Guardians’ short-sighted trade of Junior Caminero looks worse and worse by the day

This week, the starting third baseman for the American League will have the Cleveland Guardians’ fingerprints all over him. 

Cleveland signed him as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic, and he’s quickly morphed into one of the best third baseman in all of baseball. 

That’s right, we’re talking about… Junior Caminero? 

While current Guardians third baseman José Ramírez was initially set to start the All-Star Game, he announced last week that he was skipping the All-Star Game to focus on injury recovery. 

That decision meant that Caminero, who is now with the Tampa Bay Rays, will start at the hot corner for the American League, which is another reminder of how painful Cleveland’s trade of Caminero is. 

Guardians’ short-sighted trade of Junior Caminero looks worse and worse by the day

The Guardians signed Caminero out of the Dominican Republic in 2019 but didn't get a chance to see him in action until 2021 due to the 2020 minor league season being canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Caminero ended up hitting .295 (43-for-146) with nine home runs and 33 RBI for Cleveland’s Dominican Summer League team, but the Guardians elected to trade him to the Rays in the offseason in exchange for Tobias Myers, who was on the cusp of breaking into the major leaguers. 

At the time, the Guardians raved about his ability to rack up strikeouts in the minor leagues and publicly hoped that he’d be able to provide them some depth to their rotation.

That never ended up coming to fruition, as Myers went 1-9 with a 6.00 ERA in 60 innings with Triple-A before being designated for assignment. 

Meanwhile Caminero’s prospect profile just kept rising… and rising… and rising. 

By 2024, he was the top prospect in all of baseball and the Guardians had nothing to show for it. And if that wasn’t enough, Myers spent most of last year looking like an actual MLB starter — for the Brewers. 

He signed a minor league contract with Milwaukee in 2023 and made his debut for them in 2024, where he posted a 3.00 ERA in 138 innings for them before recording a scoreless start in the postseason. 

He impressed in his first taste of MLB action in 2024 (he made his debut late in 2023) before breaking out this year. Entering Friday, he had a slashline of .254/.295/.509 with 23 home runs and 59 RBI. While he doesn’t get on base at a great rate, his .509 slugging is the 17th-best mark in baseball.

“It’s a bad trade,” Guardians President of Baseball Operations Chris Antonetti said in 2023. “The guy we got didn’t end up achieving what we thought he might achieve. But when you make a lot of trades there are going to be some that work and some that don’t. We’ve certainly been on our fair share of the other side. That’s certainly one we’d like to have back.”

Meanwhile, the Guardians only have one player with a slugging percentage better than .500 (Ramírez) and only two with a better slugging than .400 (Kyle Manzardo and Steven Kwan). 

And maybe Camerino doesn’t do much in the All-Star Game because of his penchant for swinging and missing (72 strikeouts) or grounding into double plays (25). That could happen. 

But do you know one place where you can’t strike out? 

The Home Run Derby. 

Caminero will be one of the six participants in today’s Home Run Derby, and chances are he’ll show out with a bevy of majestic home runs hit deep into the Atlanta sky. 

The Guardians have made plenty of trades under Antonetti that have shaken out in Cleveland’s favor. This is the rare one where they’d like a do-over, and this weekend will be a blunt reminder of that.