Let's be honest ... we have 20 or so prospects on 40 man ... we protected 36 in this AAA phase ... we have another 20-30+ guys (conservative) ahead of Clemmer not yet eligible for Rule 5 ... thus we are talking about someone who is in 70-90 range of prospects, if that (maybe 100+). With 26 people on each roster, Clemmer would have probably been placed on AA roster again but more of a middle-of-the-road reliever. But as some already said on this board, we expected him to be left off protection list (as Tondo said "That's 24 on the pitching side alone and already cut talents like Eichhorn, Clemmer and S. Arias (injury and 16 draftees)". Clemmer drafted in 2016 as 19th round pick, is a free agent after next year. Would he have made the Guardians pitching staff next year? Only if 20 or so prospects ahead of him got injured (like Battenfield, Plink, Myer, Morgan, Morris, Curry, Allen Jr, Gaddis, Mota, Miko, Krauth, ..... and many others including Torres) . And, even with all those injuries, we would have traded for a washed up AAAA pitcher for a bag of balls.
Was never losing sleep over who we lost in this phase. Just paid more attention to it then ever due to how dry the news is lately with lockout. Have to waste my time somewhere.
Just interesting how other teams view our talent as others say that BA and FanGraphs have no way to track each teams systems accurately (so this should be a slight indication). With a deeper system (as others say), I would have expected, more 2-4. But, I guess I am just a homer. I knew though there was no one really special this deep that I would lose sleep over.
Just out of curiosity, 24 teams had selections from their system (sorry for spacing issues - but teams and selections from - 14 teams more than 1 selection from and last year we had no selections from our list)
Giants 6
Padres 5
Rangers 4
Royals 4
Arizona 3
Rays 3
Astros 3
Blue Jays 2
Pirates 2
Mets 2
Reds 2
Rockies 2
Dodgers 2
Mariners 2
Twins 1
Yankees 1
Marlins 1
Braves 1
Cardinals 1
Athletics 1
Cubs 1
Guardians 1
Brewers 1
Tigers 1