Cleveland Indians: Breaking Down the Pitching Matchup with the Cubs

The Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs reached the World Series in large part because of their pitching. Who will the two clubs be giving the ball to, and how do the two staffs compare?

With the World Series getting started Tuesday night, there have been many pieces written in the baseball media analyzing how the Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs got to this point. The answer is as simple and as old as the game itself: great pitching.

The Indians and Cubs had two of the best pitching staffs in the league during the regular season, and in the postseason they have only gotten better.

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Cleveland silenced the Boston Red Sox in the American League Division Series, holding the highest-scoring team in Major League Baseball in 2016 to just seven runs in three games.

They then followed that up by allowing a mere eight runs in five games to the Toronto Blue Jays in the League Championship Series, a club with the reigning AL MVP and a host of sluggers throughout its lineup.

What has been most impressive is the manner in which the Indians’ hurlers have done this in light of the injuries the staff has sustained.

Manager Terry Francona has been masterful in squeezing what he has needed out of his starters and orchestrating his bullpen to shorten and win games. By utilizing his best bullpen arms in the highest-leverage situations, regardless of how early or late in the game, the Tribe’s skipper has turned conventional baseball wisdom on its head.

Chicago has gotten good pitching as well, though it has experienced a few more rough spots. In ten postseason games, the Cubs have yielded 30 runs, but the majority of those have come in just half the team’s postseason games. Manager Joe Maddon has seen his staff allow two runs or fewer in five games, including two shutouts.

There is a perceived advantage for Chicago entering the Fall Classic in that its starting rotation is healthy and intact. Cleveland has been without Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar in the postseason, though the club’s healthy starters have contributed to an MLB-best 1.77 Earned Run Average in October.

This World Series is likely to turn on more than just pitching, but neither the Indians nor the Cubs would be in this position if it weren’t for the quality of their respective mound corps. If both sides continue to pitch as they have, this could be as low-scoring and tightly-contested a Fall Classic as we’ve seen in years.

Let’s take a look at how the two staffs match up.

Game One: Corey Kluber vs. Jon Lester

Chicago will have Jon Lester taking the ball. In Game One For Cleveland, there was no mystery. Kluber is the undisputed ace of the staff, and he has performed incredibly in his first career postseason.

Kluber is 2-1 in October, having thrown 18.1 innings in three starts. The 30-year old right-hander has yielded just two runs on 13 hits in that span, striking out 20 and walking seven while having a hand in two shutouts, and posting a 0.98 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and .197 batting average against.

The last time out, Kluber pitched on three days’ rest against Toronto, and though he put the Indians in a position to win, suffered the club’s only loss of this postseason to this point.

As he showed in his three playoff starts, Kluber will be around the plate, throwing his sinker predominantly, while mixing in one of the premier sliders in the game and a plus cutter. He has essentially been the same pitcher all season regardless whether he’s at home or on the road, or facing a left-handed or right-handed batter.

That consistency will be put to the test against a Cubs squad that has a nice balance of lefties and righties in its lineup and has scored nearly five runs per game in the postseason.

Lester has similarly been on top of his game in three playoff starts, all of them wins for Chicago. In 21 innings of work, he has given up two runs on 14 hits, striking out 14 and walking just two, and was named Co-MVP of the NLCS. His 0.86 ERA, 0.76 WHIP, and .189 opposition batting average show a veteran with immense postseason experience who is locked in.

And he does so throwing nearly all fastballs of one variety or another. Thus far in October, Lester has thrown his four-seamer, sinker, and cutter to the tune of nearly 90 percent of his mix, which has resulted in just soft or medium contact by hitters nearly 75 percent of the time.

The one flaw that Lester has is his well-documented case of the yips in throwing to bases, and it’s one that Cleveland should look to exploit. He simply does not make pickoff attempts, and as was evident in the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, base runners can take big leads from first base.

Where the Dodgers failed, though, was in taking advantage of those head starts. They stole two bases in the game but conceivably should have had many more. The Indians, it is well-known, led the American League with 134 steals during the regular season and in FanGraphs’ baserunning metric which measures overall efficiency.

Taking better advantage of Lester’s pickoff issue than LA, provided of course that the Tribe can get on base first, is the seemingly small detail that can change the outcome of a game.

Advantage: Push

Game Two: Trevor Bauer vs. Jake Arrieta

Francona has not confirmed his Game Two starter as of this writing, but the way things set up, Bauer and Arrieta look to be the most logical choices. Neither has had a sterling postseason thus far, but both have proven in the past that they can be big-game pitchers.

Bauer made headlines before ALCS when suffered a lacerated pinky finger on his pitching hand while repairing a drone, and was forced to leave his Game Three start when the wound opened up and began gushing blood. He went just 0.2 innings in that game, so if the finger holds up, his arm will certainly be fresh.

The 25-year old did make the start in Game One of the ALDS for Cleveland and put the team in position to secure the win. In 4.2 innings, he yielded three runs on six hits to the Red Sox, including a pair of solo home runs. The sample size for Bauer is small (5.1 innings), but he’s posted a 5.06 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, and .286 batting average against in October.

