Have the Amed Wars finally reached an end?

Let’s do an experiment, shall we?

In a move that has been predicted for months once the totally-legitimate-and-in-no-way-agent-baiting extension talks broke down, Tito’s favorite toy, Amed Rosario, has been dealt away from the Cleveland Guardians. The erstwhile starting shortstop was a favorite of not only manager Terry Francona but of generational talent and franchise cornerstone Jose Ramirez, features that were more bug and kept him in the lineup more often than was optimal. Rosario is a case study in “guy who is overexposed to what he’s bad at”: a lefty masher miscast as an everyday option and has been a blockade for the wave of youth behind him. The return for Rosario is minimal, a former hard tosser in Noah Syndergaard, who is also having an awful season: a 1-4 record over 55.1 IP and a 7.16 ERA. The swap can best be described as a dump for both, Cleveland rids itself of a player who was stunting development for its youngsters, and Los Angeles gets rid of a pitcher it was likely not going to use this season despite injuries in the rotation.

Clubhouse mechanics are vitally important and the Cleveland Guardians just threw a wrench into the mix, trading away veteran and lockerroom leader Amed Rosario to the Los Angeles Dodgers for starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard. Why a team that is only two games back of their division lead and has won the last three series is throwing in the towel and selling off veterans so unproven players can get playing time is the type of move you see in the movies, specifically “Moneyball”. Rosario was instrumental in getting the team its division crown last year and advancing to the Divisional Series in the playoffs and to only get a starting pitcher that has been out for more than a month in return is malfeasance. A scourage has been placed upon this home. Hex, I say, hex!!

Two completely different viewpoints on a player that would skew how you feel about him if you haven’t been watching baseball like most of us have. So maybe the second paragraph ended on a little bit of a strong tone, but those two paragraphs are both sides of the Amed Wars that have been raging for almost the entirety of the regular season. If you looked at #GuardosTwitter during any Guardians game, you’d see back-to-back tweets about how Rosario was a plague put upon the roster followed by how his mere presence was a salve to the youngsters of the lineup. But just like any playground incident, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Rosario was all of those and none of those and was more in the middle. His type of offensive production necessitated going 3-for-4 or 4-for-5 to be valuable. Yes, his baserunning was good-to-great, but his defensive miscues cost more games than his bat and legs saved. At the end of the day, Rosario was not going to be around in 2024 and beyond, and while it’s likely neither will one of Tyler Freeman, Gabriel Arias, and/or Brayan Rocchio, they all needed the starts at short to see if they were the next options. Rosario would have to have some sort of juiced ball era type resurgence to pull his offensive production to a place that warranted not seeing what the organization has in Freeman and Arias and that just simply wasn’t going to happen. Will he be missed, most obviously by JRam, and by a small subset of fans that thought he was better than he was? Absolutely. But trading Rosario was a move that was needed for the future of the franchise. That future is now and as of yesterday, does not include the latest Player Wars.