Cleveland Indians starting pitchers are carrying the load
The Cleveland Indians starting pitchers are pitching deep into games and taking the pressure off of an already incredibly talented bullpen.
The Cleveland Indians pitching staff was expected to be one of the best in the game coming into 2018. After all, the group only had arguably the greatest season of all time last season. This year, with the majority of the main contributors returning, the team was expected to do much of the same.
While the pitching hasn’t been on a historic pace to start the season, they have been quite good. Prior to Tuesday’s game, Indians pitchers ranked fourth in baseball in fWAR, they rank 7th in FIP-, 2nd in ERA-, and 8th in K-BB% which is quickly becoming my favorite stat for pitchers.
All this is just to say that Cleveland Indians pitchers have been pretty darn good this season and that stems from the starters to the relievers. The starters have been particularly excellent in that they are eating innings at an impressive rate.
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The Cleveland Indians rotation is leading MLB in innings pitched per start at 6.5 innings. That’s half an inning longer than the second place Houston Astros. Conversely, the Indians bullpen has pitched fewer innings than any other team in the league.
These two facts are obviously related as the longer the starters work, the fewer innings that are required of the bullpen. This helps keep the relievers fresh and the allows the team to use the best relievers in the most crucial situations.
Traditionally, this has been a good sign for a team and a starting rotation. Starters have always been the better pitchers with relievers just being the pitchers that couldn’t hack it in the starting role.
Therefore, you would want more innings out of your best players which were your starters. In today’s game, teams still want more innings out of their best pitchers, those just happen to typically be relievers now. So far this season, relievers are pitching to a 3.93 FIP while starting pitchers have a 4.17 FIP.
All of that being said, it doesn’t work that way for the 2018 Cleveland Indians. The Cleveland Indians have an absurdly good rotation filled with 4 of the top 33 starting pitchers in baseball according to fWAR. The more innings these guys pitch, the better.
The beauty of the Cleveland Indians pitching staff though is that the bullpen is really good too. The Indians have two lights out relief aces, Andrew Miller and Cody Allen, and then three solid contributors, Tyler Olson, Nick Goody, and Dan Otero.
After these five guys though, the production really drops off a cliff. The longer the starters pitch in games, the more likely that these five guys can cover the end of the game. Not only that but when the team only needs a couple of relief innings per game, only a couple of these talented relievers need to pitch every night which keeps them all fresher for the long haul.
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It’s impressive that the Indians have done this while their fifth starter, Josh Tomlin, has been in one of the worst stretches of his whole career.
Josh Tomlin currently sports an 11.92 FIP, which equates to a 272 FIP-. That is not good for a stat that has a minus in it.
Not surprisingly during this awful three-start stretch, Josh Tomlin is averaging less than 4 innings per start. Taking his numbers out of the equation bumps the other starters up to about 7 innings per start which is just remarkable in this day and age.
Josh Tomlin likely won’t be this bad the entire season, and the team should be getting Danny Salazar back before too long so the fifth starter problem should correct itself soon.
This is a trickle-down event of success for the Cleveland Indians pitching staff. As the starters continue to perform and eat up innings, the relievers stay fresh and lock down the back-end of games. This is the Indians’ formula for success in 2018 and so far things are going according to plan.
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The Cleveland Indians will need this to continue throughout the season to keep everyone fresh and healthy. In October, the team is going to rely heavily on their best players and they will need everyone available and at peak performance for a long postseason run.