Guardians Season in Review: Cade Smith

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one

The hottest and latest product of the Cleveland pitching factory is Cade Smith, a relief pitcher whose fastball is almost as sharp as his jawline.

This is one of your classic Cleveland pitchers who just matieralized out of nowhere as an elite pitching talent. But this time around, he puts up single season numbers that can arguably be regarded as top 10 ever.

In terms of his pitch arsenal, Cade isn’t a one-trick pony. But he also doesn’t specialize in too many other pitches as well.

Cade ran with a sweeper as well as a splitter that complimented his vicious 4-seam very well. His splitter averaged 34 inches of vertical break, while his fastball averaged 8.5 inches of arm-side run.

Smith’s extension reached 7.4 ft, ranking in the 98th percentile. His fastball run value of 28 was the best in the entire league. The next two pitchers in those rankings are Chris Sale (24) and Cleveland’s own Emmanuel Clase (23).

In layman’s terms, Cade Smith stuck with what got him to the league and he utterly dominated every heart of the order he faced.

And that helped him put up one of the best overall rookie seasons a reliever has ever had.

Among rookie relievers over the course of the MLB’s history, here are Cade Smith’s ranks in terms of metrics:

ERA — 19th (1.91)

WHIP — 13th (.90)

FIP — 1st (1.40)

SIERA — 6th (2.16)

K/9 — 6th (12.31)

One of the other big ways in which Cade helped the Guardians was that he was healthy and pitching like this the whole entire season. Not a single day was spent on the IL for Smith. He of course ended up pitching the most innings he ever has before in his career, but he still was efficient for every one and never hit the IL.

The Guardians bullpen was almost desperate for any sort of help in the late innings as well, with Trevor Stephan getting Tommy John surgery before the season even started.

Not only did the Guardians get help from Smith, he went above and beyond by pitching so efficiently over the course of the whole season.

Cade had the 5th best WAR on the entire team at 2.7 — a mark that even surpassed Emmanuel Clase who set the franchise record for saves this year.

That WAR was the best among every reliever in the league as well. Frankly, a 2.7 WAR season is usually regarded as generally successful for a starting pitcher.

There is a time where these numbers are thrown out the window and it’s up to a player like Cade to do what he’s been doing all season, because that’s when the team needs it most. Of course, I am talking about the Postseason.

The Postseason is usually such a huge test for relievers, because the atmosphere and pressure can either cause a pitcher to thrive greatly or choke and crumble.

Although the task seems simple enough compared to a starting pitcher’s job, it is immensely daunting for a reliever to come in during a Postseason game and face a team’s best for one inning. This is even scarier when you take into account pitching in enemy territory.

One of the greatest things to consider for the Guardians was how much they’d rely on their bullpen during the Postseason with extra off-days in between games and such.

The answer to that question? A lot.

In the Postseason, Stephen Vogt relied on the bullpen heavily, and the pitcher that was his go-to the whole time was the man-in-question: Cade Smith. And boy, did Cade deliver.

Vogt chose to use Smith very early in games, and he also chose to let him face only the opposing team’s best. Every time he threw, he would go up against the heart of every order.

With such incredible reliance, it’s a concern that you don’t overextend a reliever even with more off-days because the fatigue will set in.

But the more that Smith pitched, the more locked in he seemed.

It was only until ALCS game 4 where he gave up more than one hit and run. By that point, he had already pitched 9 of the 10 innings he threw in the postseason.

Overall, Cade’s WHIP during the Postseason was .70 with an absolutely absurd K/9 of 14.40.

All that being said, the second last game of the Postseason for Smith gave him a sour note to end 2024. Finally succumbing to such a heavy workload, he gave up a 3-run bomb to Giancarlo Stanton in game 4 of the ALCS.

Of course, that’s not how you want to remember one of your last outings of the year, but all he did leading up to that inning solidified this season for him as the best that a rookie reliever can have.

The stats, the arsenal and the overall composure Cade Smith has on the bump is otherworldly, and it’s crazy to think that this is only him as a rookie. It leaves me very hopeful for what might be in store for him as he progresses through the Sophomore year of his career and onward.