MONDAY DELIVERY: Take Me Out to the Glory Days

Spring Training is back, baby! With it comes the dream of spring, ((and nightmares of second winter)) letting the imagination run wild for what the baseball season ahead can bring us. The Cleveland Guardians are hardly ever major players in free agency, and this year was no different, but there are always moves of interest nonetheless. Looking for diamonds in the rough is a Cleveland baseball tradition at this point, but it often leads to the most fun and weird career stories later on. For every Kerry Wood signing, there's a Jeff Manship that somehow turns out better. Trying to determine who is going to emerge from the haze to be a valuable player this year from the outside looking in is folly, but it's fun to speculate on what may come. Below, I've chosen one player from each general position group who is a non-roster invitee to Spring Training and looked at their path to Cleveland so far and how they could be one to affect the Guardians' 2024 season. These are not big signings or major prospects, but they all have some factors and abilities to put together a kind of Tyler Naquin run of being undeniable in the spring and forcing playing time in the majors, or, more likely, finding some small role to improve the team.Pitcher: Jaime BarriaIt would be too easy to come here and talk about Carlos Carrasco, so instead let’s look at this former Angels pitcher. Barria is maybe the most intriguing player to me that no one has mentioned much about. He broke into the majors as a starter for LA in 2018 and delivered a 3.41 ERA in 129 innings over 26 starts. However, he flamed out of the rotation the last couple of years, only making 7 starts out of 69 appearances. The problem is, he’s not a strikeout guy, possessing only a low 90s fastball and sinker and a slider that’s more about creating weak contact rather than swing-and-miss. He’s had an up-and-down career thus far. If you go by ERA+, he has a great season every other year, posting 123, 72, 126, 97, 154, and 79 numbers since 2018, so he is due for a bounceback performance this year! ((I call this the Ryan Raburn Dynamic)) His BABIP against has followed the same every-other-year trend as his ERA+, so it appears he can be victimized by the contact he is looking to give up, even if he doesn’t give up much hard contact, being in the 82nd percentile of hard-hit percentage. I’m always curious to see if Cleveland can redeem a pitcher who has had some success elsewhere, whether it be by adding some velocity or just changing the message. Barria is still only 27, so there’s a chance this could be a depth starter we see sometime this year, or even a middle-relief option with some upside left to be shown.Infield: Micah PriesI’m definitely cheating on this one, because while Pries is a first baseman, his most likely breakthrough position in the majors will be in the outfield, seeing as he’s an older prospect (turning 26 before the season starts) and has Josh Naylor and Kyle Manzardo ahead of him at the 3. ((Not to mention the Deyvison De Los Santos of it all.)) Though he was drafted in the 13th round of the 2019 MLB draft, Pries only has 3 years of professional experience under his belt so far due to the canceled 2020 minor league play. But he’s made up for some lost time, showing a nice combination of power and utilized speed with 44 home runs and 37 stolen bases across his minor league career. This will be his second year as a spring training invitee for Cleveland, and I hope to see him in some televised game action. He jumped out to me last year as a smooth athlete in right field with a clean swing, but I also only saw him for a game or two. Still, he brings versatility, playing first and all three outfield positions, and may have some future with the Guardians as a bench bat.Outfield: Petey HalpinThis was a personal prospect crush for me from the day he was drafted. A third-round pick out of a West Coast high school, a lefty hitter with speed and potential power patrolling centerfield? I thought for sure this was going to be Grady Sizemore 2.0. Unfair expectations aside, Halpin has progressed relatively well in the minors so far since being drafted in 2020. He’s gone from one home run to six to nine last year. He's also improved his double and walk totals every year.  