The Guardians passed right-handed reliever Trevor Stephan through outright waivers and assigned him to Triple-A Columbus, per Tim Stebbins of MLB.com. That removes him from the 40-man roster, but Stephan will remain with the organization.
While Stephan could have rejected the assignment, doing so would’ve meant forfeiting the remainder of this season’s $2.3MM salary, all of next year’s $3.5MM salary and the $1.25MM buyout on his 2027 club option. Stephan is about a month shy of reaching the necessary service time to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency but still retain his salary.
The now-29-year-old was a breakout reliever for the 2022 Guardians, tossing 63 2/3 innings with a 2.69 ERA, 30.7% strikeout rate, 6.7% walk rate and 19 holds. Cleveland signed him to a four-year, $10MM extension with a pair of club options prior to the 2023 season. He tallied 28 holds that year but saw his rate stats and velocity dip. In spring of 2024, Stephan was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament and underwent Tommy John surgery. He’s yet to make it back to a major league mound.
Stephan has had his rehab assignment stopped and restarted a couple times this summer. Cleveland activated him from the 60-day IL in late July and optioned him to Columbus. He’s pitched 13 2/3 innings in the minors this year and been rocked for a 9.22 ERA, although nine of the runs against him came in a brutal pair of back-to-back outings around the All-Star break. Over his past five appearances, Stephan has looked more like himself. He’s tossed five shutout frames and fanned five opponents — albeit with four walks issued in that time as well.
Stephan’s outright is the latest in an overhaul of a Cleveland bullpen that looked almost unbeatable when he and Emmanuel Clase were regularly handling the eighth and ninth innings. Stephan’s future is at least somewhat up in the air, in light of his injuries and struggles during rehab work, while Clase’s outlook is even cloudier. He’s been on administrative leave since July 28 in connection with an MLB investigation into violations of the league’s sports-betting policy. Clase and teammate Luis Ortiz are on leave through Aug. 31, though if the investigation hasn’t concluded at that point, the leave can be extended even further.
Righties Cade Smith and Hunter Gaddis now stand as the top two leverage options in manager Stephen Vogt’s bullpen.
That 2022 bullpen was scary with Stephan and karinchak and clase I can’t believe it fell apart so quickly
If Stephan and karinchak were still good in 2024 they would’ve beaten the Yankees in the alcs
Their bullpen was even better last year, so I disagree. They just got beaten. Cade Smith and Gaddis were both better last year than Stephan or Karinchak were.
Honestly, the 2022 bullpen wasn’t even as good as what they had in 2016 either. They almost messed around and won a World Series with basically just Kluber and Josh Tomlin taking turns starting because they could run Andrew Miller and Cody Allen out there every night.
Bullpens are the perhaps the most liquid part of a team from year to year. Not a shock really. Their pen is still a very good one despite all the changes.
Go Guards!
Stephan has all the time he needs to recover and readjust. Would be a shame if this is the end of the line.
Karinchak was released by Chicago white sox a while ago. Apparently lost the ability to throw strikes.
Karinchak never really did throw strikes, he was always wild even in his minor league days. But also in his minor league days he was striking out just under 22 batters per 9 IP at AAA, before he got called up. Walks can hurt because generally it means any hits, homers, or even productive outs can produce runs. If you’re striking out that many people, it doesn’t matter because the runners you walk on just end up watching the next guy K.
His K rate dropped significantly once the sticky stuff crackdown happened. Then his velo dropped. That’s when all the rest of that pitching stuff caught up with him – the walks, being unable to hold runners, and frequently missing spots so bad he was serving up meatballs.
Same with the pitch clock. I remember the opening series in Seattle in 2023 when he couldn’t figure out how to start his delivery before the clock went out lol
Stephan is a really good example of how thin the margins are. He was a rule V pick – not a particularly well thought of prospect – who was mostly a junk time reliever. He picked up a split change from journeyman reliever Nick Wittgren during that time, worked on it in practice a bunch, and eventually started deploying it in games. Finally he had a pitch to pair with his 95+ mph heater, snf he spent the next year and a half as a dominant reliever.
But his velo is down and his control hasn’t come back to him since the injury. And now he can’t get out minor league hitters with enough regularity. It’s a cruel game sometimes, how quickly it can all go away.
My hope is that through spring next year he gets enough work to eventually get back to finding that control. His guaranteed contract and previous results will probably at least give him a chance to work his way back.
I still wouldn’t count him out yet because he’s only so recently removed from Tommy John, but your overall point is spot on.
He’ll have to fend off Enright, Aleman, a (hopefully) healthy Hentges, and probably a few others just to break camp, but I agree that his guaranteed money probably means he gets the stance to stick it out.