JUNE 17: The Indians will make room for Clevinger by moving Kluber to the 60-day IL and optioning lefty Josh Smith, Bell tweets.
JUNE 12: The Indians will activate starter Mike Clevinger to take the ball on Monday, MLB.com’s Mandy Bell was among those to cover on Twitter. Clevinger recently made a second rehab appearance as part of his recovery from an upper back/teres major strain.
While the club ended up going without the excellent righty for just over two months, that’s actually a relief. When it was determined that his injury was worse than originally believed, it seemed that he might need that much time just for rest and rehab.
Clevinger, 28, will make for a significant boost to a club that has dealt with a trio of blows to its exceptional starting staff. Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco remain sidelined, but the Cleveland organization can now slot in another co-ace alongside Trevor Bauer at the front of the rotation.
The Indians will hope that Clevinger can pick up where he left off. In his first dozen frames of the year, he allowed just a pair of hits while racking up a 22:4 K/BB ratio. It’ll take a big effort from Clevinger and the rest of the roster to track down the division-leading Twins, but that’s not out of the realm of possibility and the Indians remain in the thick of the Wild Card hunt.
Finally, some good news on the pitching front.
There has been some good news already. Plesac has done exceptionally well and their bullpen surprising leads the majors, but I get where you’re going with this. My question to you all: when are they going to send down Bauer?
Bauers?
Yes Bauer’s, not BAUER.
for what?!?! who is available to take his spot in the rotation? You realize we had a whole pitching staff on the IL?
AND he is right, with the inconsistency of our rotation, this is great news! Plesac has been great, but can we expect him to keep it up at this level? I sure hope so, but I’m not certain it’ll happen.
Plesac has been a pleasant surprise, but he didn’t pitch very well on Wednesday afternoon. He is human, after all.
True, but when nobody is hitting out there it doesn’t matter. Their offense wasn’t going to overcome what he gave up to the first 2 hitters .
Bauer the pitcher with the 3.71 ERA? Or Bauers the hitter with a .643 OPS and -1.1 WAR?
For me, Bauers can go down but only after Martin gets cut lose. I think Bauers can still have a decent contribution to the Tribe in the future, but needs to go find his stroke in AAA for a little while. Also wouldn’t be opposed to Ramirez heading back to Goodyear for a couple weeks to break it down and build it back up.
Ace stuff. Clevinger can be downright dominant.
I’ve always liked Clevinger. I think he very much has the potential to be one of the top 10 pitchers in the league.
He started out this season so much on fire I thought he was going to easily leapfrog Kluber and Bauer in this years Cy Young race then the injury blew that all up.
In 12 innings he had 22 Ks and only gave up 2 hits, that was pure domination.
Yes. One of the starts was against the Blue Jays, and I think I said to a friend, “Clevinger could K 20 tonight.” He had 10 after 4 innings and then was hurt an inning later. Clevinger has some filth.
Glad to see “Mitch Kramer” is finally healthy. GO TRIBE!
Does Carrasco have any news on him around blood condition? Anyone else thinking something like HIV?
No, you are probably the only one. If he was dealing with being lethargic, maybe anemia.
Two Josh Smiths got optioned today.