The Cleveland Indians have Major League Baseball’s best starting rotation. Let’s look into the names, stats, and projections from the talented group.
Opening Day is a special event for Major League Baseball. Like the season of spring, the start of a baseball season signals a new beginning and endless possibilities. Hey, who would have thought that the Seattle Mariners would be on top of the AL West anytime after Opening Day? In honor of the return of regular season baseball, let’s take a dive into my favorite MLB rotation. This is a very cold take, but the Cleveland Indians have Major League Baseball’s best starting rotation. They are stacked with talent and even have room for growth. While the club may lack depth, it’s hard to ignore their “big four”. Let’s dive into the numbers and examine the arms.
Cleveland Indians
In 2018, starting pitchers for the Cleveland Indians led Major League Baseball with a total fWAR of 22.2. Should we expect anything different in 2019? Absolutely not.
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As the saying goes, it’s impossible to be sure of anything except death and taxes, unless you are Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco. We should be able to count on another season of 200+ innings from Kluber and Carrasco seems primed for another season as Klubot’s second in command. After an offseason full of trade rumors, Carrasco is now under contract through 2022 (with a club option for 2023) and Kluber is set to start his fifth consecutive another Opening Day.
Now, we run into a little uncertainty when we look at Mike Clevinger and Trevor Bauer. Bauer was the Indians’ best starting pitcher in 2018, as the youngster broke out in a big way. Can this be repeated?
I think so, Bauer has shown that he has the work ethic and the commitment to continually improve. This attitude is clearly seen in the quote below. Bauer discussed the improvements to his changeup with MLB.com early on in the spring.
"“The worst ones I threw this offseason in January were better than my changeup last year,” Bauer said. “So I’m super confident about it. I’ll check the Trackman numbers and high-speed footage after today. There’s no way it’s worse than last year. And to be honest, I don’t need it to be successful. I think I threw it like 7 percent of the time last year, but if I had, it just makes me that much more deadly. Pretty pumped about it. Excited to see where it goes.”"
According to BrooksBaseball.net, Bauer threw his changeup 53.85% of the time during Spring Training. The electric righty is clearly committed to improving his craft
Trevor Bauer was in the AL CY Young Award conversation all throughout 2018. Even though he has only had one season with a sub 4.00 ERA, we should expect the righty to be in the CY Young Award conversation yet again. Prior to his breakout, Bauer always flashed plus potential. The righty was able to put it all together in 2018, proving that he is one of Major League Baseball’s best starting pitchers.
Like Bauer, Mike Clevinger had his own break out during the 2018 season. The righty built off of a solid 2017 season, proving that his output was for real. We are left to wonder, what is his ceiling?
Fangraphs projects Clevinger to regress slightly, but I think that there is a reason to believe that Clevinger will once again be a four-plus win player.
Mike Clevinger was acquired from the Los Angeles Angels in 2014. In every season since, Clevinger has been able to limit opposing hitters to BABIPs below .300 while recording above average FIPs (ignoring his initial MLB cup of coffee in 2016).
We all know that his stuff is nasty and these numbers seem to support that opinion. To me, his consistent levels of low BABIPs and above average FIPs seem to indicate that Clevinger is consistently hard to hit, as he generates high strikeout numbers and batted ball events that are easy to field. Fangraphs projects Clevinger to end 2019 with a WAR of 2.6, a BABIP of .303 and a FIP of .403. This seems like the floor for the righty as I believe that he could be a darkhorse candidate for the 2019 AL CY-Young Award.
At the end of the season, the Cleveland Indians should have three pitchers in the conversation for the AL CY Young Award. Will one of them win? It’s possible, but injuries are hard to predict and the American League is filled with a number of plus pitchers. In the end, I will be excited to see what this talented rotation can accomplish. The Cleveland Indians should once again run away with the weak AL Central, but can they take down the league’s elite teams in the playoffs? We will have to wait and see…