Assuming he is ready to pitch, it will be interesting to see how Progressive Field plays into things, as Bauer has an ERA that is more than a run higher at home in 2016. The argument might even be made that he would be better suited to start Game Three at Wrigley Field.

Like Bauer, Arrieta has had his struggles in the playoffs, posting a 4.91 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and .273 opponents’ batting average in two games the Cubs lost. The 2015 NL Cy Young Award winner has given up six runs on 12 hits, striking out 10 and walking 1, in his 11 innings of work.

After having scaled back usage of his slider during the regular season, instead relying on a mid-90s fastball, Arrieta has gone back to the sinker-slider mix that worked so well for him a year ago. He throws those two pitches more than 70 percent of the time and gets plenty of ground balls and easy flyouts from them.

What is interesting to note about Arrieta, as pointed by Ray Danner at It’s Pronounced Lajaway, is how much more effective left-handed hitters have been against him in 2016 versus a season ago. While his splits against right-handed bats stayed about the same, lefties had an OPS more 150 points higher this season, and seven of the 12 hits he’s allowed in this postseason have come left-handers.

Given the fact that Francona can essentially trot out a lineup with seven left-handed or switch-hitting bats, Arrieta’s splits will be something to keep an eye on when he takes the mound.

Advantage: Chicago

Game Three: Josh Tomlin vs. Kyle Hendricks

Baseball has largely become a game of triple-digit fastballs and brute force on the mound as opposed to the actual gamesmanship of pitching. In that way, a Tomlin-Hendricks matchup in Game Three could be something of a throwback, as neither will blow anyone away, but both are an expert in the nuances of commanding their pitches, changing speeds, and keeping hitters off-balance.

Tomlin has been one of the unsung heroes of the Indians’ playoff run, having allowed just three runs in two starts, both of them wins, covering 10.2 innings. He has struck out 10 to just three walks, limiting opponents to a .184 clip at the plate despite averaging less than 90 miles per hour on his fastball.

Where the 32-year old Texan was particularly effective against Boston and Toronto was in disrupting hitters’ timing with a steady diet of breaking balls. Whereas he threw his curveball roughly 15 percent of the time during the regular season, that usage has jumped to nearly 40 percent in the postseason.

Whether that strategy will be effective against Chicago will be something to watch. The Cubs ranked No. 11 in the National League during the regular season in the volume of curveballs seen, and No. 9 in Fangraphs’ weighted curveball runs, a metric used to measure how well hitters performed against the pitch.

While wCB is limited in its predictive power and can be victim to pitch misclassification, it seems to point to the Chicago having a potential weakness that Tomlin and the Tribe could exploit with well-located breaking balls.

Hendricks has had a slower average velocity than Tomlin in the playoffs, but it has made little difference in his performance. In three starts covering 16.1 innings, the right-hander has yielded just three runs on nine hits, with a WHIP of 0.80 and a batting average against of .164. The Cubs are 2-1 in those games, with the lone blemish being the 1-0 NLCS Game Two in which Hendricks was matched up with Clayton Kershaw.

Unlike Tomlin, Hendricks has not thrown many breaking pitches in October, opting instead to throw his four-seamer, sinker, and changeup more than 90 percent of the time. He induces a lot of groundballs with the sinker and weak contact with the change and will test the patience of Cleveland’s batters, who slashed .289/.349/.468 with an 110 OPS+ during the season against “finesse” pitchers.

Hendricks led the NL during the regular season in ERA, ERA+, adjusted pitching runs, and base-out runs saved and is among the frontrunners to win the Cy Young award. But his soft-tossing game plays into a strength for the Indians, which will be something to watch when he’s on the mound.

Advantage: Push

Game Four: TBD vs. John Lackey

The good news for Cleveland in Game Four is that it has a number of options to choose from for its starting pitcher. The bad news is that none of those options are necessarily ideal. Francona could start Danny Salazar on a strict pitch count, Ryan Merritt for his third career big league outing, or Kluber on short rest. Regardless of what the Indians decide, Chicago will likely have Lackey on the bump.

Salazar confirmed on Monday afternoon that he had made the World Series roster for the Tribe, and after pitching a simulated game on Sunday said that he felt close 100 percent after having been out since September 9th with a right forearm strain.

If he can give the team the 65-70 pitches that would likely be his limit at anywhere approaching the same level he pitched at during the first half of the regular season, Salazar’s return would provide a great lift. In the first half of the year, the 26-year old fireballer was among the AL’s best, going 10-3 with a 2.75 ERA and holding opponents to a .204/.290/.323 slash line and 67 OPS+ en route to being named to the all-star team.

Salazar hasn’t pitched in a big league game in over a month and a half, which means there may be some incentive to bringing him out of the bullpen and going with Merritt or Kluber. Merritt made his second career start in the clinching game of the ALCS in Toronto and handcuffed the Jays to just two hits in 4.1 shutout innings.

