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Cleveland Indians: A Look at the Bullpen Options

By Jeff Mount

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A strong bullpen can be the key to a successful season. Do the Cleveland Indians have the group already on the roster? Or will they need to look outside to fill those holes?

At any given time, you need four or five guys in a bullpen who can be relied on to go out and throw a scoreless inning. It may seem that in the land of Francona you need ten or twelve, but in reality only the first four will be used late in close games, and five may be needed in case of injury or overwork.  So when you read about the Indians acquiring guys like Kirby Yates (I think that was a character in Justified, but I could be wrong), those kinds of transactions will have little impact on the success of the team in 2016, because Yates will either be in Columbus or doing mop-up work.

The real question, then, is who of the guys currently on the 40-man roster can potentially be one of the four or five guys who can be trusted to pitch, say, in the eighth inning of a tie game.  We can assume that Cody Allen and Bryan Shaw will be part of that mix unless something happens in arbitration that makes them too expensive. Neither Allen nor Shaw is the lights-out, automatic kind of guy you would want in the roles of closer or main set-up guy, but the Indians were in the top four in the American League in fewest blown saves, bullpen ERA, bullpen WHIP, and bullpen K/BB ratio, so another year of that would not be a bad thing.

However, they struggled all year to find anyone else reliable to help in the late innings, resulting in Allen and Shaw seeming to wear down late in the year. Mark Rzepczynski and Scott Atchison started the year in late inning roles, but both failed miserably, and nobody else stepped up to fill the bill. Identifying at least two guys (hopefully one of them left-handed) who can fill these roles is one of the key decisions this front office needs to make during this offseason.

This is not a role that a team like the Indians will spend big money on. They have to hope that a hard throwing prospect harnesses his potential (like Allen did), or they can convince another team to include a good arm as a throw-in to a trade (like Shaw was, or Joe Smith before him). Alternatively, they will sign a boatload of marginal guys to minor league deals and hope to get lucky, as happened with Atchison for one year.  The best case scenario is that somebody already here steps up.  A total of nineteen guys made relief appearance for the Indians last year.  Several of those (Ryan Raburn, David Murphy, Rzepczynski, Atchison, C.C. Lee) are already off the roster. Trevor Bauer will probably not be in the bullpen. We won’t talk about Nick Hagadone because we don’t know when he will be able to pitch. Allen and Shaw are already accounted for.  Anthony Swarzak and Shaun Marcum are journeymen, long relievers at best.

That leaves eight guys:  Zach McAllister, Shawn Armstrong, Jeff Manship, Gavin Floyd, Kyle Crockett, Ryan Webb, Austin Adams, and Giovanni Soto. While most of these guys have skimpy track records and any projection is mostly guesswork, that is more or less what the front office will be doing, given the ebb and flow of bullpen performance.  A brief look at each of them follows, in the order of their chances to be used in the eighth inning of a tie game.

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Soto faced thirteen batters for the Indians and didn’t strike out any.  That to me, even in a small sample, is a red flag.  For Columbus, he walked 29 in 53 innings.  Another red flag.

Webb is a guy.  He has made 357 relief appearances with zero saves. He has solid numbers, but somebody decided a while ago that he wasn’t a guy to be used in late innings of tight games, and there’s nothing that I can see to make me think the Indians should buck that trend. Webb is a free agent with enough of a track record that he may get a major league deal from someone. The Indians don’t generally guarantee money for middle relievers, so his return may hinge on his price tag.

Floyd intrigues me, although I can’t say why. He has been pretty much an average major league pitcher for the past decade, and there is ample reason to conclude that he can no longer stay healthy as a starter, but as a guy who comes in to throw an inning twice a week, he may be what Atchison was in 2014.  Just a hunch.  He is a free agent, so that hunch may come to pass with another team.

Adams had a WHIP of 1.50 in Cleveland and 1.67 in Columbus. That would normally disqualify him, but he may have the most electric stuff of any of these candidates. As he gets another year removed from some serious arm troubles, he may be a guy who can get his act together and make a real contribution. Let’s classify Adams as a possibility. I could see him being a late inning guy in Columbus to start the season, with a quick promotion a possibility if he performs well there.

McAllister probably is what he is at this point in his career.  He will post solid numbers, but when hitters guess right, they will make solid contact against him, too often for him to be trusted in critical situations.  McAllister is probably ideal as a guy who can get you two innings in middle relief, which will always have value on a Francona team.  His biggest red flag may be that he is arbitration eligible.  The Indians will only be willing to pay so much for a guy who gives up more than a hit an inning.

Mandatory Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

Manship put up unreal numbers in 2015 – 0.76 WHIP, 0.92 ERA.  Making those numbers even more unreal is his long history of mediocrity prior to 2015. Actually, mediocrity is being nice about it.  These numbers would have been bad in the 90s. It would be a leap of faith to bank on 2015 being anything but an outlier, but stranger things have happened with relievers.  The good news is that he threw more strikes and more ground balls in 2015 than ever before.   That makes it seems like he actually figured something out. He will probably start out in middle relief and work his way back toward the later innings if he proves that 2015 was not a fluke.

The good news on Crockett is that he is the only left hander on this list, so he will definitely get a shot. The other good news is that everything in his track record prior to 2015 is stellar: WHIP below 1.00 and more than a strikeout an inning.  Plus, he will only be 24 next year.  The bad news is everything that happened in 2015, plus the Indians decided to spend 2015 seeing if they could jerk him around enough to break his confidence, so it remains to be seen whether he can regain it. Unless a trade is made for another lefty, Crockett is sure to get a shot.  The only question is whether that shot will be in the sixth inning or something more important.

Armstrong struck out eighty in fifty innings in Columbus, then eleven in eight innings in Cleveland.  Combined, he gave up 42 hits in 58 innings. 28 walks are a little scary, especially since that number is pretty much in line with his other minor league seasons, but that sort of ability to miss bats makes him a serious candidate. He has 31 minor league saves over the past two years, so he has been groomed for a late role, and Cleveland is the next logical step in his progression. If the Indians are banking on anyone from this list being a key guy in the 2016 bullpen, it is probably Armstrong.

Combine the lack of track records, the uncertain contract statuses, and the propensity of relievers to get hurt or lose their stuff, and it’s obvious that there’s not enough depth here to get through a full season.  There will be a bunch of other guys brought to spring training to compete for jobs, but two or three guys from this list will be needed to make major contributions for the Indians to have a solid bullpen in 2016.

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