Cade Smith’s dominant return to form for Guardians has put rest of MLB on notice 

Pretty much everything has been clicking for the Guardians lately. 

Travis Bazzana’s finally living up to his top prospect billing. José Ramírez is back to finding his power stroke. Even Seven Kwan has turned into a productive hitter since being moved down in the lineup. 

But the biggest thing that’s been working for the Guardians has arguably been closer Cade Smith, who has an American League-leading 15 saves and has allowed just one run across the past calendar month. 

It may seem hard to believe given how little we’ve heard about Smith lately, but that’s life as a closer. The better you’re doing, the more boring things are. 

Cade Smith is the American League's best closer

Smith had a little bit of excitement last night thanks to hits from Matt Vierling and Kevin McGonigle, but Smith ended all that with back-to-back strikeouts of Jahmai Jones and Dillon Dingler. 

It was another strong outing from Smith, who has thrown 4 1/3 straight scoreless innings along with allowing just one earned run since the start of May. 

He’s been worth 1.0 fWAR this season, which is third-highest total among relievers behind Miller and new Blue Jays closer Louis Varland. 

That’s a bit hard to believe considering how Smith’s season started, as he had allowed five earned runs across his first six appearances. 

The opponent batting average on his fastball still sits at .293 thanks to that sluggish start, but he’s allowed just three hits (all singles) on his splitter along with holding opponents hitless on his sweeper. 

He’s primarily thrown that sweeper to right-handed batters, but he only has one strikeout with it, so it’s primarily been a setup pitch. Instead, he’s gotten back to pumping his fastball past hitters before changing speeds with that splitter (48.1% whiff rate). 

While the Guardians’ offense is in a much better spot than it was last season, it was still going to be hard for them (or any team) to win consistently with a faulty bullpen. 

And having Smith as the anchor likely makes Stephen Vogt a bit more comfortable to call upon Smith to put out a fire in the eighth inning along with closing out a game in the ninth. 

That’s already happened twice this month when Smith picked up a four out save against the Athletics on May 1 along with doing the same thing on May 12 against the Angels after Franco Aleman allowed a home run to Vaughn Grissom in the eighth inning. 

The low-leverage spots in the Guardians’ bullpen are clearly still a work-in-progress, but Smith’s dominance at the end of the ‘pen has made those struggles a bit more manageable. 

In fact, his past 10 appearances have ended with him high-fiving the catcher to celebrate a Guardians win. That could end up becoming a familiar sight as the rest of the summer goes on. 

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