The Guardians have placed starter Cal Quantrill on the 15-day injured list due to shoulder inflammation, tweets Zack Meisel of the Athletic. Aaron Civale was reinstated from the IL to take his spot in the rotation. Cleveland also placed first baseman Josh Bell on the paternity list and recalled rookie infielder Brayan Rocchio from Triple-A Columbus.
Quantrill received an injection in his shoulder and will be shut down from throwing for a few days, per Mandy Bell of MLB.com (Twitter link). It’s not clear how long he’ll be out of action, though the shutdown could suggest it’s more than the minimal two weeks. While the Guardians will clearly be disappointed to lose one of their starters, the injury could explain some uncharacteristic struggles.
The right-hander has allowed a 5.61 ERA over 11 starts. Quantrill had kept his ERA below or around 3.00 in each of the preceding two seasons. This year’s velocity isn’t any different but he’s missing bats on a career-low 7.2% of his pitches. Quantrill’s past two starts have been particularly ineffective, as he’s respectively served up six and eight runs while failing to get out of the fifth inning.
In Quantrill’s place, the Guardians are welcoming back two veteran arms in the coming days. Civale starts tonight in Minnesota. It’s his first appearance since April 7. He missed just under two months with an oblique strain. Civale posted a 4.92 ERA in 20 starts last season.
Right-hander Triston McKenzie is listed as the probable starter for Sunday afternoon’s matchup with the division-leading Twins. McKenzie hasn’t pitched in the majors this season thanks to a Spring Training shoulder strain. He’s made three rehab starts with Columbus, allowing five runs in 10 1/3 frames. McKenzie is on the 60-day injured list and will need to return to the 40-man roster. Cleveland will have to make a corresponding move in that regard on Sunday.
Like this is going to hurt this team?
Hot Take: The Indians should trade Shane Bieber.
Not really a hot take. It’s been a discussion point within the fanbase for most of the year.
What about a cold take?
This very well could be the year. They need to address the offense this year and beyond. Bieber is the best way to get a key bat they need so badly.
Let’s face it. Outside of 2 starts this year Quantrill has sucked. I don’t know if that’s due to injury or what, but he needs to sit out a few starts to get things figured out. Were it not for this IL placement he probably was going to join Plesac in Columbus if he had another start or two as bad as the last one.
The scuttlebutt was he was ticketed for the bullpen. Now it’s likely that he is out for a bit, and rehabs in Columbus for as long as they need to figure things out. If he’s down for 2 weeks, they can rehab him in Columbus up to a month, either until someone else gets hurt/traded, or they decide what to do with him (bullpen?).
The other thing they’re going to have to manage at some point is that Bibee and Allen are supposed to max out at like 150 IP this year, because they never were built up for more before their ascent. So might come a time they have to send down one or both and call up Quantrill just to eat some innings (this would likely only happen if they’re firmly out of the playoff picture).
It is going to be interesting to see what happens managing that pitching workload after they are shutdown. If everyone is healthy/effective you got the fromt 4, so not a big deal.. but Quant hasn’t looked like himself and Civale has difficulty staying healthy.
Almost seems like they need to send Curry or Morgan down to get stretched out and ready to start at some point in the second half.
I suspect Curry is going to get sent down to get stretched as soon as Morris is back, but it depends on if they decide to stretch out Morris. Morris threw 2.2 IP his last rehab outing and they said they’ll consider where he’s ar and if they want to stretch him more after. If they put him as a RP, it’s pretty clear he’d have Curry’s role as a multi inning guy. Which presumably frees Curry to go back to starting at AAA.
Or they stretch out Morris and then probably option him and he’s now part of the SP depth.
All this could be why they’ve kept Gavin Williams down as long as they have. The guy is killing it in AAA. I’m not sure how Plesac has been doing, but I would think they’ll leave him down there until they’re 100% certain he’s overcome his problems.
The bigger issue is that they had 4 guys making arbitration money in the rotation who have a track record of success, and it’s not clear that 3 of them are among the top 5 starters in the org.
Bieber obviously stays until he gets traded.
Civale gets hurt a lot sure but he’s been gold when healthy, and isn’t the sort of guy who gets better out of the pen. So can’t really move him.
Quantrill is now on the IL, but before that maybe would have had to move to the pen
Plesac got optioned out
Allen and Bibee are two of their best options. McKenzie is too. Gavin probably is better than Civale, but leaving Civale as anything other than a ML starter would tank his value. And at this point it’s clear they need to move probably all of those guys either this summer or this offseason.
They also need to trade some of their surplus middle infield talent.
Which is weird because they’re nominally a team that needs to sell, but what they need is a corner outfield bat. The type that mostly contending teams would want to trade for.
You’re right about the need for a corner OF. There is no player in the organization that is going to solve the problem in RF any time soon. I think the Reds’ Jake Fraley would be perfect there, but they have their own glut of middle IFs.
The curse of the Wahoo.
Doesn’t quite explain the other 70 seasons though.
Does explain since 95, they curse just started last year.
They haven’t won a title since 48, which incidentally is right when Wahoo first debuted. Seems to me that the curse was having Wahoo in the first place.
Three AL Championships, ten Division Championships since 1995 with Chief Wahoo.
This year trailing Minnesota & Detroit, only 2 ahead of White Sox, 7 games below . 500….
They won a division title the year after they dropped Wahoo and the year after they dropped the team name. Wahoo hasn’t been their primary logo basically since Francona took over. You’re reaching.
Or Gene Bearden.
Son of Paul.
TJ’s, shoulder inflammation, forearm tightness, etc., etc., etc. Coaches who apparently never saw Tom Seaver pitch should spend a few days in the film room watching how he threw the ball. He got his power primarily from his legs, not his arm. I don’t recall him ever having a major injury to his arm. He ended up in the Hof with more than 300 wins. He wouldn’t have accomplished that by spending a significant amount of time on the DL.
In the current state of baseball I don’t think we’ll see another 300-game winner any time soon. Even 200-game winners are becoming extinct. Seaver was not only incredibly durable, he pitched in the era of four-man rotations, and complete games were commonplace. Now we have teams shifting to six-man rotations and only expecting 5 or 6 innings from their starters. Even so the injuries are still through the roof. It’s easy to see the current pitching philosophy in baseball as a whole is deeply flawed.
I saw a film of Seaver having small discs placed on his major joints. He went through his wind-up which was filmed. When the film was played you could see how he threw the ball. Right away you could see how his legs provided the power. Then came his arm. It isn’t hard if coaches from the lowest levels of the game would just learn it and teach. Surgeons must be getting tired of performing all these arm operations.