The many pressing questions surrounding the Indians through a quarter of the season
By Zack Meisel May 17, 2021 33
Bryan Shaw rescued the Indians on Thursday as they nearly turned a no-hitter into a no-way-did-they-just-blow-that-game bout of humiliation. Cleveland stood at 21-14, one game behind the White Sox for baseball’s best record.
The question, at that juncture: Is this sustainable?
The answer, spelled out over three ensuing days of sleepwalking in Seattle: probably not, unless there are some individual improvements and/or roster changes.
That leaves us with many pressing questions about this team as it inches toward the quarter pole of the regular season, the point at which many evaluators agree to abandon the “small sample size” excuse and assess their rosters.
How is this team 21-17?
Name one player who has exceeded expectations thus far.
Shaw. No doubt. The early minutes of his Cleveland sequel have impressed more than his first tenure.
James Karinchak. Sure. Though, Karinchak pitching like he’s from planet Cerberus and was dispatched on a mission to Earth to ravage the souls of major-league hitters isn’t totally out of character.
José Ramírez. Eh. He owns a .925 OPS and is an extra-base-hit machine, but that’s not overly surprising.
René Rivera. He has three hits in 10 at-bats. Yeah, we’re reaching.
There just isn’t anyone whose outstanding performance seems wholly unsustainable. And that makes it difficult to comprehend how this team has a winning record in the first place. The individual parts — plenty of players are falling short of expectations — don’t add up to a team that’s on pace to win 90 games.
So, will the individual parts improve (or be replaced by more capable players) or will this thing come crashing down like a house of cards?
Who are the reinforcements?
Someone asked president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti on Sunday morning if Owen Miller was OK.
“I’m like, ‘I think so. Why, what happened?’” Antonetti said. “They said, ‘He only got two hits last night.’”
Miller went 1-for-4 on Sunday, which sent his batting average tumbling to .477. The slacker is 21-for-44 in 11 games for Triple-A Columbus. And whenever the front office opts to summon a position player from the minors, he seems like a safe bet to debut.
Miller, who ranked second on the team in hits during spring training, has played all four infield spots in Columbus. He told the Indians his best positions are second and third base, so they have worked him at shortstop and first base to increase his versatility, and it just so happens the latter two spots are where there could be immediate major-league opportunities.
How long is this first-base experiment going to last?
The most obvious move would be to replace Yu Chang with Miller. Chang has logged a grand total of one plate appearance in the past 10 days. It’s a waste of a roster spot at the moment, especially considering Chang’s .137/.185/.176 slash line. Even if the club still believes in his big-league ability, it isn’t going to see evidence of that by playing him sparingly and at first base.
Jake Bauers’ slash line sits at .191/.276/.279. Compared with Chang, he’s hitting like Eddie Murray. Compared with about anybody else, he’s hitting like Eddie Murphy.
Bauers and Chang have had the platoon advantage in 108 of 131 plate appearances, but in those 108 trips to the batter’s box, they have combined for a .155/.241/.227 slash line.
Cleveland’s first basemen own a 32 wRC+ (100 is league-average run creation). That would be the worst output for a team’s first basemen — ever. The 1920 Philadelphia Athletics, thanks to a rough year from Ivy Griffin, produced a 43 wRC+ at the position.
Bauers’ metrics are a bit more promising than Chang’s, but the team can’t survive this level of ineptitude at that position. There are a handful of ways to shake things up, since first base is Josh Naylor’s natural position. Miller, Bobby Bradley or Daniel Johnson could all factor into the equation. Nolan Jones has played some first base as well, but he’s sporting a .344 OPS with 20 strikeouts in 36 at-bats at Triple A.
Who’s going to help this guy? (Jennifer Buchanan / USA Today)
Can Ramírez carry the lineup all season?
The array of crimsons and garnets and scarlets on his Baseball Savant page suggest Ramírez has been one of the league’s top hitters this season. And while his .925 OPS and 11 home runs illustrate as much, his metrics — 96th percentile in expected batting average, 97th percentile in expected slugging percentage, 94th percentile in strikeout rate — indicate he’s capable of much more.
He needs help, though. Manager Terry Francona relocated Eddie Rosario to the No. 2 spot in the lineup Sunday to help Rosario see better pitches to hit. Instead, Rosario dropped down a sacrifice bunt in the seventh inning, which led to an intentional walk to Ramírez, which preceded Franmil Reyes’ inning-ending double play. The club’s most daunting threat to erase a one-run deficit, neutralized by a sacrifice bunt by its prized free-agent signing who was shifted to a higher spot in the batting order to spur his turnaround at the plate. Yikes.
“It’s a (left-handed pitcher), he’s struggling. He’s trying to do something to help us win,” Francona said. “I do appreciate the thought. I know it’s coming from a good place. We just don’t want to take José’s bat away.”
Ramírez, Reyes and Jordan Luplow are the Indians’ only regulars with an OPS+ better than league average. Those three and Naylor are the only regulars with an OPS+ better than 20 percent below league average.
The two veterans signed in the offseason to add some lineup stability have yet to produce at the plate.
Eddie Rosario: .206/.266/.328 slash line
Cesar Hernandez: .218/.303/.340 slash line
The two catchers — and, yes, defense comes first at that position — have yet to produce at the plate.
Roberto Pérez: .131/.274/.295 slash line before he underwent finger surgery (He did say the injury affected him at the plate.)
Austin Hedges: .137/.185/.176 slash line
The two newcomers acquired for Francisco Lindor have yet to produce at the plate.
