Guardians must avoid repeating past Michael Brantley mistake with Steven Kwan

The 2018 season marked the end of an era for the Cleveland Guardians. After a dominant three-year run that ended with an uninspired performance against the Astros in the American League Division Series, Cleveland’s front office decided to rework the roster on the fly by letting go of Andrew Miller, Cody Allen and Michael Brantley. 

While all three were still quality players (or an All-Star player in Brantley’s case), Cleveland’s front office let all three of them hit free agency without extending them the qualifying offer, which meant that they didn’t get any kind of draft pick compensation when all three signed elsewhere. 

And even though the Guardians’ situation now is very different from how things were in 2018, they’re still on track to have that history repeat itself with Steven Kwan, who is just two years away from hitting free agency. 

Guardians can't let Steven Kwan leave without any compensation

It’s hard to truly articulate how much Kwan means to the Guardians given that he went from a largely overlooked prospect to an All-Star within the span of three years.

But his future has hung over the Guardians for the better part of the past year thanks to the fact that him hitting free agency seems like an inevitability.

Even though the Guardians didn’t end up trading Kwan at the mid-summer deadline or during the Winter Meetings, they clearly listened to offers on him. 

The comparison between Kwan and Brantley’s situation was recently brought up by Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes, who was asked about Kwan’s future in a reader mailbag. In that mailbag, Hoynes wrote that he doesn’t think that the Guardians would let Kwan walk without any compensation, whether it be from a trade or a qualifying offer. 

This offseason the qualifying offer (which was worth $20.025 million) was extended to 13 players. Four of them (Brandon Woodruff, Trent Grisham, Shota Imanaga and Gleyber Torres) accepted and nine of them declined. 

Most of the time it’s an empty offer that just guarantees since the players who can qualify for it are set to make more on the open market. In fact, only 12 players have accepted the offer since it was first instituted in 2012. 

But there have still been some surprises over the years. Woodruff’s decision to accept the QO stands out as the most recent example, as his decision ended up becoming one of the biggest reasons why the Brewers traded Freddy Peralta to the Mets. 

By the time Kwan hits free agency, the QO could end up being around $25 million (so long as it isn’t eliminated in the new CBA). If that’s the case, Guardians ownership may not want to run the risk of offering it to Kwan — even if he’d likely decline it in lieu of making more money in free agency. 

Even though there’s no excuse for Kwan’s tenure with the Guardians ending with anything other than a long-term extension, it would be even worse if Cleveland ended up letting him go for nothing.