Cleveland Indians: Triston McKenzie is here to stay in the major leagues

Cleveland Indians prospect Triston McKenzie twirled quite the gem in his Major League Baseball debut.

August 30, 2018. That was the last time we saw Cleveland Indians standout pitching prospect Triston McKenzie pitch in a professional baseball game.

That game was at the Double-A level as a member of the Akron Rubberducks of the Eastern League. McKenzie threw six shutout innings against the Bowie Baysox (Baltimore Orioles AA affiliate), capping off a 7-4 season in which McKenzie posted a 2.86 ERA, a 1.00 WHIP, struck out 87 hitters in 90.2 innings work, and held opponents to a .191 average.

It appeared as if McKenzie was on pace to make his MLB debut in 2019, but an early-season back injury and subsequent pectoral injury while rehabbing kept him on the injured list for all of 2019.

Enter 2020 and the year of the prospect.

On Saturday night against the Detroit Tigers, McKenzie made his major league debut for the Indians, throwing a phenomenal outing in his first live game action in nearly two years.

McKenzie allowed one run (home run) on two hits, striking out 10 and walking one. He also earned the win in his MLB debut thanks to a four-run sixth inning for the Indians offense. Only one Cleveland Indians rookie has struck out more hitters in their MLB debut than Triston McKenzie and that was Luis Tiant back in 1964. Tiant struck out 11 in his debut.

The first strikeout of McKenzie’s career came against Miguel Cabrera in his first inning of work. Cabrera made his MLB debut when McKenzie was just five years old.

McKenzie’s four-seam fastball maxed out at 96.5 mph and produced 11 swings and misses. Overall, McKenzie produced an absurd 17 whiffs on the night, including one with his slider, a new pitch he has added to his repertoire to go along with his fastball, changeup, and curveball.

Words just can’t do McKenzie justice when describing how lethal his stuff was tonight. Take a look at the two gifs below, courtesy of the Pitching Ninja. The first is a shot of his 96 mph fastball stuff which caused the hitter to come out of his helmet. The second shows just how difficult of a time Tigers hitters had on picking up McKenzie’s stuff.

Hitting a baseball is already one of the hardest things to do in professional sports, but it’s not even fair when Triston McKenzie can tunnel his pitches so well that a 94 mph fastball looks exactly the same as a 79 curveball out of the hand and up until the last second.

It was only one start, his first above the Double-A level, but Cleveland Indians pitching prospect Triston McKenzie is here to stay in the major leagues. Despite missing all of 2019 due to injury, neither of his injuries were to the elbow, meaning there’s little cause for concern moving forward.

Congratulations to Triston Mckenzie on a noteworthy debut and hopefully, there are many more starts like this one down the road.