He has stuck in centerfield. He’s done all this while being almost 3 years under the average age of every level he’s played at. But there are concerns, obviously. His OBP has declined every year, and last year he struck out 126 times in only 452 at-bats. While his minor league career BABIP is a strong .332, it has also decreased every year. So while the power has shown a bit more, the contact abilities might not be up to snuff enough to get to that power in games as he continues to inch closer to the majors. This is projected to be his first season in AAA, so I’ll be watching him closely to see if he stays on his current 4th outfielder projection or becomes something a little better, like Grady Sizemore. It's a long shot to see him in Cleveland this year, but if we do, it could be for very fun reasons. Or everyone got hurt and the season is on fire. But let's think Sizemore thoughts here.Catcher: Brian LavastidaLavastida seemed to have some prospect juice coming into 2022 after good seasons at the plate in 2019 and 2021 (another player that lost a year of development in 2020). He was a top-30 team prospect, and some fans were chattering about him maybe being a part-time or full-time starter, especially with the questions we had about Bo Naylor at that time. Lavastida made the team out of spring training in 2022 due to an injury to free agent signing Luke Maile, but Lavastida only saw 6 games of action, recording one hit in 12 at-bats before spending the rest of the year in the minors. But he never found his bat again that year, hitting only .209 and even being sent down from AAA to AA midseason, before being designated for assignment in 2023. He accepted his assignment, but again was back in AA Akron for the third time. He found more success at the plate in 2023, hitting a career-high 12 homers, so maybe the bloom isn’t totally off the rose. The reports about his defense sounded good in his earlier prospect years, but there have been questions since. Lavastida is no longer competing to be a starting catcher on the Guardians with Bo Naylor finding the success he had in 2023, but Austin Hedges is only signed to be the backup catcher for this year, so there is an opportunity for a job going into next year if he can keep his bat awake and be at least steady on defense.There may not be a lot of glory to start as non-roster invitees, but every year a handful of these guys play in the majors, and some of them create or restart careers for themselves out of those opportunities. It's the ultimate baseball dream, but now we must get on to the ultimate baseball songs. Or at least songs that mention baseball and bring this whole spring training thing into one big mess of excitement for the season to come. How can you not be romantic about baseball?Top 10 Songs About (or related to) Baseball10. Glory Days, Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band. A standard of reliving the past with rose-colored glasses and sadness, but it can’t be higher than this when he calls a fastball a “speedball.” Come on, Bruce. Every baseball writer loves you, what are you doing? Perfect music video though.9. Tessie, Dropkick Murphys. Once reviled by the Red Sox fanbase as a cursed song before breaking the Curse of the Bambino in 2004, now hailed as a classic. Also featured on the greatest baseball video game of all time, MVP Baseball 2005.8. Mrs. Robinson, Simon & Garfunkle. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? I don’t think any athlete has more songs featuring their name than Joltin’ Joe.7. Perfect Situation, Weezer. Almost nothing about baseball here, except use of it as a metaphor for going for it in a relationship. All you have to do is swing and you’re a hero.6. Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?, Count Basie. The only reference to Take Me Out to the Ballgame on this list is the jazzy intro to this 1949 song about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Lots of big band sing-along in this one, making it sound like the biggest party in Brooklyn. Also throws a mention to Satchel Paige in there for the Cleveland flavor. 5. The Natural, Randy Newman. Hard to put an instrumental on here, but also harder to leave The Natural off the list. This score captures lightning in a baseball bat, while also giving that good 80s tinge of synthesizer. It’s a little haunting, but full of on-field glory and determination. I’m gonna go watch The Natural now.4. Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, Les Brown. Love a timestamp song like this that is of its era in style and subject. Just makes ya wanna grab ya best gal and do the Charleston!3. America the Beautiful, Ray Charles. The only night game of the year for the kids from The Sandlot was on the 4th of July, and this soulful rendition of the American classic playing as the kids watch fireworks, ignoring The Jet hitting a home run, is pure nostalgia bait that I will take every time. How can you not be romantic about baseball? ((Wait, wrong baseball movie))2. Centerfield, John Fogerty. My dad would always change the eye color of the “handsome man” mentioned in the song from brown to blue when singing along to match his eyes because he played centerfield for his church softball team. But more broadly, it feels like this song should play in the head of every little rural kid getting together at the local American Legion to play a double header before getting some ice cream at the Dairy Queen and riding home in their woody station wagon.1.Cleveland Rocks, The Presidents of the United States of America. There’s no baseball in here, and it’s a cover of the original, but growing up watching The Drew Carey Show with everyone decked out in Indians gear for this theme song forever imprinted it as pure baseball in my mind. I still get pumped hearing it, after all these years.