The success of Carlos Carrasco could play a big role in the Indians season. (Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports)
Right-hander Corey Kluber, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, is obviously the Cleveland Indians’ most important starting pitcher. However, the team’s most pivotal starting pitcher could be right-hander Carlos Carrasco. How Carrasco pitches in 2015 will be a big factor in whether the team’s starting rotation can meet the expectations of manager Terry Francona.
“It needs to be our team’s strength if we want to be contender we aspire to be,” said Francona of the Indians’ starting rotation. “We don’t have a lot of age on our staff. But we have some guys learning how to pitch at a pretty high level early in their career.”
One of those is the 27-year-old Carrasco, who has yet to spend a full season in a major-league rotation. But Carrasco’s sensational second half of the 2014 season stamped him as a pivotal figure in the rotation in 2015. After the all-star break last year, Carrasco had a 1.72 ERA, an average of 9.8 strikeouts-per-nine-innings and opposing batters hit .197 against him. In his last 10 starts, he had a 1.30 ERA, averaged 10.2 strikeouts-per-nine-innings and opposing batters hit just .179 against him.
“In the second half of the season he may have been the best pitcher in baseball besides Kluber,” said Francona. It’s for that reason that Carrasco, for the first time in his career, comes to spring training with his spot in the rotation secure.
Carrasco is expected to be slotted No. 2 or No. 3 in the rotation this year. Indians officials are fairly confident that they will get another quality season from Kluber, maybe not a Cy Young Award-winning season, but the kind of season worthy of a No. 1 starter.
Whether the Indians can remain a contender throughout the 2015 season will depend in large part on how the starters after Kluber perform. Chief among those is Carrasco. If he can pitch reasonably close to the level he did in the second half of last season, it will give the Indians two dominating starters at the top of their rotation. If Carrasco regresses in 2015 it could leave a major hole in the rotation.
