well. I thought, yeah, I thought he, but I guess not anymore, but still, yeah, I guess, you know, they had some Boston Red Sox fans on the shredder. Yeah, must have been you've got to pick one. Pick one. That's all if you're going to be a left fielder. Well, that's your, your spot. You have him as a left fielder. It just doesn't make any sense to me how that that ranking came out. And

6:32they've got two number one and, you know, at the top of the list there. As far as Juan goes, does this give him any extra motivation and any, any impetus to, you know, maybe the message that it's being sent here is, you know, hey, Steven, Juan plays in Cleveland. He doesn't get the recognition. You know, we heard it for so many years with Jose Ramirez, the most underrated player in the game is Steven, Juan, suffering from being underrated because he plays in Cleveland. And rankings like this are reflective of that. And is this a motivation for him to want to get the heck out of town? Yeah, I don't know, Joey. He doesn't strike me as that kind of guy that, you know, just because he's not rated in some rankings during January and February that he's going to use that as a springboard to get out of town. I think if Cleveland is willing to pay him what he wants, or they can reach a deal, I think there's probably room for a deal to be made. But who knows? I'm not sure what motivates guys. But just, you know, from talking to Juan,

7:34seeing him every day, he does not seem like that kind of guy. But Joe, I mean, he did his, his production did drop off in the second half. He hit 285. I'll be going into the break, 254 going in, you know, in the second half. That included a 214 batting average in August. And, you know, and the Tigers did a great job against him in the Wildcard series. He had 167, two for 12. He wasn't the only guy that didn't hit on Cleveland. But, you know, this is still a guy that does a lot of good things, Joe. As you mentioned, his defense, his base running, and he had 336 with runners in scoring position last season. So I mean, he's got to be doing something right. If I'm Steven, Juan, hopefully, you know, I don't get rabid ears. I'm not wearing myself out, watching MLB Network and you know, ringing my hands over this. I'm, I'm just working to get better. Yeah. I think from, from year one, Steven, Juan is a, is a player who recognizes his

8:36own value, recognizes his own worth and knows what he's good at and capable of and, and where he sort of sits among the hierarchy there. I think he understands that this sort of ranking is something that's, you know, it's outside noise, obviously. But, but he's definitely a guy who's used stuff in the past to motivate himself. You know, we've seen evidence of that all the way up through from his rookie year. I just hope that the motivation isn't color to buy or tainted by, you know, this, you know, what if I, if I were playing on the West Coast or if I was in a bigger market, if the recognition would be sort of different there. And I'm not saying that that's the case. I just, I just, you know, for the fans who want to see him stick around and sign a multi-year extension, you know, you hope that the, maybe they can use this in some way to, to convince him. The, the other sort of players on this list, what do you think of some of these guys? I, I, I do have to mention MLB Network did a fan poll and so it was opened up to fans. It had no input from the

9:38shredder or metrics or anything like that. You want to take a guess at who was number one in the fan poll, according to MLB Network viewers for, among left fielders. I'm not good at guessing, Joe, tell me, tell me, it was, it was on spot. It was Stephen Kwan, number one, Jackson Cheerio from the Brewers, number two, rally green, number three on that list, interestingly enough, Roman Anthony, number five, and Jaren Durand, number 10 on that list, according to the voters. Yeah, the top 10 as chosen by fans, Stephen Kwan, number one, the top 10 as chosen by computers, Stephen Kwan unranked for the second time in what his, his four or five seasons. So yeah, I just, there's a, there's a disparity there. A lot of people like what they see and they like who Stephen Kwan is and a lot of teams would like to have Stephen Kwan. A lot of fans would like to have Stephen Kwan penciled in as their lead off hitter. Yeah,

10:38no doubt about it, Joe. He's a popular guy. He enjoys the game, you know, you can, you can tell and, you know, he's not that big a guy. People can relate to him. He, you know, like, as he says, he spends the off season in Chicago and he can walk down the street and nobody notices him. So, you know, I think, you know, there's some fans can relate to him. He's, he's the people's choice for sure. Hopefully he's walking down the streets in Chicago, bundled up and nobody can recognize him right now because goodness, it's probably double digits below zero up in Chicago. All right, Hoynesy, you know, rankings aside, I think that's, it's kind of crazy to think about the money some of these guys make and the contracts that have been signed recently, Jose Ramirez signing the extension or agreeing to the extension at the end of last week, 175 million, but 70 million of that deferred a big step for the guardians and their organization because they'd really

