Amed Rosario signs one-year $4.95 million deal with Guardians to avoid arbitration

GOODYEAR, Arizona -- Amed Rosario and the Guardians beat Tuesday’s deadline for exchanging salary figures for the 2022 season.

Rosario, Cleveland’s most consistent offensive player last year, agreed to a one-year $4.95 million deal on Monday night to avoid arbitration. Rosario made $2.4 million last year and was projected to make $5 million this year by mlbtraderumors.com.

Shane Bieber, Austin Hedges, Cal Quantrill, Franmil Reyes, Josh Naylor and Bradley Zimmer are also eligible for arbitration. If they don’t reach a deal, they’ll exchange salary figures with the Guardians sometime Tuesday. After that things will get intesting.

Cleveland, like most clubs, has taken a file-and-trail approach to this stage of arbitration. If a deal isn’t reached before figures are exchanged, negotiations stop and the team goes straight to a hearing to determine the player’s salary.

This season is different because the hearings will extend into the regular season because of the 99-day lockout. Can you imagine the Guardians’ statistical experts revealing the flaws of Bieber, Reyes or Quantrill to the arbitration panel on a Monday morning and then sending those players out to face the White Sox a couple of hours later?

Rosario was a 1.2 WAR player last year. He hit .282 (155-for-550) with 25 doubles, six triples, 11 homers and 57 RBI. He was 13-for-13 stealing bases. He walked only 21 times, compared to 120 strikeouts, which lowered his onbase percentage to .321.

Cleveland acquired Rosario and Andres Gimenez from the Mets as part of the Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco trade before the start of the 2021 season. Rosario arrived with a suspect reputation for his play at shortstop, but turned in a steady performance for Cleveland.

Opinions on Rosario’s defense are split. Last year, however, he finished ninth in the voting for the AL Gold Glove award for shortstops. Fangraphs’ defensive runs saved stat, however, did not help him. The same for goes for Statcast’s Outs Above Average stat.

What he has done is swing the bat and showed he’s a team player.

Last year, when Gimenez was awarded the shortstop job early in spring training, Rosario agreed to play center field, a position he’d never played before. The results weren’t great, but by May he moved back to shortstop when the struggling Gimenez was optioned to Class AAA.

This spring manager Terry Francona asked Rosario if he would be willing to play some left field depending on what the Guardians do at the shortstop position in terms of trades or free agency. Well, not much has turned up in that regard, but organization has several young shortstops in big league camp who are pressing for playing time.

Rosario said he had no problem with the request.

“They just wanted to run it by me to be prepared to play the infield and outfield,” said Rosario. “They have appreciated how I’ve contributed to the team and they wanted to show me that respect.”

Rosario said he feels more comfortable bouncing between the outfield and infield this year than last season.

“I feel much better in this circumstance because I don’t have the pressure of never having played there before,” said Rosario.

Asked if he was disappointed and if he felt he should be the Guardians’ starting shortstop based on the way he played last year, Rosario said, “I think probably the opposite. It makes me feel good that the team trusts me to play other positions. Most importantly, they want me to play in any way that I can help the team. I feel good that they have that confidence in me.”

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