Guardians Season Preview Commentary: Trade, torturous at time, turns out terrific

This is next-level Major League Baseball front office-ing. It's a crash course in how to avoid a crash-and-burn outcome when painted into a corner by economic circumstances beyond your control, within an industry unforgiving to those without the wherewithal to financially compete. Ladies and gentlemen: the exquisitely executed Francisco Lindor trade, Messrs. Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff executors. If the 2022 Cleveland Guardians season was Terry Francona's Mona Lisa, the 2021 trade of Lindor and Carlos Carrasco to the Mets for Andres Gimenez, Amed Rosario and two minor league prospects is Antonetti's and Chernoff's Panama Canal. It's helped get a franchise from there to here. It has reinvigorated a market, reimagined the future and reconfigured possibilities heretofore thought unreachable. What more can you ask from a trade? All that produced by what appeared to be yet another cut-your-losses-and-hope-for-the-best transaction — a Cleveland staple at the time — that drew the expected cries of derision by a heavily scarred fan base. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and how much longer until the Browns' first game? For the Guardians it was a familiar refrain. Another homegrown star who had grown too expensive for the market and organization that drafted, developed and worshipped him, then stood by helplessly as he either left as a free agent, or forced his financially strapped team to trade him. You know, every three or four years: Wash and repeat. Year after year, producing moans after groans from one of the game's most tormented markets. But then, along came the Lindor trade, accompanied by all the usual trappings and angst shoveled on top of a weary fan base worn out by residing in an unfortunate geographic area in which great sports memories rarely happen. It was Lindor and Carrasco to the Mets for Gimenez, Rosario and the two obligatory minor league prospects. To Guardians fans the names Gimenez and Rosario meant next to nothing. Then 2022 happened. Nobody saw it coming, nobody believed it possible and nobody could believe how it ended. Because it ended with a spectacular September to remember. A surge to the top of the AL Central, then into the postseason, where the Lindor-doesn't-play-here-anymore Guardians came within one win of reaching the American League Championship Series. Two of the ringleaders were Gimenez and Rosario. At the time of the Lindor trade they were, to most Cleveland fans, just a couple of guys. But by the end of the season they were a couple of stars. If you're grading trades, by the end of the season nobody missed Lindor. Consider the following. Gimenez was the starting second baseman on the American League All-Star team. He was also the AL Gold Glove winner at second base. He finished in the top 10 in the league in WAR, batting average, OPS, sacrifice bunts, stolen base percentage and intentional walks. The only American League position player with a higher WAR than Gimenez's 7.4 was some guy named Aaron Judge. Think about that. Gimenez was sixth in the American League MVP voting. Lindor was ninth in the National League MVP voting. Gimenez got 141 voting points in the MVP balloting. Lindor, in the National League, got 77. Rosario led the American League in singles and triples and was third in total hits. He was the heart and soul of the 2022 Guardians. Nobody played harder or hustled more. Lindor was in the top 10 in the National League in games played, at-bats, runs, triples, hits, RBIs and sacrifice flies. But Gimenez was a better all-around player than Lindor in 2022, and Rosario wasn't far behind those two. Then there's this: the salaries of the three players last year — Rosario $4.9 million, Gimenez $706,000 and Lindor $34.1 million. Repeat: Gimenez $706,000. Which team got more bang for its bucks? You decide. Lindor is 29, and he is three years into his 10-year, $341 million Mets contract. Gimenez is 24. His 7.4 WAR in 2022 dwarfed Lindor's 5.5. Gimenez has also reportedly agreed to a seven-year, $106.5 million extension with the Guardians. Wait. What? Go ahead, read that again. Two years ago Gimenez was a fringe major league middle infielder in the Mets system. Now he is one of the most important building blocks for a Cleveland franchise that apparently, after years of nickel and diming its way to near the bottom of the yearly major league payroll lists, is prepared to start spending money again. Gimenez's $106.5 million deal is roughly $40 million more than the Guardians' entire 2022 payroll. All of a sudden the league-leading 25 times Gimenez got hit by pitches last year was worth it. Two years ago when the Lindor trade was made, Gimenez, to Guardians fans, was just a guy. Now all of a sudden, he's THE Guy. Not just now, but for the next seven years: $106.5 million. Apparently, the Guardians are open for business again. Francisco who? Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com. Follow him @Jim_Ingraham on Twitter.