Guardians Future Look Bright: Multiple Prospects Added to…
We may be in the midst of the offseason, but the Cleveland Guardians still have important decisions to make with their 40-man roster.
MLB’s Rule 5 Draft will be held during the Winter Meetings in mid-December, but the deadline to protect players and add them to the 40-man roster was Tuesday at 6:00 p.m.
With all of this going on, the Guardians made several roster moves on Tuesday afternoon.
Guardians Added To 40-Man Roster
On Tuesday, the Guardians added prospects LHP Doug Nikhazy, OF Petey Halpin, RHP Franco Aleman, and RHP Nic Enright to their 40-man roster.
Now, all of those prospects will be unavailable to other organizations in the Rule 5 Draft.
None of these moves were particularly surprising to the Guardians. Nikhazy, especially, was a pitcher that Cleveland couldn’t afford to lose to another organization.
Guardians Designate Several Players For Assignment
In order to make room for these prospects, the Guardians hard to make some tough decision with other players in the organization.
Cleveland’s roster was at 39 players heading into Tuesday, but they still had to designate multiple players for assignment as part of the roster moves.
These players include RHP Connor Gillispie, RHP Peter Strezelecki, and OF George Valera.
The most shocking move was seeing Valera get DFA’d. At one point, he was considered one of Cleveland’s top prospects in the entire system and their best young outfield player. However, Valera has suffered multiple injuries over the last few seasons, which have really hurt his development.
Valera could still become a solid big-league player at some point, but his future is unknown for now.
