The Guardians placed right-hander Carlos Carrasco on the 15-day injured list Friday with a left hip strain and optioned infielder/outfielder Angel Martinez to Triple-A Columbus, per a team announcement. In their places, Cleveland recalled outfielder Will Brennan and reliever Peter Strzelecki from Columbus. The Guards also called up left-hander Joey Cantillo as the 27th man for today’s doubleheader against the Twins.
Cantillo will start Game 1 of today’s twin bill. Zack Meisel of The Athletic tweets that righty Alex Cobb, acquired from the Giants at the trade deadline, will start Game 2 for Cleveland. He’s on the 60-day injured list, so they’ll need to make a corresponding 40-man roster move between games one and two today.
It’s the second IL stint of the season for Carrasco, who opened the year on the 15-day injured list due to neck spasms. He signed a minor league deal to return to Cleveland over the winter, made the rotation in spring training, and is currently second on the team in games started, trailing only right-hander Tanner Bibee.
While Carrasco has been a consistent presence in Cleveland’s rotation this year, his results have paled in comparison to his peak years. The now-37-year-old righty has eaten up 103 2/3 innings but been clobbered for a 5.64 ERA. His 19.9% strikeout rate is a couple percentage points shy of league-average, while his 7.4% walk rate is better than average. However, Carrasco is working with a career-worst 91.8 mph average fastball velocity and has been extremely homer prone, yielding an average of 1.65 long balls per nine frames. A bloated 17% of the fly-balls he yields have left the park. He’s hit a particularly rough patch of late, surrendering 17 runs (on the strength of five homers) in his past 17 2/3 innings.
Carrasco clearly isn’t performing well at the moment, but his placement on the IL further tests the depth for a Guardians club that lost Shane Bieber for the season (Tommy John surgery) back in April and has seen young pitchers Logan Allen and Triston McKenzie struggle to the point that they’ve been optioned to Columbus. The Guards acquired Cobb prior to the deadline and signed veteran left-hander Matthew Boyd to a big league deal as he wrapped up his rehab from 2023 Tommy John surgery. Cobb will make his Guardians debut tonight, and Boyd isn’t expected to be too far behind him.
That could potentially give Cleveland a rotation of Bibee, Cobb, Boyd, Gavin Williams and journeyman Ben Lively down the stretch. There’s potential for a solid group there, but it’s anyone’s guess right now how Cobb will perform coming off hip surgery and how Boyd will perform on the back of last season’s ligament replacement procedure. It’s not the dominant Cleveland rotation we’re used to seeing, but the Guardians boast one of the best bullpens in baseball, which helps to offset some of the uncertainty.
As for Cantillo, today will mark his third big league start. He’s been tagged for six runs in 7 1/3 innings thus far and will face a tough task in squaring off against a Twins team that has thrived against left-handed pitching this year. A former third-round pick, Cantillo has ranked among the Guardians’ more promising young arms since being acquired from the Padres back in the 2020 Mike Clevinger trade. He’s had some command troubles in the upper minors and missed a significant portion of the current season on the injured list, but Cantillo has a 4.21 ERA and 27.1% strikeout rate in 124 career Triple-A frames — albeit against a 13.4% walk rate that’ll need to improve if he’s to sustain success in the majors.
The corresponding move between games… do you think it’ll be Cantillo going back down? Can they do that?
Why not?
If Cantillo has been called up and designated as the “27th man” for the double-header then i think he has to
Anyone can be sent down that has optioned or another pitcher DFA’d, but its likely that the Kailua Kid is sent back down.
Brennon up is a good thing. I’d rather see Rocchio down than Martinez but I get it.
I’ve been impressed by Martinez so far. Brennan is only ok, but Martinez could be something special in the future. It would be good to get him more ABs, but they are positioning for the playoffs.
Hoping that we see Manzardo up and Rocchio down soon
Does manzardo play short stop?
Rocchio has been their entire offense today
Still can’t see how Rocchio still has a job on this roster and then he goes and provides the only offense in game 1.
Team can’t catch a break and nobody is hitting right now.
They’ve been catching a break all season. Finally catching up to them Rocchio is hardly the only problem. It’s most of the other not ready for major league talent. Martinez, Noel, Schneeman, Brennan to name a few. You get what you pay for and the FO didn’t spend anything
I like Carrasco but I think his career is pretty much over.
Carrasco is a loyal soldier, taking the IL bullet for the team, real or not, so no one gets dfa’d.
Ah so that is what it is?
Seems comical that their rotation going forward includes 2 pitchers who haven’t thrown a pitch this season. It’s just what Cleveland fans like to hear while they are leading the division. At least the front office didn’t outright quit at the deadline this season like last season.
By the end of this weekend they will no longer be leading the division. The Guardians are Lucy and the fans are Charlie Brown. Honest we are going to win it this year. Just believe in us. Then they pull the rug out and we’re once again waiting for next year. We knew it was coming
It’s hard to fathom as an outsider looking in that this starting rotation has enabled them to be arguably the best team in the AL up till now. Carlos Carrasco is your #2 starter? I see all these ERA’s in the 4s and 5s. Wow. That bullpen has really pulled its weight in gold, or something. Cuz that rotation is fair to middling, at best.
They make up for it, from what I can tell, with great fundamentals.
There goes Cleveland’s playoff hopes. 😉
The Kailua Kid makes it to the majors. There will be a pig or two in the imu on the island tonight.