Cleveland Indians: Three things that went right in April

Quality production from the 2016 draftees

As most Cleveland fans know, the team will go as far as the starting pitching can take it. The offense contains too many inconsistent bats and too much youth and inexperience to be counted on to carry the club to a playoff berth. Therefore, the rotation will be called upon to do much of the heavy lifting.

Fortunately, the Tribe came into 2021 with one of the best starting trios in all of baseball. The pitchers in question – Bieber, Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale – have been a gold-plated gift since they first toed the rubber in an Indians uniform. All three came to the organization out of the same amateur draft class and have pitched tremendously well since each made their debuts with the big-league club. That year, 2016, will surely go down as one of the greatest hauls of talent in Cleveland Indians history for a single draft.

Top of that class is the team’s ace, Bieber, who has commenced 2021 the same way as in 2020. That performance a year ago ended in Bieber being crowned the AL Cy Young winner, while also leading the Majors in wins (8), ERA (1.63) and strikeouts (122) to claim the pitching ‘triple crown’.

Bieber has begun the current campaign by continuing to etch his name into baseball history. He now holds the record for consecutive games with eight or more punch-outs (18), and his 68 strikeouts through a pitcher’s first six starts of a season are the second-most in baseball’s modern era (post-1900), behind only Nolan Ryan, ‘The Strikeout King’, who recorded 78 Ks through his first six starts in 1978.

Plesac, barring two back-to-back bad outings versus the White Sox, has put up nothing but quality starts in his six outings, including a masterful seven innings of shutout ball against Detroit on April 6. Zach looks destined to solidify his burgeoning reputation as one of the best young pitchers in the AL. Following a debut 2019 season where he tossed 115 innings with a 3.81 ERA, he improved those numbers by shrinking his ERA even lower to 2.28 in 2020.

Aaron Civale, the final third of the trio, was spectacular in April. He is tied for the Major League lead in wins (4) and is sporting an impressive 2.94 ERA through five starts and a 0.92 WHIP which is even lower than Bieber’s and good enough for fourth lowest in the league.

If these three young stars continue to throw quality outings, the Indians are halfway to contending deep into the regular season.

The three ‘R’s

A lot has been made of the Tribe’s offensive limitations by fans and Cleveland media alike, but there have been early successes from the lineup in April. That success has largely been confined to the heart of the order where the bats of José Ramírez, Franmil Reyes, and Eddie Rosario reside.

Together, the three have smacked 17 home runs, which is half of the team’s total, and driven in 49 of Cleveland’s 99 runs batted in. There should also be an honorary mention for Jordan Luplow who has hit his way into additional playing time after launching six dingers in April to go with 15 RBIs in just 60 at bats. (It’s just unfortunate, for the purposes of this article, that his name doesn’t begin with the letter ‘R’).

Reyes and Ramírez both hit above .273 for the month and owned an OPS above .900. Their prowess with the lumber made up for the constant struggles at the top and bottom of the order, which are littered with guys hitting well below the Mendoza line. The free-swinging Rosario hasn’t been as consistent as the other two, hitting just .225, but has made his at bats count by driving home an efficient 14 runs on just 20 April hits.

Ramírez and Rosario were already well-established names in the game, and what they offer to a lineup is a known quantity. The former is one of the best hitters in the game in the prime of his career, while the latter is a guy, also in his prime years, who gave his previous team 20+ home runs and 70+ RBIs a season, on a consistent basis while hitting for a decent .275 career average.

Reyes, who welcomed the birth of his second child this weekend, had fewer than a thousand career at bats going into 2021, but he has shown his long-term potential with a gargantuan 62 home runs over that span. On current performance, the kid is on pace to hit around 42 home runs and collect 110 RBIs this season.

With these three doing damage in the middle of the lineup, the teammates ahead of them in the order should begin to see plenty of good pitches. This should, in turn, translate into better results at the plate which will see the Indians start to score more runs.

Clase dismissed

It wouldn’t be fair to right an article on what went right for the Cleveland Indians in April without mentioning the tremendous effort by the bullpen.

The relief corps is headlined by the relief tandem of James Karinchak and Emmanuel Clase. Neither pitcher has allowed a run in the 24 innings they have pitched, collectively, while amassing 38 strikeouts between them. Karinchak also owns an obscenely tiny 0.34 WHIP. They have shared save opportunities in the early going, but Clase has begun to emerge as the team’s first-choice closer with Karinchak setting up in the eighth.

Even with the lofty expectations that Karinchak and Clase had foisted upon them, they have managed to surpass them. Late-game leads haven’t felt this safe since 2016, when the Indians acquired Andrew Miller to pair with Cody Allen, or during the heyday of Chris Perez, Vinnie Pestano, and other members of the vaunted ‘Bullpen Mafia’ a decade ago.

Almost forgotten in dominance of the Tribe’s late-inning duo, is the triumphant return of Bryan Shaw who enjoyed a great first month back in a Cleveland uniform. Shaw threw 10 innings in April, giving up just one run and striking out 11.

If the Tribe starters can continue to toss quality starts, then the wins will become automatic with such lights out relievers available to finish games.