CLEVELAND — Logan Allen’s eight strikeouts Sunday were the most by a Guardians starting pitcher this season. Only Shane Bieber (seven on April 4) and Zach Plesac (six, April 9) have eclipsed the five-strikeout mark in an outing.
Five years ago, Cleveland boasted four starters with more than 200 strikeouts: Carlos Carrasco (231), Corey Kluber (222), Trevor Bauer (221) and Mike Clevinger (207). Bieber joined that quartet in May 2018 and rounded out the rotation for the rest of the season, finishing with 118 strikeouts in 114 2/3 innings.
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Strikeouts aren’t everything. The second syllable of the word is the more important part.
But this isn’t your slightly older sibling’s Cleveland starting rotation. This is a group in transition.
Allen is the first member of the wave of starters on the way, and his companions aren’t far behind. Coaches and executives throughout the organization salivated over Gavin Williams and Tanner Bibee all spring. Assistant general manager James Harris even indicated Sunday that the two consensus Top 100 prospects deserved to merit consideration for the roster spot Allen claimed, “but Logan came up last year (to Triple A) and he faced a little bit of adversity.”
Triple-A Columbus manager Andy Tracy unleashed his customary hijinks on Allen on Friday before informing him he was being promoted to the big leagues. He first told the lefty that the coaching staff was concerned about the spin rate on his changeup and had contemplated holding him out of his last start. Then, he revealed the truth: Allen was bound for the mound at Progressive Field on Sunday afternoon.
Allen drove to Cleveland on Friday night and reacquainted himself on Saturday with his Guardians teammates, many of whom he shared a clubhouse with during spring training. On Sunday morning, as Cal Quantrill supplied the room with a pop punk playlist at maximum volume and players handed out white “Chill Will” shirts in support of outfielder Will Brennan, Allen sat at his locker with Mike Zunino. The catcher clutched an iPad in his left hand as the two studied the Marlins scouting report and discussed Allen’s pitch-sequence preferences.
Donning an oversized navy jacket with red sleeves on a blustery, overcast day, Allen marched from the bullpen to the dugout before first pitch. He slapped hands with the relievers as they passed him, making the opposite voyage. He peered toward the stands and took in his surroundings. Allen said he had 15 to 20 family members and friends in attendance, including his older brother, Hunter, who played at Alabama State and always served as Allen’s battery mate as they grew up.
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Allen started his big-league career by striking out Miami’s Jon Berti on a 93 mph fastball over the plate. Zunino grabbed a new ball from home-plate umpire Lance Barksdale and threw it to José Ramírez to toss around the infield. He lofted the strikeout ball to the bat boy. The ball was waiting in Allen’s locker after the game — and after teammates doused him with beer and shaving cream.
There was nothing overly flashy about Allen, just an uptempo pace and pinpoint command and the conviction to challenge hitters in the zone that helped him zoom through the farm system. He started the first seven hitters with a first-pitch strike.
“Once you get strike one,” he said, “things tend to go your way. So that’s the most important thing.”
More than half his pitches were fastballs, ranging from 90 to 94 mph. He threw some splitters, sweepers and cutters. He issued only one walk, and it came in his final inning, the sixth — impressive poise given no one would have blamed him for feeling as though a hamster was spinning a wheel in his stomach. He said early on he felt the nerves until he arrived in the bullpen for his warmup tosses, at which point he “realized it’s just baseball.”
“The second, third and fourth innings, we wanted to disrupt him a little bit. It didn’t work,” Marlins manager Skip Schumacher said after the Guardians’ 7-4 win. “Credit to him with his composure out there. It didn’t matter what we did.”
Little high, little Lo.
Logan Allen struck out 8 in his Major League debut.#ForTheLand pic.twitter.com/PrtTm0dczF
— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) April 23, 2023
It’s the third debut in franchise history with at least six innings pitched, at least eight strikeouts and no more than one run allowed. Triston McKenzie (Aug. 22, 2020) and Luis Tiant (July 19, 1964) were the other two.
And the Guardians needed it. The rotation seems month-old-Pepsi flat.
Bieber, Quantrill and Plesac have pitched with plenty of traffic on the bases and have dodged harm to varying degrees. Peyton Battenfield was thrust into the mix less than two weeks ago after being exposed to the Rule 5 draft over the winter. McKenzie and Aaron Civale should help in a month or so. And so could Bibee and Williams at some point. Those two would offer the rotation some heat and some strikeouts.
