Believeland Ball’s Top 25 Cleveland Indians of 2018: Number 5

This month we are covering the top 25 Cleveland Indians players from the 2018 season. Today our string of hot Tribe pitchers continues with our pal Cookie.

What better time to discuss our number five Cleveland Indians player from 2018 than the day after he signs an incredibly team-friendly contract. Carlos Carrasco didn’t have his best season by any means, but he certainly played a huge role for the Indians.

Any time you have 15+ wins that’s a huge feat for a pitcher. While he hasn’t had an ERA below 3 since 2014. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of excellence. Carrasco had a stretch of pure brilliance in the midst of his 2018 season.

During a mid-summer game against the Twins, Carrasco took a liner right to his elbow that looked pretty ugly. It wound up taking him out for almost a month. But when he came back, he was better than ever. Carrasco went 8-2 for the next two months after his return and allowed just 15 earned runs in that span.

It was something the Indians needed during a sluggish part of the 2018 season. But he also gave the Indians some deep outings at the start of the year. Carrasco was able to work 7+ innings five times in the first two full months of the season. That can prove to be a valuable thing to have as the year goes on.

Now that the Indians have extended Carrasco, the have a rock in their rotation. We don’t now that the rotation will look like at the start of 2018, but we can guarantee Carrasco will be there, and that’s something we should appreciate.

We didn’t have Carrasco for the 2016 World Series run, and it would have made a world of a difference if we saw him out there. There’s a chance the Indians take care of business in that series and we aren’t sitting here wondering “what if.”

Sure, hindsight is 20/20 and we can always imagine having Cookie out there. But we have him now. He makes for a powerful duo with Kluber, but even if the Indians don’t have Corey Kluber on this team, I feel extremely confident anytime I see Carrasco out on the mound. You should too.