Let’s Talk About Pitching

There are some issues abrewin’ on the Corner

Tuesday, August 6, was an ugly, dreary day in Northeast Ohio. From the non-stop rain to the off-and-on power outages, it was overall not the best start to my return trip home for my birthday. I knew, however, that this weather causing the postponement of Tuesday’s game meant that my ticket for the August 7 game became a twofer.

It was a great start to the day! The weather was fantastic, and I found close parking for the first time ever as I joined nearly 20,000 other fans inside Progressive Field for game one a double-header against the Diamondbacks. For me personally, this was my first Guardians game since...well, the name change. Having moved out of state in 2021, getting to see them in-person became impossible, so this was a big day to say the least.

Unfortunately, the fun part of the festivities ended rather quickly on the day.

Walks killed the Guardians’ starters in both games, but especially in game one. Ben Lively labored all start, and he couldn’t throw strikes against the bottom of the Diamondbacks lineup, leading to a pair of two-run homers from the Snakes, and before you could look up, it was 4-0. Loud, four-letter expletives were very audible from Lively from where I was sat.

It did not get better from there, though a big shout out to Eli Morgan for having the best outing of any Guards pitcher on the day, tossing a scoreless 1.2 innings.

Something that raised an eyebrow for me following Lively’s hook was just how Stephen Vogt chose to manage this bullpen, and it’s very concerning as it’s not the first time he’s done it in this losing streak.

Recently, Vogt began using Cade Smith as his any inning, high leverage fireman to cut down the best of another team’s lineups in close games that the Guardians were leading. This exact kind of pitching has proven to work, and it was Terry Francona’s deployment of his WMD, Andrew Miller, in the 2016 Postseason that actually started this, but it’s better served in October, not the beginning of August, and here’s why: the bullpen, more specifically Smith, is GASSED, and two major consequences are being seen from it right now.

Firstly, is the bullpen’s overuse. There are 17 pitchers in baseball who have 52 or more appearances this season. Of that 17, five of them are Guardians. Between Hunter Gaddis, Scott Barlow, Tim Herrin, Emmanuel Clase, and Cade Smith, they’ve combined for 252.1 innings. For comparison, that’s more innings than Tanner Bibee and Ben Lively combined this season.

As for just Cade Smith, nearly every pitch the rookie has thrown since the start of July has been high leverage as he’s moved into that stopper/fireman role as the season has gone on, and it’s very clearly wearing on him.

We saw similar issues arise with Smith earlier in the season as he adjusted to the life of a major league high leverage reliever, but seeing this now in his current usage as our starting pitching has reached the peak of its volatility is very concerning.

Can Cade Smith bounce back from what seems to be clear fatigue? A betting man would say yes. That being said, he can’t continue to work in this fireman role during the regular season. Smith has been asked to get more than three outs in 5 of his last 11 outings, and should this pace continue, he will finish the season with roughly 78 innings pitched. This would be the most innings of any Cleveland reliever since 2007 when Rafael Betancourt hurled 79.1 innings of 1.47 ERA ball across 68 appearances. Suffice to say, it’s asking quite a lot of a rookie.

The unfortunate flip side of this has seen Stephen Vogt waive the white flag a couple times in games where the Guardians were trailing in the middle innings in what this offense has proven to be winnable games in order to save bullets with his big arms in the ‘pen.

Let’s go back to August 3. After taking the first two games over the Orioles, Cleveland trailed Baltimore 3-2 entering the eighth inning. Xzavion Curry gave the Guards a solid 7th inning of work, and in a one-run game, all eyes were then on Stephen Vogt to see who he’d go to for the eighth. He ended up sticking with Curry, and he surrendered four runs in the 8th. Therein lies the issue: the entire high leverage section of the bullpen was used the day before when Carlos Carrasco could only give the Guardians 4.1 innings before Vogt deployed his array of high leverage arms to carry the final 4.2 innings. The result was a win, but the trade-off ended up being leaving Curry on the mound to take a pounding when the game was still well in hand. Naturally, the Guards scored two meaningless runs in the bottom of the eighth which, had Vogt had arms to go to in the bullpen, would have given Cleveland the lead.

Getting back to the double-header against Arizona, it happened again. There was no reason to leave a lefty in Anthony Gose in to face Ketel Marte after walking Corbin Carroll, but Vogt was seemingly hellbent on saving his bullets for game two, and the lefty killer Marte took Gose halfway up the bleachers, pushing a 5-3 in-reach game to a decisive 7-3 lead. After running white hot all season long, I witnessed, first-hand, a manager waive a white flag at a winnable baseball game. The only thought running through my head is that a first place team should not be doing this regularly, but here we are.

Admittedly, it’s easy to point the finger at Vogt right now, but he’s also playing with the cards he’s been dealt, and the starting rotation has put him between a rock and a hard place.

Frankly, without Tanner Bibee right now, this rotation is in total disarray. The ghost of Carlos Carrasco has been tasked to throw over 100 innings of nearly 6.00 ERA baseball this season, Triston McKenzie’s season-long battle with throwing strikes has seen him demoted to Triple-A, becoming a non-factor for 2024, and Logan Allen has been hit harder than just about any pitcher in baseball this season, and that saw him get demoted as well.

In 2024, the Guardians have gotten just six outings of 7+ innings from their starters. It’s the second fewest in baseball behind just the Marlins, and they’re just one of three teams to get single-digit 7+ inning outings from their starters. Logan Webb by himself has had twice as many starts go seven innings and beyond in 2024 than the Guardians.

It had been almost a month since we saw Lively struggle like he did against Arizona, but when this team badly needed a strong starting outing, a guy who’d come out of nowhere to become a rock in a turbulent rotation finally crumbled. I walked back to my car following the double-header and series sweep to Arizona, and as I crossed by the cemetery that sits on the corner of Sumner and East Ninth right outside of the ballpark, the immediate depressive comparisons of the trajectory of the team began to run through my head. The Guardians have now lost five straight, a season high considering this team hadn’t even lost four straight once all season up to this point, and we still don’t know who’s starting game one on Friday in what’s set to be the biggest series of the year in Minnesota. Cleveland has played 32 games since the start of July. Just 13 of them has seen a starter record at least one out in the sixth inning.

Even with arms that have been going well, it can’t seem to sustain right now. Bibee has been the constant in this rotation after his rocky first month, and now he’s banged up after experiencing shoulder tightness after his last start, leaving his status in limbo heading into Minnesota. Ben Lively has come out of nowhere to perfectly replace Aaron Civale as the rock solid, 150+ inning guy who absolutely should not start a playoff game if avoidable. This leaves Gavin Williams, who’s exchanged a consistent slider for throwing 100, and it’s gotten him hit hard as he works back to form.

We also don’t know what to expect from Alex Cobb, who hasn’t thrown a major league inning in 2024 following hip surgery, or Matthew Boyd, who also hasn’t thrown a major league inning in 2024 following Tommy John. These were the two big arms brought in to stabilize this absolute merry-go-round of a rotation, and they’ve combined for as many innings as you, the reader, and me, the writer. Cobb, who I’m quite high on for what that’s worth, will make his debut in the second game of Friday’s double header. Boyd is still a bit away.

If this team cannot find stability in any shape or form in its starting rotation, October will be a very quick month for the Guardians.