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For now, it’s Allen who will offer a glimpse of the future. When he met with Guardians staff at the fall development program at Progressive Field last October, they told him they didn’t want to repeat the discussion in a year. They wanted Allen in the dugout or on the mound, aiding Cleveland’s postseason pursuits.
The Guardians place a ton of emphasis on how players respond to adversity. Allen faced his first speed bump last season upon his arrival to Columbus after breezing through High-A Lake County and Double-A Akron. With the Clippers, he was charged with five earned runs in six of his 14 starts. His strikeout rate decreased. His walk rate soared. He made an effort to boost his velocity over the winter so he would have “more opportunities to get guys out, more chances in the zone.”
The plan paid dividends. He overmatched Triple-A hitters for three starts before receiving the call to the majors. Now he has a chance to stick in the rotation as the Guardians search for the right combination to carry them through this season — and beyond.
Final Thoughts
1. While Allen, Bibee and Williams garner attention, Daniel Espino, the prospect with the 100 mph fastball and wipeout slider, is on the shelf again. Espino had started ramping up in Arizona after experiencing shoulder soreness and inflammation during a January throwing session. He hadn’t yet thrown off a mound, but he recently had a recurrence of those symptoms after playing catch. He’ll visit a doctor in the coming days to determine his next steps, but it’s a painful setback for a highly regarded pitcher who was on track to possibly make his major-league debut this season.
2. Meibrys Viloria has appeared in eight of Cleveland’s 22 games. He has tallied four plate appearances and has totaled 17 2/3 innings behind the plate as a defensive replacement. In those innings, Guardians pitchers have tossed three wild pitches and runners have swiped three bases in three chances. He could have been a logical candidate to be designated for assignment to clear a spot for Allen on Sunday (and to keep Tyler Freeman on the major-league roster). After all, manager Terry Francona has been open about the team’s three-catcher setup being a short-term arrangement. Instead, the organization opted to expose Bryan Lavastida to the waiver process, which might say a lot about the 24-year-old, who is off to a sluggish start at Double-A Akron following a miserable 2022 season. Before the move, the Guardians were carrying five catchers on their 40-man roster, which limited their flexibility.
3. James Karinchak has surrendered four home runs in 12 innings this season. Last year, he allowed two home runs in 39 innings.
4. Josh Bell has at least one hit in 10 of his past 11 games.
Bell’s first 10 games: 3-for-38, .329 OPS
Bell’s past 11 games: 15-for-41, 1.129 OPS
“I was working tirelessly to stay inside the ball and try to get balls in the air,” Bell said. “Things felt good in the cage there for a little bit, but it’s nice to see things finally start getting going during the game.”
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5. Josh Naylor, mired in a 1-for-38 skid, notched a single in the eighth inning Saturday. Then, he delivered a pair of hits off lefty Jesús Luzardo on Sunday. Those hits snapped an 0-for-17 start to the season against left-handed pitchers.
I asked Francona how he evaluates Naylor and determines how to proceed with him against southpaws, given his .512 OPS against them last season and his rough showing in the early going this year.
“When you have the answer, if you tell me, I’ll do it,” Francona said. “We were sitting around (Friday), just talking for a while, because I dropped him in the order and I didn’t want him to come in and just look at it, so I wanted to talk to him a little bit. I was explaining to him — and I don’t ever want to get into (hitting coach Chris Valaika’s) area, because that’s not right — but I believe he can hit everybody, not just righties. He’s fearless at whatever he does. I told him, I think it’s mental. ‘I think you sometimes get yourself out.’ He either tries to do too much or sometimes he gets a little long and he wants to hit it far. I asked him, ‘What was your best at-bat on that road trip?’ He said that ball he hit to short (in Washington D.C., with an exit velocity of 105.7 mph that resulted in a double play). I said yeah. I said, ‘To me, if that would have gone up the middle, I bet you would have taken a deep breath. You have to get yourself to remember that.’ We’ll see. There is a balance, because you’re trying to win every game you can, but you don’t want to quit on a kid you think is an everyday player. It might not help.”
First, the Guardians need Naylor to mash righties, as he did last season (.856 OPS). The roster is missing a lefty-crusher to pair with him. Otherwise, he might be closer to running out of chances to prove his case to be an unquestioned everyday player.
(Top photo: Ken Blaze / USA Today)
