The recently renamed Cleveland Guardians are a young team with one of the league’s smallest payrolls. Despite this, the Guardians managed to make it to the ALDS only losing in Game 5 to the New York Yankees. One of the reasons for the Guardians success, is their pitching staff among other sides of the ball. They have a load of great pitchers both young and old. I’m going to focus on two young guys who have established themselves as certified great pitchers in the past few years. Emmanuel Clase and Triston McKenzie are a pair of young pitchers who really have made a name for themselves. Mind you, the Guardian pitching staff is ranked 4th in AL ERA with a 3.46. They also rank 1st in AL inning pitched and 5th in AL strikeouts with a 2nd rank in saves.
Let’s start with one of the best closers in baseball, Emmanuel Clase. Clase throws right and has 3 years of MLB experience. He recently signed a 5 year 20 million dollars a year contract. Clase was drafted out of the Dominican Republic. At only 24 years old, Clase is shaping up to be one of the best closers in baseball. This season in 2022 he accumulated 2.8 bWAR and for his career he’s already up to 6.6 in just three seasons. Let’s take a look at his stats:
What stands out for Clase is his WHIP, FIP and low walks per nine. Clase doesn’t allow baserunners or many hits for that matter. He rarely allows a homerun. Not even mentioning his low ERA or his really excellent ERA+. So what does Clase throw that makes him so good?
Clase features three pitches, but he rarely threw his four seam fastball, only 20 of them. His bread and butter pitches are his cutter and slider. As you can see from the chart provided by Baseball Savant, Clase just makes hitters miss. Clase reminds me of Mariano Rivera who had that nasty cutter. The Whiff rates on both his cutter and slider are in the 80th percentile of the league. Here is a visualization of the movement below. I think Clase’s results really speak for themselves.
Triston McKenzie is a starting pitcher and he throws right handed. Currently 25 years old, McKenzie was drafted by the Guardians in 2015 and has 3 years of MLB experience. McKenzie is well known for his slim 6-5, 165 pound build which gave him the nickname “Dr. Sticks”. McKenzie had his best season in 2022. He accumulated 4.0 bWAR of his career 5.7 WAR in 2022. Let’s take a look a his stats:
Very similar to Clase, McKenize’s eye opening stats are his WHIP and ERA+. McKenize also recorded a career high in strkeouts with 190 nearly 54 more. He also maintains a low walk rate and doesn’t give up the long ball too often. It’s also notable that his innings pitched were only second to Shane Bieber on his own team. Let’s dig deeper to see how McKenzie gets all those strikeouts:
As you see from Baseball Savant, unlike Clase, McKenzie’s best pitch is his fastball. Mckenize also has a curveball which is even better in terms of whiff rate than Clase’s slider. Nonetheless, it’s clear that McKenzie likely didn’t realize his slider was that effective. He probably should have thrown less sliders and more curves. One of McKenzie’s strengths is his fastball spin which sits at the 69th percentile in the league along with his 74th percentile chase rate. You can his spin rate visualized below:
Overall, I believe the statistics back up the statement that the Guardians young pitching staff is the basis for their recent playoff run. The Guardians also have some great offensive players which should probably be detailed in another post. But I really like what Clase and McKenzie bring to the mound.
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Thanks to Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant for the statistics.
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