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September 26, 2018The Houston Astros will present a monumental challenge for the Cleveland Indians in next week’s American League Division Series. The job of Indians brass is simple – to mitigate that challenge using creative, out-of-the-box thinking. The wisest avenue would be thinking in terms of surplus value. The Indians have a surplus at the starting pitching position, assuming Trevor Bauer is healthy enough to contribute. Terry Francona and company must find a way to leverage their starter surplus in order to compensate for an unstable tail end of the bullpen.
So, how can the Indians maneuver their way into maximization of their resources? It’s easiest to think of next week’s playoff series as a collective grouping of the five games, or approximately 45 innings. For argument’s sake, we will contend that Terry Francona will carry eleven pitchers, the same amount he opted for in last year’s ALDS. This leaves 45 innings to be covered by those 11 arms.
There are several schools of thought on how to allocate those innings, but the Indians will have plenty of options in that department. Among the starters, you have your top tier of Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and Trevor Bauer. Mike Clevinger had an immaculate ERA but outpitched his peripherals a tad and has a profile that is walk-heavy, which is troublesome in the small sample size of the variance-laden playoffs. On the other end of the spectrum you have Shane Bieber, who outpitched his peripherals by a mile and was miles better than his misleading 4.80 ERA.
Moving toward the bullpen, the Indians have three pivotal cogs – Andrew Miller, Brad Hand, and Cody Allen. Beyond that, it’s the lefty/righty match-up pair of Adam Cimber and Oliver Perez. That accounts for ten of the eleven arms. The last arm is anyone’s guess – Francona could call upon Josh Tomlin or Dan Otero for mop-up duty, or Tyler Olson to add another match-up specialist – but is mostly unimportant because that arm would be relegated to mop-up duty, most likely.
First, we can allocate a couple low leverage mop-up duty innings to the eleventh arm. So, now we must account for 43 innings with our remaining ten arms. Corey Kluber will likely start Game 1 and Game 5, a conservative five innings per start can be attributed to him to total ten innings. Trevor Bauer and Carlos Carrasco can be attributed five innings each, again leaning conservative to maximize their outputs and limit them to two times through the order. Now we get into the real meat of the issue at hand. We are left with 23 innings to allocate among Shane Bieber, Mike Clevinger, Andrew Miller, Cody Allen, and Brad Hand, plus the matchup specialist innings.
First, you can count on one to two innings from both Adam Cimber and Oliver Perez. This may seem low, but the advantages gained from having sidearm specialists are somewhat neutralized by an Astros lineup that seems to lack avenues to pursue split advantages. George Springer, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman each seem to square up on a pitcher just as well whether they are right-handed or left-handed. With approximately 20 innings left to allocate, Francona will almost certainly give Miller, Hand, and Allen five innings each. That leaves six innings for the pair of Clevinger and Bieber.
Where you can get creative is in the application of those innings, however. Perhaps you reserve Clevinger for the “opening” three innings of Game 4 rather than calling upon two starters to go on short rest. With this approach, you get to pick and choose where to slot Bieber into a game for his three or so innings. The starting pitching surplus means that you don’t need to push your starters to get you length in any capacity. For example, if Kluber stumbles in the second inning of Game 1, you can go to Bieber to try to patch the bleeding. If Bauer looks a little off, you can go to Bieber to smooth things over. The advantage here is getting to pick and choose where to slot an effective fifth starter.
The above layout is nothing more than a plan. Everyone has a plan — that is until they get hit in the mouth. Adversity may come knocking early and often in a playoff series. Pivotal decision points will manifest themselves. Francona needs to keep it simple in this year’s playoffs — in the highest leverage situations, use the best available arm. There are several dependable workhorses in his stable — the method in which Francona chooses to utilize them could make or break a series against the defending World Series champs.