Nearly $30 million from an era of big spending now all off the books.
Jose Barrero was claimed off waivers by the Texas Rangers this weekend, which in itself is something of a story of reasonable importance. He was once rated as high as the #33 overall prospect in the game by Baseball America, and his tools jump off the page if you watch him practice. At 25 years of age, there’s a chance he still puts it all together at the big league level, something he’ll next have the opportunity to prove while with the reigning World Series champs.
That he was even on waivers in the first place is the news around these parts, however. The Cincinnati Reds weren’t really in a roster crunch this early in spring training, and with over two weeks remaining until Opening Day, there didn’t seem to be a need to place on waivers a guy like Barrero just yet. Hell, they’d just lost an infielder to an 80-game suspension, Jonathan India had barely worked his way back on to the field from a recurring foot issue, and Matt McLain is still battling an oblique injury. Stacking infield depth – something the club had made a habit of doing – seemed to be more pertinent now than ever.
Instead, the Reds called time on Barrero, waiving him with manager David Bell saying to The Enquirer’s Charlie Goldsmith outright that he ‘wasn’t going to make our team.’
David Bell on Jose Barrero: “He wasn’t going to make our team, so that was the move we had to make. If he would have cleared waivers, it would have been great to have him back. At the same time, we’re happy for him. I’ll miss him. He has been a big part of our organization.”…
— Charlie Goldsmith (@CharlieG__) March 9, 2024
Barrero, who has worked as both an infielder and outfielder, simply wasn’t going to make the team. Not if the club had another injury, another injury setback, not to anyone on either side of the dirt. It would appear that veteran non-roster guys like Josh Harrison and Tony Kemp, both of whom provide versatility, had already surpassed Barrero on the team’s depth chart even though Barrero, still just 25, was out of options.
I’m not sure what the Reds saw in the short bit of camp this year that made that decision come so quickly. This sure seems like the kind of move they could’ve made months ago, back when the actual season gave them ample insight into what he could and could not do. Perhaps they were simply exhausted with trying to trade him with no takers, something that’s hard to truly fathom given the previously mentioned tools. That he’d struggle so, so mightily at the big league level in bit-part time, though, must have ultimately sealed the deal.
Calling time on Barrero turns the spotlight back to the once-vaunted 2016-2017 international signing class. The Reds famously doled out nearly $30 million in that window to sign Barrero (then going by Jose Israel Garcia), shortstop Alfredo Rodriguez, and pitcher Vladimir Gutierrez out of Cuba, blasting past the roughly $5.16 million pool they’d been given for that window. The club gave that trio nearly $17.5 million alone, and a roughly $12.5 million penalty was given for going so far over their bonus pool.
Rodriguez was out of the Reds system after 2021 after stalling out at AAA. Gutierrez, meanwhile, remains a free agent after the Reds outrighted him off the roster in October instead of giving him even the most modest of raises as a first year arb-eligible player. Now Barrero has been shipped to the Rangers for a return of no more than a free 40-man roster spot, one that will likely be used on Harrison or Kemp to serve as his 26th man replacement on the Opening Day roster.