Cleveland Indians: Four cornerstone players for the Tribe’s future

James Karinchak

The bullpen of the Cleveland Indians has a lot of young arms that are intriguing to the future of the club, but one that stands out for a few different reasons is James Karinchak. At just 25-years old, Karinchak has the opportunity to entrench himself as the closer for the Indians moving forward and being the anchor of the bullpen.

With a blazing fastball and nasty breaking balls, Karinchak is the perfect arm out of the bullpen. The combination of his pitches resulted in 53 strikeouts over 27.0 innings, meaning Karinchak struck out 65% of the outs recorded with him on the bump.

The other side of Karinchak that could make him a focal point of the new-look Tribe is his ability to create a persona around his game. While he’s really only been in the majors for one season, Karinchak has already started to form a following.

Even though he is a reliever, Karinchak has fully embraced the Ricky Vaughn look from ‘Major League.’ From the haircut, to wearing 99 and running out to Wild Thing from the bullpen, Karinchak has adopted the Vaughn look and his prowess on the mound isn’t too far off either. Closer or not, Karinchak is already a name known around baseball for that alone.