Cleveland Indians: Tomlin’s New Approach Bodes Well for Game 3

The Cleveland Indians will send Josh Tomlin to the mound against the Chicago Cubs in Game Three of the World Series. What does the crafty right-hander need to do to succeed?

It’s a whole new World Series for the Cleveland Indians after Wednesday night’s defeat in Game Two at the hands of the Chicago Cubs. Things are all tied up 1-1 as the series shifts to Wrigley Field, essentially turning the Fall Classic into a best-of-five affair.

Cleveland, which saw Trevor Bauer and the bullpen struggle in Game Two, will be handing the ball to Josh Tomlin. In two starts this postseason covering 10.2 innings, the right-hander has allowed just three runs on seven hits, striking out 10 and walking three. Given the lack of depth the Indians have in their starting rotation right now, it’s difficult to overstate just how important Tomlin has been to the team in October.

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What makes Tomlin’s performance even more impressive is that, just two short months ago, he was pitching so poorly that manager Terry Francona removed him from the starting rotation. The 32-year old Texan posted an earned run average of 11.48 in 26.2 innings of work during the month of August, yielding 10 home runs to the opposition and losing five consecutive starts.

From those dark times to now, though, Tomlin has made an adjustment in how he approaches hitters, and it allowed him to slow down the mighty lineups of both Boston and Toronto. That approach should also give him a chance to shut down the Cubs on Friday night.

During the regular season, Tomlin relied mainly on his four-seam fastball and his cutter, throwing them 75-80 percent of the time. Given that his average velocity doesn’t crack 90 miles per hour, that usage caught to him, and resulted in that disastrous August and a lot of hard contact.

In the postseason, though, he has featured a curveball, and focused on keeping it at the bottom of the zone. One-third of the pitches he threw against the Red Sox at Fenway Park were curves, and more than 42 percent of his pitches against the Jays at Progressive Field. What’s more, he has increased the use of his sinker (two-seam fastball) while reducing the number of cutters and four-seamers.

The results of this change have meant pitches at the bottom of the strike zone and soft contact, both of which play well against Chicago. 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.

Chicago also had the lowest average exit velocity, the eighth-worst batting average, and the lowest contact rate against curveballs in all of MLB in 2016, as Mike Petriello points out for MLB.com.

Kris Bryant, Ben Zobrist, and Dexter Fowler have all beaten up curveballs in 2016, but players like Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, and Addison Russell have struggled against them. Fowler and Zobrist also swing at balls outside the strike zone the least on the team, suggesting that those two will require a different tactic from Tomlin.

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All of this is to say, while no one can predict what will happen in the postseason, Cleveland has every reason to be confident in Tomlin’s ability to navigate the Chicago lineup with his new approach. The Cubs will undoubtedly know it’s coming, but given his ability to throw strikes, locate, and change speeds to disrupt timing, advanced knowledge may not be useful. Tomlin proved that against Toronto, and will look to do so again on the big stage Friday night.