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January 19, 2016LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love are finalists for the 2016 Olympic team
January 19, 2016The Cleveland Indians have an abundance of good, reliable starting pitching. ESPN’s Buster Olney recently ranked the Indians as the second-best rotation in MLB. The emergence of Cody Anderson and a healthy Josh Tomlin helped stabilize the back-end of the rotation upheld by stalwarts Carlos Carrasco, Corey Kluber, and Danny Salazar. With the potential of Trevor Bauer lurking, the 2016 staff could have another dominant season. Adding to the riches, the Indians top prospect lists are filled with several high-potential arms, including Michael Clevinger.
Clevinger was acquired from the Los Angeles Angels for relief pitcher Vinnie Pestano in August of 2014. After Pestano flashed his previously dominant self in his initial nine innings of work for the Angels with a 0.93 ERA, he fell back into his free fall with a 5.40 ERA in 2015 before being designated for assignment in July of 2015. Pestano hopes to get back into MLB as he signed a minor league deal with the New York Yankees to enter spring camp in 2016.
Meanwhile, Clevinger was the Bob Feller Award recipient as the 2015 Indians Minor League Pitcher of the Year, and Indians pitching co-ordinator Ruben Niebla called him a “no-brainer addition to the 40-man roster.” The 6-foot-4 220 pound right-handed pitcher was drafted in the 2011 MLB Amateur Draft fourth round out of Seminole Community College (Sanford, FL) by the Angels, but a 2012 Tommy John surgery held back his development in their system. Clevinger had only 130 innings pitched in his three and a half years in the Angels system, while he had 158 innings pitched for the Indians in 2015 alone. So, despite being only three months younger than Cody Anderson, he is a year behind him in development.
The Indians were encouraged by Clevinger’s 2015 season. He came into Spring Training among the most prepared players for the season, and he maintained both his health and velocity throughout the season. He was flirting with the mid-90s with his fastball in March and he was sitting at 93 miles per hour while touching 98 for the Columbus Clippers in the playoffs.
Additionally, Clevinger has already demonstrated signs of having major league quality breaking balls. He has a curve-ball and slider that have flashed as plus pitches, and his change-up really took a step forward in 2015 towards becoming a viable MLB pitch. The change-up became a pitch Clevinger was able to utilize as one of his better weapons against both right and left handed batters towards the end of the season. Now, Niebla notes it is “just a matter of him throwing it more” as he continues in his development.
Add it all up and Clevinger had quite the breakout minor league season. For the regular season with the Double-A Akron Rubberducks, he finished with a 2.73 ERA, 1.057 WHIP, 145 strikeouts, and just 40 walks in 158 innings.
The next phase of his development will likely determine how high the ceiling for Clevinger can climb. He needs to continue to develop his overall body strength, maintain his delivery, and have those secondary pitches remain consistent weapons.
For his part, Clevinger is an excellent athlete. His strength and flexibility is balanced without an obvious deficiency in either. He was a tremendous skateboarder in his youth and also played shortstop in amateur baseball. Niebla notes Clevinger is “athletically one of the best in the organization.”
And, Clevinger is willing to work hard to obtain results. He is in the organizational throwing program, which includes long-toss. He has 15 scheduled off-season bullpens before he will report to camp.1 Clevinger also was in Goodyear for voluntary training sessions for four days in December and will be returning in late January for another round, while he also participated in the rookie career development program in Washington D.C. earlier in January.
The Indians project Clevinger to be a MLB starter but timeline projections are more difficult to obtain. One issue is the noted stacked rotation the Indians already possess at the MLB level. Another is once a timeline is set, either an injury or great demonstration of talent can change it in a hurry. Niebla used Kluber between the 2011 and 2012 season to indicate how quickly those plans can change as his timeline was drastically shortened.
However, as Indians fans enjoy the potentially dominate 2016 rotation, one does not need to strain their eyes to see Clevinger coming along as part of the next set of ace pitchers developed within the Cleveland Indians player development system.
- Side note for fun: he lives close to Corey Kluber and does throw with him from time to time in the off-season. [↩]
35 Comments
hi MG … justin upton to the tigers. mr. ilitch is going-for-broke.
It’ll take a ton more for Ilitch to go broke. And, they’ll be a fun team to watch. Interested in where they think they’ll get some pitching.
Hey guys…take a look at the byline. Major gratitude to Todd Paquette of Indians in Depth for the collaborive efforts on this one.
Cool. As long as he loses Bronson Arroyo’s barber.
Lose Cespedes replace him with Upton. Must be nice.
Trade bait? Indians are going to have to use the abundance of young arms in order to find a bat. It’s just a matter of timing IMO.
You must have missed the part about him being a former serious skateboarder 🙂
I don’t think the hair is going anywhere.
