according to USA Today<\/a>. <\/p>\nThe Guardians had a roughly $100.5 million payroll in 2025, ranking 25th in the league. <\/p>\n
Former Cleveland star shortstop Francisco Lindor signed a 10-year deal with the New York Mets worth $341 million through 2031. The Mets entered the 2025 season with Major League Baseball\u2019s largest payroll at approximately $323.1 million, according to USA Today, yet failed to make the postseason. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been there five years since leaving Cleveland,\u201d Pluto said. \u201cLindor has been to the playoffs twice.”<\/p>\n
Pluto also mentioned New York Yankees star outfielder Aaron Judge, who’s under a nine-year, $360 million contract that runs through the 2031. The Yankees had the third-highest payroll at $293.4 million in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been with the Yankees for the last 10 years,” Pluto said. “How many World Series has he won in that period? He hasn\u2019t won any. He\u2019s been to one and they lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pluto said it\u2019s not simple to judge a player\u2019s legacy based on wins or payroll alone. <\/p>\n
\u201cAre the Yankees or are the Mets wasting their careers of Francisco Lindor and Aaron Judge? I don\u2019t know,” Pluto said. “What\u2019s the standard? I\u2019ve never gotten a good answer from that.”<\/p>\n
Pluto argued that baseball\u2019s postseason success isn\u2019t simply about money.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe teams that are in right now, what amounts to baseball\u2019s final four, have the Dodgers, they\u2019re the gigantic spenders,” Pluto said. “And then you have Milwaukee (which) spends more than Cleveland but is not a big spender. And then you kind of have two teams sort of in the middle of the pack in Toronto and Seattle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pluto said Ram\u00edrez himself has never said he feels stuck or disappointed in Cleveland.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but I think he gets frustrated at the end of the year,” Pluto said. “He\u2019d like to go deeper (in the postseason). But I\u2019ve never heard that. If anything, he\u2019s always said how much he loves playing here.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlayers have different interests,\u201d Pluto added. \u201cFrankie Lindor not only wanted a gigantic contract, which he got, he also wanted a bigger market. Jos\u00e9 has, like, zero interest in marketing. He\u2019s a little bit kind of like, leave me alone, let me play ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Pluto said the Guardians could do more to reward and support their star.<\/p>\n
\u201cJos\u00e9 signed a big discount contract to stay here,” Pluto said. “He has three years left, and I think it\u2019s like $21, $23 and $25 million over the next three years. They can do what they did four years ago, which is rework that contract and give him some more money. They can go out and try to get another veteran hitter… They could try to get a veteran hitter to play the outfield and hit behind him.”<\/p>\n
But Pluto said criticism of the Guardians\u2019 ownership misses the larger question.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you throw out this narrative, what constitutes a career that\u2019s not wasted? Tell me. Give me the standard,\u201d Pluto said. \u201cIs it three World Series in 10 years? Is it a bunch of payroll that has to be the highest in baseball or the top three or top five in baseball, even if we lose, but as long as we\u2019re spending a bunch of money badly, that counts? What is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pluto said most people can\u2019t answer that question.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, the person who answers that is the player,” Pluto said. “That\u2019s why I think people have to look at these players and realize it isn\u2019t all just on some spreadsheet. Think about what you\u2019re saying when you say a career\u2019s wasted. If it were simply about which teams spend the most money every year, it always would be the Yankees and Dodgers or the Mets and the Red Sox. Those would be the ones always in the World Series and they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The debate over whether star third baseman Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez\u2019s career is being wasted in Cleveland has resurfaced. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-226360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}