How the Guardians Can Help Fix Emmanuel Clase

Our relief god looks suddenly very mortal

Emmanuel Clase has a 7.84 ERA and every Guardians’ fan’s heart in their throats when he takes the mound, right now – how do they fix this?

1. Reduce Clase’s workload by DFA’ing Triston McKenzie and promoting Andrew Walters

I understand Stephen Vogt’s logic in letting Clase pitch on Sunday. The closer had thrown only 15 pitches combined in the previous two days, making pitching three days in a row a reasonable ask. However, I feel that the team did not take properly into account the amount of stress involved in those two outings where there was some traffic and intensity. Part of the decision to pitch Clase no doubt had to do with the short-staffed nature of the bullpen; if a game is reasonably in doubt, Vogt cannot go to Triston McKenzie because McKenzie can’t command his secondary pitches and is only throwing fastballs. It is time for the team to bite the bullet and DFA McKenzie and promote Andrew Walters. I suspect they will wait until the next time there is a short outing from a Guardians’ starter (perhaps this week against the Yankees’ best offense in baseball), let McKenzie wear it for a few innings, and then see if they can get him through waivers. But, I’d rather be proactive than reactive.

Give Vogt the full compliment of good relief arms and encourage him to take some of the pressure off of Clase by not asking him to close every night, at least until he fixes some of his other issues and can breathe a little easier. This isn’t removing Clase from the closer role – this is recognizing his workload and the need to work on some things.

2. Maintain an Increased Usage Rate of his Slider

Clase is throwing his slider 9% more often than last year. In his most recent outing in which he threw it about a third of the time. I think this is the right approach as hitters are cheating on his cutter in an extreme degree. Whether it is the slider or a sinker he has been tinkering with, he has to find a way to keep hitters honest and not just selling out to hit his 100 mph cutter. The slider has better vertical break on it than it did in 2024 by about an inch and similar horizontal break, so it’s not a question of the pitch being an inferior offering and needing to be avoided. I think Austin Hedges and the coaching team were right to ask him to trust it more on Sunday and that plan should continue regardless of Sunday’s sketchy results.

3. Focus on Fixing Location, Working to Live Up and In in the Strike Zone

Twitter user La Mole “FranmilsEyebrow” put out a good thread on this matter as I was working on this piece last night:

For those who don’t have Twitter, here are Clase’s location percentages versus right-handed and left-handed hitters from 2024 to 2025:

The issue is abundantly clear here… Clase has been throwing the ball up and in in the zone about 15% less often on right-handed hitters and down and in in the zone about 4% less often on left-handed hitters. Also, we can see almost a 15% increase in pitches thrown down and on the outside of the zone for Clase, which explains right-handed hitters putting up a .462 wOBA on him so far this year. In the immortal words of Bob Newhart, Clase should “stop it!”

When looking at Clase’s other percentages on baseball savant, the main thing that stands out is that hitters have not missed the pitches he’s thrown in the middle of the plate with their highest run values against those pitches on him of Clase’s career and allowing a 7.5% barrel rate which is more than twice as high as his career 3.5% rate. I suspect this is mostly bad luck as Clase isn’t throwing more meatballs than he normally does; hitters are just absolutely not missing any mistakes right now. Fixing his location issues should help hitters not be as locked and loaded for meatballs.

4. Keep the Arias/Rocchio Infield Alignment Behind Him (for the time being)

There are few people more ready for the arrival of our Lord and Savior of Pulled Fly Balls Juan Brito than I am, but, for now, I think the Arias and Rocchio tandem up the middle is the best chance to reduce the amount of groundballs Clase gives up making their way into the outfield. Now, I’d still get Brito up here and make a defensive substitution late, if need be, but, overall, it’s probably best to focus on fixing Clase’s issues by making sure the defensive alignment behind him is as good as it can possibly be.

5. Work Constantly on Clase’s Confidence Levels

I think it’s quite possible that Clase is dealing with a bit of a hangover from his ALDS and ALCS blow-ups. I tend to be skeptical that professional players, especially those who have risen from poverty stricken homelands, are intimidated by competitive pressure. But, it certainly seems possible that he needs reminded of how dominant he is when his stuff is working. His velocity, movement, extension and release points remain good/elite. It’s one thing – location – and the confidence it takes to execute that location that is holding him back. No one will remember a rough first three weeks of the season if Clase can get himself together and get back to the player who was the most intimidating pitcher in the big leagues in 2024. I’m sure Vogt, Carl Willis, Brad Goldberg, Bo Naylor and Austin Hedges are reminding him of these truths every day.

If I had to rank my overall concern on Clase from 1 being not concerned at all to 10 being panicking, I’d put my number at about a 4. And it’s only a four because relievers, as a whole, are so volatile and a big part of what makes a closer effective is the unrelenting confidence that, no matter what, they’re going to find a way. Clase might just be having a bad year and he might not find it. That IS a possibility. But, the numbers, the track record of the player and the support staff lead me to believe that he’s gonna find his way back to being one of the most dominant relievers we have ever seen play the game sooner rather than later.