Like the close friends Nolan Jones and Tyler Freeman put together, they had been exchanged for each other
Kansas City, Mo. – Nolan Jones had reduced the 28 -team field.
While he was preparing his equipment for the equipment for a Cactus League match last Saturday, the right defender was summoned to the director’s office. He had been pulled by the formation of the colorado rocky mountains, because he was mistaken. But the rocky mountains could not tell him the identity of his new team.
“I left the office,” Jones recalled on Wednesday.
Ok, there are 30 teams. It crosses the rocky mountains, of course. The Guardians have already exchanged it with Colorado two years ago, so he eliminated them, he thought.
This leaves 28 options and many questions. Who needs a defender right? Who believes in that extraordinary Rookie season and can look beyond the unbridled 2024 campaign?
Jones has wandered for the corridors of the complex of the rocky mountains in Scottsdale, in Arizona, for 45 minutes, trying to solve the mystery and stressing the meeting with 25 new teammates and a new coaching staff while the watch has sprung up the opening day. Who would exchange for him a few days before the start of the season?
In the meantime, about 40 miles to the west, the Guardians were organizing a similar conversation with the Infielder Tyler Freeman. They removed him from their training and told him that he was treated, but they could not reveal which team. So, Freeman’s phone rang.
When Jones finally finished stimulating, he called Cleveland’s former teammate Sam Hentges to convey the news, but Hentges did not answer. Jones needed to speak through his situation with someone.
He made himself faceted Freeman, a friend and teammate of the longtime and a great perspective companion. They climbed through the Cleveland system together, the prospects rankings climbed together and debuted with the club within a few weeks from each other in 2022. Jones was invited to Freeman’s wedding during the winter, but he has not participated since he was finally at home with his girl after a difficult season.
When Freeman replied to Jones’ call, he was on the point of tears after learning that he was leaving the organization that enrolled him in the second round in 2017. Jones, unaware of the fact that Freeman had delivered a similar message, asked him why Freeman was emotional. Freeman told him that he was mistaken with an unknown team.
“I might have an idea where you’re going,” Jones said to him.
While the last pieces of their opening puzzles decided, the rocky mountains believed Jones-Che is out of the options of the minor-seacrifiable League. In November 2022, the rocky mountains launched the second base perspective Juan Brito in Cleveland for him. Jones arrived fourth in the NL Rookie of the Year Ballot in 2023, with 20 Homer, 20 stolen bases and an .931 Ops in 106 games, but suffered from a miserable reduced season of injuries in 2024.
During a usual conversation of the late spring between the two front office last weekend, the rocky mountains asked if the guardians had had an interest in gathering with their choice of the second round in the draft 2016. Cleveland was looking for a little power for Mancini, in particular someone who could patrol the right field in tandem with Jhonkensy Noel. When the Guardians reciprocated the interest in concluding an agreement, Colorado took the target of Freeman, who was intended to serve as the utility player of Cleveland.
The rocky mountains and the Guardians were approaching the finish line with the agreement late on Saturday and since they needed to extract the players from their respective matches, they had to inform them of the trade. However, since the agreement had not been aimed, they have kept secret the identity of the other team.
Jones and Freeman agreed on the fact that once you learn more information from the teams or their agents, they would be reconnected. A couple of hours later, it was official: two friends sitting in commercial limbo had in fact been, among other things.
Jones had been reciprocated with his original team. Once the news has leaked to the public, his phone buzzed for hours with family names and area codes of Cleveland recognizable. On Wednesday he returned to the same locker, in the middle of a row on the right side of the visitor’s clubhouse, which he occupied when he made his debut in the championship with the Guardians in 2022.
“It was an absolute vortex,” said Jones. “I haven’t seen myself going back here. For any particular reason – I just thought, I have already been mistaken from here. It is very nice that I was able to enter a Club House and feel I never left.”
(Photo by Nolan Jones: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
