Just as the Indians got good news on the injury front with Michael Brantley returning to the team on Monday night, things got much, much worse. On an odd play Sunday, Carlos Carrasco was covering first base when his left leg collapsed under him. By some miracle of foot placement, Carrasco got the out at first, but he only took a couple more steps once standing up before falling right back down. After the trainers looked it over on the field, he required assistance to get back into the dugout.
With the amount of pain Carrasco appeared to be in and the fact that he was unwilling/able to any weight on the leg made it seem as if the injury had the potentiality to be severe. After acknowledging that it was his left hamstring yesterday, the Indians have stated today that it is only a mild strain of the hamstring. He is expected to miss four to six weeks and given the alternate possibilities as of yesterday, this is an incredibly good news scenario today.
The Indians will certainly miss Carrasco, who was expected to succeed Corey Kluber as the Indians ace this year. Over the past two seasons, he has been tremendous with a 3.17 ERA in 317.2 innings after a rocky start to his MLB career that included Tommy John surgery that cost him all of 2012. Upon his return, he was pushed into the bullpen due to inconsistencies on the mound, but after returning to the rotation late in 2014 he had a complete turnaround. In 2015, he came in fifth in the AL in fWAR and looked to be continuing that trend with a 2.45 ERA in 2016 over his first four starts. Even Sunday, he was throwing a one hit shutout against Detroit for the first 2.2 innings until the injury caused his removal.
For most teams, the loss of a pitcher the quality of Carrasco would decimate the starting rotation, but the Indians are one of very few lucky teams to have a huge well of starting pitching talent. Kluber is already slated at the front of the rotation and another top 10 fWAR pitcher from 2015, Danny Salazar, will move up to Carrasco’s number two spot. Josh Tomlin was dominant at the end of 2015 and has continued his that into 2016 by constantly forcing hitters to make bad contact.
For the moment, it appears that Trevor Bauer will be replacing Carrasco in the rotation as he did in the game Sunday. Up to this point, the Indians have gone with an eight man bullpen, but adding an outfielder (Brantley) while losing Carrasco to the DL will shrink that number by one. Bauer had always been a starter until last September, throwing 329 innings with a 4.38 ERA across 2014 and 2015, but he was beaten out for the fifth spot in the rotation by Cody Anderson. Anderson had been struggling of late so it looked like it wouldn’t be long until Bauer was back in the rotation anyone, but he made it a little earlier than expected.
Should the Indians need to go even deeper in the rotation, because of Anderson or any other reason, they can. Lefthander T.J. House has MLB experience and would provide a completely different look than any other pitcher currently in the starting five. In addition, the Indians have Mike Clevinger, who had a 2.73 ERA in AA last year before nearly throwing two no hitters in the AAA playoffs and dominating in Spring Training this year, and another left-hander in Ryan Merritt. Essentially, no matter what Major League Baseball can throw at the Indians, they can handle it with MLB ready pitching.
Luckily for them, Carrasco did not tear anything and should be back within about a month and a half. Over that span, Bauer should be able to handle things fine. Obviously, there is a drop off in talent level between the two, but compared to most team’s sixth starters, the Indians have to be pretty happy they have a spare former third overall pick in their back pocket.
