Do The Indians Have Enough Pitching Depth to Survive The Stretch of Injuries?

The Indians have been beat up over the first two months of 2021, as the injuries have mounted, which includes the starting pitching staff. The Tribe has lost all of their starters on the hill, and are doing whatever they can to try to fill the roles of the injured players with young minor leaguers.

Terry Francona has always said when you think you have enough pitching, you go out and get some more. It’s too bad his bosses didn’t heed his advise.

We know the Indians have traded away a lot of pitching over the last two and a half years, moving former Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber, and then Trevor Bauer and Mike Clevinger in deadline deals in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

The organization has done a tremendous job developing young pitchers. The current (if healthy) top of the rotation features three pitchers drafted in 2016: Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac, and Aaron Civale. Going into spring training, the fourth and fifth spots appeared to belong to Cal Quantrill and Triston McKenzie.

We wrote at the time that outside of Bieber, none of those guys had more than 300 big league innings under their belt, and it would be wise to trade for or sign at least one experience arm.

Pitchers like Tijuan Walker (6-3, 2.38 ERA with the Mets), Jake Odorizzi (2-3, 4.08 ERA with Houston), and Tyler Anderson (3-8, 4.75 ERA with Pittsburgh) among others all were available shortly before spring training started. 

None of them signed for huge amounts of money, always a consideration for the frugal Cleveland franchise.

Perhaps the organization got too caught up in the success of Bieber, Plesac, and Civale, all of whom seemed to have very little growing pains coming up to the bigs. Or more realistically, the ownership would not allow for the signing of a veteran hurler to add another proven arm.

Quantrill had command issues in spring training (he’s still going through them), so he went back to the bullpen, because of that and the fact that Logan Allen pitched extremely well in Arizona.

When the regular season started, Allen couldn’t keep the ball in the yard, and McKenzie, who opened as the 5th starter, couldn’t throw strikes.

They tried 24-year-old Sam Hentges, 24-year-old JC Mejia, and 25-year-old Eli Morgan, none of whom had any major league experience, and none were experiencing any great success in the minors.

When Bieber got the call in 2018, he was 6-1 with a 1.47 ERA in 13 starts at AAA and AA. Plesac came up in 2019 out of necessity due to injuries, but he was 4-2 with a 1.70 ERA in 10 starts in the high minors. Civale was 7-1, 2.43 in 13 starts in ’19 when he got the call.

By contrast, Hentges didn’t even pitch in the minors this year, nor last season due to the pandemic. His last minor league season was spent in Akron in ’19, where he went 2-11 with a 5.13 ERA.

Mejia had made two career starts above Class A in his life, both this year, before getting called up. He was 3-1 with an ERA just over four in Hi-A ball, in 2019, pitching just 33 innings.

Morgan made four starts this year at Columbus (4.67 ERA) and made 19 starts in AAA two years ago, with a 3.79 ERA.

We understand the organization didn’t think the latter trio was ready for the big league rotation now, but they left themselves no room for error.

And when Plesac went down on May23rd, the Tribe could’ve signed a free agent not currently in anyone’s organization and they would be ready now to help the team over this hurdle.

Rick Porcello, Cole Hamels, and Anibal Sanchez are just three pitchers still unattached, and another Homer Bailey, just signed with Oakland. Could any of those guys have helped? There is no way of knowing, but at the very least, they could have bought time for the youngsters.

They could’ve made a trade as well, although we would like to think Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff tried. It is well documented the organization has a ton of middle infielders regarded as good prospects. Move one of them for a starter who can soak up innings without taking the team out of a game early.

Perhaps the Indians can whether the current storm and stay in the race for the playoffs, and if they do and come up just short, they could point to these games pitched by men who weren’t ready to handle the job.

The point is the front office (including ownership) should have listened to their skipper. Heading into spring training, the pitching staff was very inexperienced. They pretended it wasn’t an issue.