Amed Rosario: .211/.271/.330 slash line
Andrés Giménez: .179/.226/.308 slash line
Giménez had a few days off this week so he could work with hitting coaches Ty Van Burkleo and Victor Rodriguez on eliminating the leg kick in his swing.
“He tends to get a little over-rotated with it,” Van Burkleo said. “So he’s going to go back to what he was doing before he put in the leg kick and just eliminate some of the movement, try to get more connected with the lower half with a little more of a compact swing, just synchronizing the swing a little bit better, and I think eliminating the leg kick will help him.”
How is the team balancing its youth with its bid for contention?
It’s important to remember Giménez, for instance, is only 22 and skipped Triple A en route to the majors last year.
Triston McKenzie is only 23 and hadn’t pitched competitively for two years before he broke into the big leagues last summer. The team’s youth and inexperience will produce some significant ebbs and flows, as we’ve already witnessed.
McKenzie has completed five innings in only two of his six starts. He has issued 25 walks in 28 innings, tripling his walk rate from the first six years of his career.
“I feel like I’m not necessarily doing my job, or I’m kind of doing a disservice to my teammates,” McKenzie said Saturday. “I feel like I’m showing flashes of putting together good starts and then I’m letting them down and walking guys and putting myself in bad positions.”
McKenzie’s metrics are unsightly: When hitters make contact against him, they’re destroying the baseball. He ranks near the bottom of the league in opponent exit velocity, hard-hit rate and, obviously, walk rate. However, he ranks in the 90th percentile in whiff rate. His curveball and slider, in particular, have prompted a ton of fruitless swings.
“I don’t think in Triston’s case that it’s a confidence issue,” pitching coach Carl Willis said, “but again, willingness to attack the zone, particularly when you’re behind in the count. His curveball is obviously a major-league-caliber curveball. His fastball, he can work top of the zone well, and working on getting the ball down and away, which he’s improving. I just think it’s really staying in attack mode and challenging guys and not being fearful of contact. And I’m not saying he is, but it’s tough if (he’s being) careful.”
Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale have formed a steady trio atop the rotation. McKenzie and Sam Hentges are learning on the fly at the major-league level. Hentges had a rough 2019 season at Double-A Akron and spent last summer at the Indians’ alternate site. Now, he’s facing big-league hitters every five days.
“There’s no better place to develop than here,” Willis said. “At the same time, there’s no more difficult place to develop than here. I think their mental toughness is huge. But more importantly, and these guys are tremendous, their willingness to learn, their willingness to hear constructive criticism and direction is really, really enlightening. It’s fun to work with these kids and see them figure out things.”
Can the pitching staff keep bailing out the lackluster offense?
The Indians boast the league’s best bullpen ERA at 2.70. Shaw, Karinchak and Emmanuel Clase — who has had command issues of late — have combined for a 1.07 ERA and 68 strikeouts in 50 1/3 innings.
The rotation, the bedrock of the team for years, ranks 13th in the league with a 4.09 ERA. That’s the Indians’ highest rotation ERA since 2012, when they lost 94 games in manager Manny Acta’s final season at the helm. That team’s rotation — Justin Masterson, Ubaldo Jiménez, Zach McAllister, Derek Lowe and either Josh Tomlin or Jeanmar Gómez, with cameos from a beardless, anonymous rookie named Corey Kluber, David Huff and the artist formerly known as Fausto Carmona — generated a 5.25 ERA. This is not that.
Bieber hasn’t been as sharp his past few outings, and though he owns the two highest pitch counts of any starter this season (121 and 119), he insists that’s not an issue. Bieber, Willis and Francona did, however, discuss his workload on Saturday. Bieber has recently struggled to command his slider, and he couldn’t work on it as much as he would’ve liked during his bullpen session a couple of days before his start Sunday because he’d thrown so many pitches in his previous outing.
“We have to be very mindful of it,” Willis said. “He’s so good that sometimes it’s tough when you feel like the game’s at hand. More times than not, when he’s on the mound, the games are close and you ask any starting pitcher in this league, ‘Hey, you got one more inning?’ Well, nobody says no. And then a lot of times when you want to make a move, they’re a little upset because they enjoy competing. We discussed it with him. We trust him and we trust what he tells us in the dugout. But at the same time, he’s 25 years old, one of the best pitchers in the league. It’s our responsibility to take care of him and ensure that he’s going to have the career — long career, successful career — that he should.”
Plesac’s revival has helped offset some of the rotation’s inconsistencies. He has limited batters to a .131/.202/.212 slash line in his past four starts, with only 13 hits allowed in 29 1/3 innings. He has pitched into the eighth inning in three of those games. Plesac and Willis said a slight adjustment with his lead foot — planting it a bit sooner so his hips don’t swing open — has contributed to his recent surge.
He hasn’t needed to rely on strikeouts, either. His ground-ball rate and the percentage of batted balls that opposing hitters have topped have soared this season. As he pursued the franchise’s first no-hitter in 40 years Thursday night, Plesac totaled only two strikeouts in eight innings.
“He has this gift, and I don’t know that it can be explained,” Willis said. “So many times, hitters are swinging at pitches and they don’t really know what they are. They don’t really know what they’re swinging at. Sometimes his slider may profile almost like a changeup. Other times it’s obviously like a slider. His changeup is phenomenal as we all know. You just see a lot of poor contact with Zach. I feel like his spin direction, his axis, how the seams work — hitters take a lot of swings at pitches that they’re not really sure: Is it a slider? Is it a fastball? Is it a changeup? And you just see that poor contact.”
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