Still love Vinnie and hope he can make a comeback…but preferably not with the Yanks.
(yes I know this article was not about him)
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/349425/homer-hippie-o.gif
they did acquire j.zimmerman & pelfrey for the rotation … not horrible … and i don’t think they’re done with starting pitching yet . but their biggest splash was in the back end of the bullpen : f.rodriguez (brewers) to close & j.wilson (yankees) & lowe (martiners / blue jays) to set-up … this is where they had been lacking most in recent years.
I’d be fine with having a stable of amazing starting pitchers. If you can get a big bat in a trade for Clevinger fine, but if you’re talking about trading him for a bat like Mark Trumbo, I would pass.
And then you add in to the mix that they got him for a song……..
Great write up guys, much appreciated. Will be very interesting to see how Brady Aiken responds this year too.
STAY ON TOPIC!!!!
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvtp37MZ0O1r3kvzio1_500.gif
Baseball’s paradox. You wonder if the teams with money can keep the discipline to raise the farm, and the clubs without are always a piece away.
Here’s a comparison for you.
Player A: Age 24, AA:
27 GM, 26 GS, 149 IP, 9.48 K/9, 3.02 BB/9, .42 HR/9
Player B: Age 24, AA:
27 GM, 26 GS, 158 IP, 8.26 K/9, 2.28 BB/9, .46 HR/9
Player A is Corey Kluber, those are his combined numbers between the AA affiliates of the Padres and Indians. Player B is Mike Clevinger, this last year.
It should be noted that Kluber developed a more effective primary pitch after that year (his cutter), so this doesn’t mean Clevinger is the next Kluber necessarily. But the similarities are somewhat uncanny, don’t you think?
Good stuff. If Clevinger can keep making progress with that changeup and make it a pitch that gets outs, he could make a similar leap.
it is why MLB is the true sport of parity, while the NFL keeps trotting out Brady, Ben, and Peyton.
Frankly, I’d rather deal Cody Anderson than Clevinger. The former may have had a very successful cup of coffee in the big leagues last season but I think Clevinger’s ability to strike guys out makes him the better long-term option.
And I think Clevinger is closer to being MLB-ready now than Anderson was in 2015. Anderson spent two months in Akron, had 2-3 starts in Columbus and then was in the bigs. Clevinger almost certainly starts in Columbus from Opening Day on.
Pestano was mentioned, so fair game. I loved Vinnie when he was here, but a prudent move to trade him when we did and we look to reap the benefits due to it.
thanks. and yeah, we wanted to start off with guys closer to the bigs, but there’s certainly more younger guys with huge potential (like Aiken) on the farm as well.
Not to mention how random the MLB playoffs have become, especially in the single-game wild card era. You would think the NFL’s single elimination format would be much more amenable to parity than baseball with its 5- and 7-game series, but that has not been the case the last decade or so. Usually in January, the better NFL team wins (and that team, of course, is usually the one with the better QB). Things like the Royals’ 2014 run or the wild card Cubs knocking of the 100-win, division champ cards last October almost never seem to happen in football.
All this is to say, I’ll take my chances with Kluber-Carrasco-Salazar in any series with any team nine months from now…if we can get there :).
Yeah, NFL has become “health + QB” in the playoffs. Only real randomness is when a good QB gets hot and is a great QB for a few games (ala Eli Manning or Joe Flacco).
Yeah, I wish Illitch’s kids would put him in guardianship, too. He has to be depleting their inheritance.
But they also have to replace David Price with Zimmerman. Good luck with that. And who knows if Verlander is starting to slide–he was pretty horrible for most of 2015. And come to think of it, so was Sanchez.
Looked at some comparisons, but Kluber just seemed too crazy a comp to list considering the big jumps he had once he locked in his pitches.
Quite glad you added it here in the comments though. Here’s hoping.
Great article!
Much improved bullpen on paper of course but the entire division will be tougher led by the defending champs KC Royals. Indians have a tough road ahead even with their rotation.
Indians lone advantage over Detroit is the starting rotation but the Tigers lineup is much better and they significantly improved a horrible bullpen.
I just threw that out there I wasn’t all that familiar with Clevinger. I just think if the Indians seriously want to contend for the post-season they’ll need a legitimate bat. My hopes are that the Indians abundance of young pitching can continue to make strikes because if it can that gives the Indians something to use in a trade. Whoever it may be.
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should be the best division in baseball , along with the NL central.
hi MARK … verlander started the 2015 season not 100% healthy. he was much better in the 2nd half of the season & got his fastball into the mid-to-high 90’s again … he starts this season healthy … we’ll see what happens.
Let’s be honest: I’m just a jealous bald man.
So far, you are spot-on here.