The Indians announced Friday that they’ve activated lefty Andrew Miller from the 60-day disabled list and cleared roster space by designating right-hander Zach McAllister for assignment. McAllister, who has been with the team since 2010, was one of the team’s longest-tenured players.
McAllister, 30, was traded to Cleveland by the Yankees eight years ago this month as the player to be named later in 2010’s Austin Kearns swap. While he never found his footing as a stater with the Indians, McAllister blossomed into a quality bullpen piece when taken out of the rotation in 2014. Over the next three seasons, from 2015-17, he pitched to a pristine 2.99 ERA with 10.0 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9 through 183 1/3 innings of work.
This season, however, has been another story entirely for McAllister. Through 41 2/3 innings, he’s limped to a 4.97 ERA with a diminished 7.3 K/9 mark against 2.2 BB/9 while serving homers at a career-worst rate (1.5 HR/9). He’s yielded seven homers through those 41 2/3 frames after surrendering only eight long balls throug 62 innings in 2017.
The 2018 season would’ve been McAllister’s last year of club control anyhow, as he’s now accumulated the requisite six years of Major League service time needed to reach free agency. Unfortunately for him, he’ll hit the open market on his worst full season as a reliever.
It’s still possible, of course, that another club could snag McAllister and plug him into its relief corps in the hopes that a change of scenery and some different coaching will foster a return to form. McAllister, after all, is still averaging just over 95 mph on his fastball with a near-identical swinging-strike rate to the one he posted in 2017, and his chase rate has actually jumped by nearly five percent. He’s only earning a $2.45MM base salary, with about $773K of that sum yet to be paid out, so he wouldn’t exactly break the bank for a team in search of a bullpen mercenary to close out the season.
If he ultimately is run through outright waivers and clears, McAllister does have enough service to reject an outright assignment to the minors in favor of free agency while retaining the rights to the remainder of his salary. At that point, he’d be a free agent available to all 29 other teams for only the pro-rated league minimum.
I never thought they’d actually do this. But I’m glad they did.
I was going through the roster before Miller had to be activated and he was the most logical guy to go since they needed to clear a spot on the 40-man and 25-man rosters. I just didn’t think they’d actually go through with it.
I’m sure they wanted to keep him and he’s been a quality reliever before, but there wasn’t any reason to keep him. I liked him and hopefully he does well somewhere, but you could tell this was the end of the line with the Indians. Same with Tomlin, but they don’t have to make that decision for another month or so.
Color me happily surprised, because now we will no longer have to sit through the most excruciatingly slow-moving relief pitcher in recent memory.
I’m pretty sure Rafael Betancourt moved a lot more slowly. But then again, he was more consistently effective with the Indians than McAllister has ever been.
True. Maybe they’re related? Second cousins, possibly?
Now they need to do the same to Tomlin
It’s inevitable. They’re dragging out his rehab as long as they possibly can, but they say is coming soon where CLE will have no choice but to pull the chain on Tomlin. We’ve seen enough.
i’m afraid it won’t happen, tomlin is a friend of tito just like michael martinez
It’s very true that Francona still believes in Tomlin despite his performance, but you just can’t hide him anywhere on the roster, and his role cannot be strictly garbage time in blowout games. The front office will have to sit down with Francona and bluntly state that everybody loves Tomlin, but opposing batters love him more than even you do, and so he’s gotta go
Tomlinson should’ve been gone long before McAllister IMO. A reliever having a bad stretch is one thing, you adjust his role and bump him to the middle innings and/or mop up duty. A starter like him is horrible to handle, you never know what inning you’ll need the ‘pen up and you’ll likely wear out some arms quickly and set you back in a series requiring help from the minors. One night you might not get out of the 1st with Tomlinson, others it might be the 4th or 5th. No way to rely on an unreliable player in a pennant race.
Doesn’t matter if you’re the longest tenured player on the team if you’re worth negative WAR on the season
Austin Kearns was AWFUL as a Yankee. Lazy fielder, couldn’t hit. Somebody will claim Zach
Kearns got old early…..
He pretty much fell off the face of the earth the following year with the Marlins.
Very surprised, while I thought he should’ve been gone long ago there are others that should’ve been gone before him like Tomlin.
I agree, although it seems like the Indians have a ton of respect (maybe too much) for Tomlin so they probably didn’t want to get rid of him unless they had no other choice. So in the meantime they made up an injury for him to stay on the DL.
Phantom injury for sure unless he genuinely developed shell shock from all the HRs he surrendered this year.
When Joba Chamberlain got cut (2.25 ERA in 20IP) should have been this guy. Been following this guy long time cuz he was ex-Yankee PTBNL for Austin Kearns lol
Joba had 11 walks in 20 Innings, but I believe McAllister was the other pitcher on the roster bubble.
Because Joba did so much that season or for the rest of his career…
Joba was horrible, that ERA in such a small sample size of 20IP is so misleading when he walked so many and couldn’t keep inherited runners from scoring.
“that ERA in such a small sample size of 20IP is so misleading when he walked so many and couldn’t keep inherited runners from scoring.”
He allowed 6 Runs, 5 of which were earned.
3 walks were intentional; 11 walks are really 8.
Joba had a 1.15 WHIP, and .171 AVG.
McAllister had a 1.45 WHIP, .255 AVG
I think CLE kept Zach due to potential. Maybe it was the right move. Just sucks that was the last time Joba ever pitched for a MLB team, after CLE released him. If Joba had 5.00 ERA, I’d be more OK with it lol. Oh well, at least he’s happy in retirement.
You left out the most important number, 30.
As in 30 MLB organizations knew more than you and knew he would not help their organization.
Texas rangers will try for him!
Or Baltimore.
Toronto will pick him up
This would be a much better move than Oliver Drake or the guy they just acquired. At least McAllister had a prime.
An interesting project for Don Cooper. CWS bullpen is already garbage, it can’t get much worse.
Probably some underlying injury…..
I honestly don’t remember him being as effective as his 2015-17 numbers suggest. My suspicion is he harvested most of those stats in low leverage situations. Francona rarely brought him in to put out any kind of fire.
Another example of stats being misleading.
Unless one can factor in the game situation, the opposing players, the players teammates (in this case, who were his catchers), the managers and pitching/hitting coaches philosophies, the point in the season, his team and the opposing teams position in the standings, etc……..
People underestimated Shaw so incredibly wrong until he was gone. Night after night you were biting nails and then you look at the stats and are pleasantly surprised by good numbers. McAllisters numbers were very good over the years until this season.
A lot of fans were ready for Shaw to hit free agency, but the guy got the job done despite the fact most outings resembled a drunken tight rope walker. I agreed with the FO not bringing him back only because it would have been a bad idea to give him a contract like the one he got from COL.
No doubt, there’s no way they could’ve competed with the offers Shaw and a Smith got, nor should they have. But they got caught flatfooted thinking they had replacements on staff.
Atlanta should grab him….insurance, maybe solve his issues