How Long Can the Indians Afford to Be Patient with Closer Brad Hand?
It is hard to come up with any criticism of the Cleveland Indians’ pitching staff. They lead the American League in ERA at 2.56.
They also lead the AL in strikeouts, least walks, and shutouts. The only category they are struggling a bit in is allowing the long ball.
They’ve allowed the fifth most in the league, but that is really a product of being around the strike zone so much.
Most of the home runs are of the solo variety, and throughout the history of baseball, some of the game’s best hurlers have allowed tons of homers.
The career leader is Jamie Moyer, and the next four pitchers are all in the Hall of Fame: Robin Roberts, Ferguson Jenkins, Phil Niekro, and Don Sutton.
However, there is one thing that should be a concern for Terry Francona and his pitching coaching staff of Carl Willis, Ruben Niebla, and Brian Sweeney. And it may be the most important pitching spot for a contending team. It’s the status of closer Brad Hand.
Saturday night, Hand picked up his 5th save, but it certainly wasn’t pretty. Coming in with a 3-0 lead handed to him by Shane Bieber and Nick Wittgren, Hand walked the lead off hitter on five pitches.
He then got Miguel Cabrera to lineout to LF, while the next hitter, Jonathan Schoop reached on catchers’ interference, which wasn’t Hand’s doing.
Another line drive to left was followed by an RBI double, so suddenly, the Tigers had the tying runs in scoring position. Cameron Maybin bounced to the mound, and the Tribe won the game.
In Hand’s 5-2/3 innings this season, he’s allowed five hits and four walks, along with seven runs, four of them earned.
He’s made seven appearances on the season, and has produced just one clean inning, that on August 4th. And he’s yet to protect a one run lead heading to the ninth.
He did come into a scoreless tie vs. the White Sox on July 29th, but proceeded to allow four runs (three earned) facing five hitters, retiring just one.
If the rest of the bullpen were struggling, we could understand Francona’s reticence to move away from Hand as the closer, but that is not the case. In fact, the skipper has started to use rookie James Karinchak in high leverage situations, aka the “Andrew Miller” role.
Wittgren, who closed some a year ago when Hand was down with a tired arm, has pitched eight times (8 IP) to a 2.25 ERA and striking out 10. He’s prone to giving up the long ball, he gave up 10 gopher balls in 2019, but just one this season.
Another rookie, Cam Hill, has also earned a save, and outside of an outing against the Cubs last week, has also been very effective.
The questions are these for Tito, does he feel confident using Hand in a one run save opportunity? Would he use Karinchak in that spot, if he hadn’t already use him earlier? Would he go to Hill or Wittgren?
Again, it would be one thing if the veteran lefty, and three time All-Star struggled once or twice, but he’s been shaky in six of his seven outings, and his velocity seems down, and he’s had command issues with his slider.
If Francona isn’t nervous, everyone else is.
This isn’t a normal 162 game season. The Indians are a little over a third of the way through the season, so patience is in short supply.
Perhaps Willis and his guys see something to indicate Hand is close to regaining his usual form. If they aren’t, it will be interesting to see what course of action is.