11:39never done something like that in the past, not to the extent of $70 million worth of a contract, deferred payments over, you know, 10 years or so. The deferrals are becoming a lot more invoked. You go back to sort of the granddaddy or the, the godfather of deferred contracts and that's Bobby Bonilla. You know, every year they celebrate Bobby Bonilla Day where he gets what, 1.2 million from the Mets all the way through, you know, the next, I mean, that's that contract's got to be coming up at some point, but you now go to Shoheotani who deferred what, $68 million of his $70 million a year for 10 years from the Dodgers to keep them financially viable to sign other free agents and that's sort of the right now the gold standard of contract deferrals. What do you think of this trend of deferred payments, you know, and what it's done to baseball and what it's

12:39done to players ability to sort of sign with these same clubs, the Dodgers and the Mets and other teams for big bucks and and still keeping them able to add other players because the superstars are deferring their payments. It's a it's a good strategy by the front office and if you can get the player to agree to it, kind of, you know, works both, you know, it helps both parties. I mean, years after a player retires, he's still getting paid by that club. I mean, there's still some security there. And like you said, Joe, he, the team gets a chance to, you know, some flexibility to continue to build a roster and they're not held hostage by one contract. And so it is a good idea. You know, when when Mani Ramirez left Cleveland to sign with the Boston, the long term deal, the Guardians, it turns out they offered Mani just as much money, maybe more than Boston did,

13:40but a lot of it was deferred and Mani didn't want to do that. Mani and his agent didn't want to do that. So he went to Boston where most of the money was up front. You know, it just depends on the player and the team, the team's situation. You know, I think, you know, what Jose has done here has really, you know, given the Guardians a chance to, you know, if not this year, then next year, to add some help, to add some offensive help, whatever they needs, you know, I think it's a two-way street and you have to have a good relationship with the player to do this. Yeah, that's that's the key there is Jose. It really doesn't feel like he was going anywhere or if if he wanted to stay, you know, he also wanted to make sure that the Guardians were able to put pieces around him and I think that was sort of the feeling maybe back to the beginning of the contract when he left a lot of money on the table back in 2022. And now it's sort of it becomes sort of a it becomes sort of paramount now that they that they do that here in the second sort of phase of his his

14:44contracts as with them that they they actually show, you know, in good faith that they're actually going to do this. I just want to go back to mentioning the the Bobby Bonilla contract. The parameters of it were just crazy. He receives an annual payment of $1.193 million from the Mets every July first from 2011 through 2035. So he's still going to be making $1.193 million every year through 2035 just sort of crazy. It dug up some some really sort of oddball weird facts. Jose Ramirez, Choyotani on soda, all these guys who were signing all these deferred contracts. So there's a lot of deferrals out there and and that are in play in 2026. I'm going to go through a bunch of these weird facts and some of these names are pretty interesting. Max Scherzer. I remember he was what he used to use to pitch for the Mets pitch briefly for the I'm sorry for the nationals for the

15:49Mets and the Dodgers. Max Scherzer and what last year he pitched for the blue jays. Max Scherzer making 15 million from the nationals this year, 15 million from the nationals next year, and 15 million from the Dodgers in 2028. And I don't think he even has a team yet this year if he's intending to still pitch. The Astros O. Zach Granky, $12.5 million this season. I don't think he's pitched for what in two years. Madison Bumgarner making five million dollars this year and next year from the Diamondbacks. Chris Davis getting 3.5 million this year and will be on their payroll for the Orioles through 2037. You think about that? Wow. You mentioned Mani Ramirez earlier. He will receive his final cash payment from the Red Sox for that original deal that he signed two million this season. He'll make his final two million dollars from the Red Sox and he hasn't played in forever. Justin Padroyo getting 2.5 million from Boston every year from this year through 2028.

