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There was a time in my career when I would have praised the Guardians for repeatedly making the playoffs using only talent they developed internally, for not spending money on free agents. When I started covering baseball, opportunity cost was real. The game didn’t have the massive amounts of central revenue it does today, and it had a very small amount of local revenue sharing. Neither of those things have been true for some time, so the kind of team-building that was praiseworthy in the 1990s is now something to scorn. The Guardians have done nothing this winter to build on their successes of the last two seasons. In fact, they head into 2026 with a payroll $20 million lower than they started 2024 with.
The Guardians are what is wrong with baseball in the 2020s: a team living off corporate welfare and doing nothing in December to get the fans excited about coming to the ballpark in June.
