The Guardians Bullpen Needs Help

Help should be on the way for the Guardians ‘pen soon...and they need it

Coming into 2024, the talk of the town was starting pitching. Shane Bieber, Triston McKenzie, Gavin Williams, Tanner Bibee, Logan Allen. That’s as strong as a 1-through-5 as you were set to find in the bigs. Unfortunately, we never even saw this turn through the rotation once this season. Instead, Bieber is done, Gavin hasn’t pitched, and it’s been a mix and match combo of Sticks trying to return to form (which appears to be happening!), a struggling Logan Allen, Tanner Bibee, the emergence of Ben Lively, and the aging Carlos Carrasco giving up all too many runs.

Needless to say, bullpen is taxed. After last night, the Guardians have asked their bullpen to get the second-most outs in the American League, sitting at 119.1 innings, behind only Tampa Bay’s 123.1. A lot of this, of course, is largely due in part to the aforementioned health of their starting pitching. In terms of innings from starters, Cleveland is nearly bottom of the barrel. The only team with fewer than Cleveland’s 147 starting pitching innings is Houston with 146.

The natural reaction to this might be why not try different starters? Well, what was seen as a place of depth before the season has seen Shane Bieber go down for the year, Gavin Williams battle a non-ligament elbow issue that’s kept him out up to this point in the season, and Triston McKenzie battle his way through working his way back to normal after his own elbow issue last season. It’s not just at the major league level, either. Joey Cantillo strained his hamstring after an eye-opening Spring, Doug Nikhazy is on the injured list with an oblique strain, and Daniel Espino once again won’t pitch for an entire season due to his shoulder injury. Needless to say, the help is not on the way for them.

Where there is help, however, is in the bullpen. Despite being overworked, there are arms who can help this ailing crew get some needed rest and return to their elite form they had to start the season, and hopefully we see them soon. Let’s meet them.

Sam Hentges

Sam Hentges has a real shot at being back this weekend at the soonest. Rehabbing from swelling on his middle finger on his pitching hand, Hentges has essentially been given an extended Spring Training down in Columbus. The clamoring for Hentges, from myself included, should be met with some bit of caution. While we’ve seen how good Hentges can be. Left shoulder issues combined with poor results made 2023 a bit of a lost year for Hentges, but in his most recent rehab start in Columbus, he was back up towards 95 mph on his fastball, as his velo has ticked up with each appearance for the Clippers this season.

Hentges has excelled at generating groundballs despite his down year, inducing grounders on 57.7% of balls put in play against him. The key will be Hentges generating lighter contact. In 2022, Hentges allowed an average exit velocity of 88.8 mph. In 2023, it was well up, sitting at 91.5 mph, one of the worst marks in the majors.

A bounceback for Hentges would add a major lefty arm for the back end of the bullpen, and it would allow Stephen Vogt to ease Hunter Gaddis out of his late inning role while he figures his problems out.

Franco Aleman

Franco Aleman absolutely dominated Double-A last season to the tune of a 0.00 ERA in 24 appearances. From there, despite a slow start, he’s continued his strong pitching in Triple-A Columbus this season, throwing 7.0 scoreless innings in a row with 12 strikeouts. Aleman gets tremendous extension at 6-foot-6, 235 pounds, which helps his average fastball and sinker velocity play above 95 mph.

Aleman’s fastball generates 16.8 inches of iVB (induced vertical break), above the major league average on a fastball in 2024 (16.1), but his “sinker” is very interesting. The average sinker from relievers in the majors this season sees 7.1 inches of iVB and 2163 RPMs (revolutions per minute) with 15.3 inches of horizontal break. Aleman’s sinker clocks in at 15.3 iVB and 2445 RPMs with 13.1 inches of horizontal break. Just watching it, it moves a lot more like your traditional 2-seamer as it has just 15.6 inches of downward break compared to MLB’s reliever average of 24.5 inches, but between it and his 4-seam fastball, Aleman relies heavily on the gas, throwing a variant of the fastball over 82% of the time, and it’s proven to be very overwhelming for opposing hitters. At the pace he’s on, Aleman’s forecast to the majors could be a lot sooner than later.

Andrew Walters

The worst part about Double-A is not having any Statcast data to use. That being said, Andrew Walters has been nothing short of dominant in his first professional season in Akron, striking out 54% of batters faced with an 0.79 ERA. Coming out of Miami, the book on Walters was that he dominated primarily with the fastball with a slider mixed in on occasion, and not much has changed thus far. His heater sits around 95-96 and flirts with 100 at times with ride, and he has shown solid command. Walters might be a bit of a long shot seeing as he was just drafted last July, but if the debut as well as early returns in Akron say anything, the organization is clearly high on him with a quick acceleration path through the minors very likely.

Peter Strzelecki

Strzelecki was acquired by Cleveland via trade after Arizona DFA’d him this offseason. We’ve seen a bit of Strzelecki in Cleveland this season, and all he’s done at any level this year is make hitters look foolish. With a release point and overall mechanics somewhere between Nick Sandlin and Craig Kimbrel, Strzelecki’s stuff has been his calling card from day one.

Using Thomas Nestico’s (@TJStats on Twitter) tjStuff+ model, Strzelecki’s slider grades out at 118 where 100 is league average, which is among the best. Strzelecki’s biggest hitch has always been walks. You hear it all the time. Great stuff, poor command. That being said, his walk rate is down below 4%, a career best at any level where he’s thrown at least 10 innings. His slider is a legitimate weapon, and I think there’s real palpable growth here for a middle innings guy.

Another great bit on Strzelecki I found was that he just added his sinker last season. Detailed in this article from Jack Stern of Brew Crew Ball, Strzelecki adopted the sinker and fell a little too in love with it at times, throwing it too much especially when he gets behind in counts, abandoning his swing-and-miss stuff at times. With Columbus, however, Strzelecki has seemed to find a happy medium. He’s been fastball/slider heavy (42.7% fastball, 35% slider), mixing in his sinker around 13% of the time to help induce weak contact. His changeup has proven to also induce a ton of chase, sitting at an 85.7% chase rate despite only finding itself in the zone less than 40% of the time.

Strzelecki is the most intriguing of the arms here to me, largely because I think you can lock him into the middle innings and not budge off of him all season. His stuff plays, and the big worry that had been his command has not been an issue in Columbus at all. It’s high time to get him back and traveling with the big league club.

Outside of replacing Cookie’s spot in the rotation with more starts for Xzavion Curry, the starting rotation isn’t likely to change much any time soon. With the bullpen, however, this team is going to have to make the most of their resources, and they have plenty to choose from. Above were a handful of names ready to come in and help, and that doesn’t even include riskier arms like Anthony Goes and, of course, James Karinchak. It seems a lot more likely that help is on the way sooner for the bullpen than anywhere else on the team, but if there’s a unit that can carry the Guardians into the Summer, it’s the ‘pen.