16:54And here's the craziest one I came across. Matt Holliday is going to make $1.4 million from the Cardinals this year. He last played for them 11 years ago. His son Jackson is going to make $820,000 from Baltimore. So he's going to make almost twice as much as his son who's actually playing this year. And like we said, Bobby Bonilla 1.2 million from the Metz and another $500,000 from the Orioles. The last one that I found Vinicastia. He hasn't played since 2006 and he's still getting more than $100,000 a year from Colorado and will continue to be on their books until he is 61 years old in 2029. That's amazing. I mean, these guys are none of them have picked up a bat in how long and they're still making crazy amounts of money that they deferred from when they were when they were playing. So yeah, those those are some insane facts about deferred payments

17:56and and now Jose Ramirez sort of part of this this trend and the Guardian sort of jumping in getting their feet wet with deferrals. Good retirement planning, Joe. It pays off. And here I sit with no no retirement plan. Nothing nothing on the books. Nothing to think about. It's it's going to be only working at home depot at some point. I just know it. All right. You know, we wanted to talk about the the 2026 schedule. The Guardians and Major League Baseball releasing the times and the TV broadcast schedule. The Guardian's actually appearing on 13 nationally televised games this year, including the the first NBC Sunday night game coming up on opening weekend. The season kicks off Thursday, March 26th. But that Sunday night, the following Sunday, they will be in Seattle taking on the Mariners on NBC's Sunday night baseball. The premiere of that version of Sunday night baseball at 720 p.m. Poinsie, what do you think when you saw the

18:56MLB schedule and the times and just seeing that all on paper sort of made it all a little bit more real and then it's coming up quick. Kid and Joe, it really went into the calendar flips the January 1st. It's start, you know, the season starts coming, coming into it like a freight train. You see in the schedule and you know, all the times and the broadcast schedule, you know, you start looking over your shoulder like it's almost here. I just know that first opening trip, Joe, four against Seattle and three against the Dodgers. I mean, it doesn't get much. It's a tough, that's a tough opening right there. Those are tough, seven tough games. Yeah, you better be ready to hit the ground running, especially, you know, that series on early week, series Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday against the Dodgers in LA. But, you know, for Steven, Steven vote, the Seattle trip is always a fun one. You know, his family is up there and it's sort of a big homecoming for him. Nice to open the season that way, at least at the very beginning of, you know, being around.

19:58He can sleep in his own bed for at least one night. Yeah, that's nice. I mean, the last time I think last year he brought his team, his sons, he brought his son's little league teams to the ballpark before the game. So yeah, it was, it was cool. So I'm sure they'll do that again. You know, he's spent a lot of the winter. There's a lot of the offseason coaching his daughters and sons baseball teams. So I'm sure, you know, that'll carry over into this four game series with the Mariners. Yeah. And as far as being on national TV 13 times, is that sort of a, at least a little bit of a recognition of the excitement that the Guardians were able to generate last season at the end of the year into the playoffs. And this is a team that a lot of people want to see, see guys like Jose Ramirez and Steven Kwan and Gavin Williams and what they can do. Yeah, they made themselves one of the best stories in baseball last season by coming back with that historic rally, you know, 15 and a half games back in July, you know, loving games back

21:03on September 4th, winning the last, winning the division on the last game of the season. What an extra innings on a, on a home run by Brian. Yeah, Brian Roqueo. I mean, it doesn't get that storybook stuff. They just didn't take it a little farther into postseason. Yeah, I think people would would like to see this team and want to see how they do it, you know, I mean, a lot of times the last season, they did it with smoke and mirrors with this offense and they haven't done a whole lot to improve it. And we'll have to see if that style still, you know, still still work, still plays. And just how much this team can improve from last year to this year, open the road like we are open the open the season with seven on the road, Seattle and L.A. They end the season with six to row at the end of the year, Boston and Kansas City being on the road to sort of finish the year. Does that have any impact on, you know, what's going on with them? I think so, Joe. Definitely. I think it's always harder to win on the road. I think,

22:07you know, Boston, it looks like a really good ball club. They were a playoff team last year. Kansas City had a winning record two years ago. They were a playoff team. So yeah, and both teams have made moves to get better. Yeah, that's a that's a tough way to end the year, especially if you're in contention or you need to win X amount of games to get to the post season. It means that's going to wrap up today's edition of the Cleveland baseball talk podcast. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Two good and co-coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk, and contain three grams of sugar per serving. That's 40% less than the five grams per serving in leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience. Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold, bold, or frothy, two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one. Two good coffee creamers,

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