Guardians’ fatal flaw that will derail hot start to 2024 season

Production in any rotation starts at the top and because Bibee was so good in 2023, picking up a second-place AL Rookie of the Year finish, the 25-year-old is being asked to pick up the slack for the injured Bieber. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t look as though Bibee came into this season ready for an encore. His stuff is diminished, he’s getting hit much harder and the Guardians don’t know what to expect from him in a full 30+ start workload.

The main issue with Bibee this season is that his four-seam fastball, which has lost about a mile per hour on average from a season ago, is getting tattooed. With a fairly typical arsenal for a right-handed starter, Bibee relies on the fastball over 40% of the time, though that number has already shrank about 5% from his 2023 usage. The batting average against it has jumped from .243 to .429 and the expected stats support the dip in effectiveness.

On the whole, Bibee has a 4.44 ERA, 5.53 xERA and 1.60 WHIP. He still has solid strikeout numbers and the excellent results from a season ago would indicate he’s still capable of shaving those stats down, but he’s far from the ace the Guardians were oping he would be. And that puts a ton of pressure on the remained of the group to carry more weight than they’ve proven to be capable of shouldering based on experience.

Uncertainty across the board

Behind Bibee, Triston McKenzie looks to be the best bet to be the number two, because in 2022, that’s exactly what he was. But coming off an elbow sprain and shoulder strain that limited him to 16 starts last season, McKenzie has lost his control almost entirely. He leads the AL with 17 walks despite throwing just 22 innings thus far.

Logan Allen, meanwhile, is still trying to establish himself as a quality major league starter. His rookie debut was strong, with a 3.81 ERA in 24 starts, but that ERA has jumped to 5.06 in five starts in year two. It’s good to have youth at the back end of a rotation, but Allen is being asked to be a stabilizer who goes deep into games, not a young arm with a long leash to figure it out.

Ben Lively has looked the best of the five starters so far, but he’s also only made two starts, both against the ailing Boston Red Sox without Rafael Devers in the lineup. Meanwhile Lively has never made more than 15 starts in a single season, and that was all the way back in 2017 with the Philadelphia Phillies. So perhaps the Guardians have unlocked something for Lively in year eight, but a larger sample is needed.

And finally, there’s Carlos Carrasco, who is a great redemption story in his return to Cleveland at the age of 37. But Cookie was one of the worst starting pitchers in the league in 2023 and although he’s battling in 2024, he’s still at -0.1 bWAR through his first five starts.

Guardians living on borrowed time

So although the overall success of the Guardians has been eye-opening across the league, it’s clear the rotation won’t allow them to keep winning at this torrid pace. They may have done enough already to remain in the playoff picture all summer and perhaps they can even win the AL Central, but going into a playoff series with the names Cleveland currently has is a sketchy proposition at best.

And unfortunately, if history is any guidebook, the Guardians won’t be willing to make a big splash at the trade deadline in order to remedy their shortcomings. If anything, they’ll be aggressive in trading away anyone they think they can get value for, as they did with Civale a season ago.

That could easily find them their next Josh Naylor or Andrés Giménez, but in terms of winning now, it doesn’t bring them any closer to playoff glory.