Amed Rosario

He's probably the most interesting player on the roster right now. He was the Mets' #6 prospect in 2014, #7 in 2015, #3 in 2016, #1 in 2017 and has been a big-league mainstay since 2018. He was one of two big pieces to come to us from the Lindor deal (along with Andres Gimenez, who was the more high-upside piece while Amed was established at the time of the deal).

He's still only 27, is a career .274 hitter and has shown some pop, along with tremendous speed and contact ability (Fangraphs rated him as the in the bigs last season). He finished #11 in OPS last season among all shortstops, though his .715 mark is almost exactly league-average. He also just had his best defensive season of his career, with a massive improvement from -9 in 2021 to 6 in 2022.

He also has a huge endorsement by Jose Ramirez, who said that (maybe kidding? who knows...). Jose's support is definitely not a non-factor in the team's thought process. He seems like a well-liked guy in the clubhouse too, and is definitely one of our leaders (his hustle is contagious, and he was always the first guy up cheering on his teammates at the dugout).

On the flip side, the Guardians are loaded with middle infield talent. Gabriel Arias and Tyler Freeman were already on the roster in 2022. Brayan Rocchio, Jose Tena and Angel Martinez are all knocking on the door. And SS is Andres Gimenez's natural position, though in all likelihood he'll be locking down 2B for the foreseeable future after his Gold Glove season (though he is playing SS in Venezuela right now). Is Rosario's play worthy of blocking these well-regarded prospects from seeing the field? Sometimes baseball fans have a bad habit of over-valuing our own prospects.

The other thing to look at is the free agent SS market. Looking at the deals given out this offseason to Trea Turner (11yr/$300M), Carlos Correa (13yr/$350M) and Xander Bogaerts (11yr/$280M) this year, as well as recent deals to Francisco Lindor (10yr/$341M), Fernando Tatis Jr (14yr/$340M), Corey Seager (10yr/$325M) and even Javier Baez (6yr/$140M), and it's fair to wonder what the cost of retaining Amed Rosario long-term would be. He's probably not held in the same regard as guys like Baez or Trevor Story, who both earned 9 figures last season. But could he compare to someone like J.P. Crawford - who signed for 5yr/$51M? That certainly wouldn't be an unreasonable amount to pay, in my opinion.

Also worth wondering - is any team really going to give up much of anything for Rosario? With only one year left on his deal and a new contract upcoming, along with a lack of consistent power and a good-not-great glove at the infield's most important spot, what would be a return worthy of giving up on the guy? Or can we look at the improvements that he's made every season and expect that he can continue to grow in areas such as defensive ability, power () and patience at the plate? He's no longer working on playing the outfield, so he definitely could focus fully on developing as a long-term shortstop.

TLDR: Has been highly regarded his entire career. Still young, 64th best hitter in the bigs, major defensive improvements, still seems to be room to grow. Big endorsement from Jose. Shortstops are expensive and he might not be. What would teams actually be willing to give up in a deal for him? We have lots of middle infield talent coming through the minors.

I honestly don't know where I stand on this debate - it seems like people are passionately on one side or the other of this one. He seems like a really likeable guy who works hard and takes a lot of pride in his play. I'm not sure what his true ceiling is, but I'm always weary of going all-in on upcoming prospects when it isn't a true position of weakness. It seems like he's a guy that a lot of people want to move on from, but I really do like Rosario and wouldn't be upset at all if we retained him for a J.P. Crawford-esque deal (5yr/$51M). Especially since Jose offered to cover 80% of it ;)

I just noticed this today, really shows how non-existent his trade value was. Also how overused he was for us.