Kluber, as mentioned previously, started Game Four of the ALCS pitching on short rest for the first time in his career. While he battled, it was obvious that he didn’t look as sharp, and against the Cubs at Wrigley, that could mean disaster.

Lackey has been the least-used member of Chicago’s starting rotation in the postseason, having gone four innings apiece in his two starts. He’s also been hit the hardest, allowing five runs on ten hits in those eight innings of work, good for a 5.63 ERA, 1.88 WHIP, and .333 batting average against.

What Lackey has worked in his favor against a Cleveland lineup that is mostly short on postseason, and especially World Series, experience, is his more than 135 career innings pitching in October. The mercurial 38-year old righty has been in big spots before and knows how to win on the biggest stage.

One thing to watch in how the Indians attack Lackey is the volume of curveballs and sliders he mixes in. No other Cubs starter throws as many breaking balls, nearly 40 percent, but few clubs in the American League hit those pitches better than the Tribe.

Cleveland’s wSL and wCB marks ranked first and third, respectively, during the regular season according to FanGraphs, and Lackey has given up plenty of hard contact in the playoffs on those pitches.

Until Francona makes known his plans for Game Four, and there’s no reason why he should rush that decision, it’s difficult to say which side will have the upper hand on the rubber. Given the options the Indians have and Lackey’s struggles thus far in the postseason, it could make for a hitter-friendly affair, to say the least.

Advantage: Push

Bullpens

This is where the fun gets started, as both Cleveland and Chicago have electrifying bullpens and managers who aren’t afraid to use them. As noted, Francona’s use of his relievers in these playoffs, in particular, has garnered a great deal of attention as he’s abandoned many of the long-held, gospel truths of bullpen management.

Maddon has also shown himself flexible to be creative in using his relievers, though he has not out of necessity had to so as often as the Indians have. The Cubs certainly have the bullpen personnel to match high-leverage situations with high-intensity arms.

Taking a look at each club’s top four relief options paints a scary picture for opposing hitters:

Cleveland

• Cody Allen: 7.2 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 12 K, 3 BB
• Andrew Miller: 11.2 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 22 K, 2 BB
• Bryan Shaw: 5.2 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 5 K, 1 BB
• Dan Otero: 3.1 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 K, 0 BB

Chicago

• Aroldis Chapman: 8 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 10 K, 4 BB
• Mike Montgomery: 9.2 IP, 10 H, 4 R, 7 K, 3 BB
• Carl Edwards: 3.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 K, 2 BB
• Pedro Strop: 3.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 K, 1BB

Chicago seems to have the most vulnerable bullpen, having allowed 14 runs in the postseason to Cleveland’s six. But Chapman is among the greatest closers in the game, and with a late-inning lead, there aren’t many teams that will want to take the chance that they can touch him up for a score.

The Indians have leaned heavily on their relievers because of the thin starting rotation, and those guys have answered the call. Miller, the ALCS MVP, has been used anywhere from the fifth through the ninth innings, and for multiple innings, providing Francona with perhaps the dominant bullpen arm in high-leverage situations in these playoffs.

Allen, too, has been dominant, saving five of the Tribe’s seven wins and going multiple innings a few times as well. Between him and Miller, 33 of 72 batters faced have gone down via the strikeout and just one out of every five has managed to reach base. That is next-level bullpenning and could be the key to a Cleveland championship.

Advantage: Cleveland

Assessing the Matchup

It has been clear all postseason long that Cleveland has a much smaller margin for error with its pitching staff due to injuries than would normally be the case.

The Indians have shown again and again that they are up to that challenge, and have put in some of the most impressive performances on the mound of any team in October.

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• Cleveland Guardians tantalizingly close to locking up AL Central tiebreakers
• Cleveland Guardians: Terry Francona becomes meme in profanity-laced ejection
• Say goodbye to defensive shifts and hello to bigger bases, pitch clock in 2023
• Cleveland Guardians: Shane Bieber second-fastest to 800 strikeouts in major-league history
• The next week will make or break the Cleveland Guardians’ season

Chicago had the top pitching staff in the big leagues during the regular season, and while that group has taken a few lumps in the playoffs, they constitute a formidable obstacle for the Tribe to surmount.

The starters don’t allow many baserunners, period, and if Cleveland is unable to score early, one of the toughest bullpens in the game is lurking.

What will be the most fun to watch, at least to this author, is how two master tacticians like Francona and Maddon orchestrate their staffs.

Both have proven adept and creative in their usage throughout the season, and with both sides performing so effectively, runs could be at a serious premium.

This is the World Series, so one would expect that nothing will be left in the tank for either the Cubs or the Indians. No situation will be overlooked, no contingency will be not planned for, and no pitcher with fire in his arm will be left unused.

Next: World Series Position-by-Position Breakdown

We have two teams in this World Series who are playing to end prodigious championship droughts, and it’s only fitting they would appear so evenly matched on the mound. 

Cleveland’s and Chicago’s hitters will more than have their work cut out for them, which should make for some seriously high drama. The Tribe has been counted out throughout the playoffs and responded. The question will now be whether they can do it one more time against this collection of Cubs pitchers.