The last thing Cleveland Indians Manager Terry Francona should have had to worry about this season was the ability of his pitchers to successfully remove their undershirts without injuring themselves.
Tuesday afternoon Francona, on a Zoom call with reporters, had to explain how one of his pitchers seriously injured himself while removing his undershirt.
Or, as Francona put it, “aggressively removing his under shirt.”
The overly-aggressive pitcher is Zach Plesac, the No. 2 starter in the Indians’ vaunted rotation that all of a sudden is quickly becoming something far less than vaunted.
While aggressively removing his undershirt on Monday, Plesac caught his right thumb on his chair. The result: a non-displaced fracture of the thumb. The 26-year-old right-hander has been placed on the injured list. He will be examined on Wednesday by Dr. Thomas Graham in Dayton.
The Indians will know more following that examination, but it seems likely that Plesac will be sidelined for an extended period of time, which becomes the latest blow to an Indians rotation from which great, not bizarre, things were expected in 2021.
Plesac was one of the best pitchers in the American League last season, a fact that got overshadowed somewhat by teammate Shane Bieber’s spectacular Cy Young Award-winning year. Plesac last year led all major league pitchers with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 9.5, while posting the third lowest ERA in the American League (2.28), and holding opposing batters to a .191 batting average.
On May 7 this year, Plesac was the opposing pitcher when Cincinnati’s Wade Miley pitched a no-hitter to beat Cleveland 3-0. But in that game Plesac pitched eight scoreless and walk-less innings on three hits, with seven strikeouts.
In his next start, a 4-2 win in Seattle on May 13, Plesac took a no-hitter into the eighth inning.
His last start came last Sunday, against Minnesota, when he retired the first nine batters he faced in order, but then couldn’t get out of the fourth inning, giving up five runs on five hits.
Plesac’s injury is a huge blow to an Indians rotation that now has only two proven starters, Bieber, and Aaron Civale. The rotation was already wobbly following the rapid collapse of the number four and five starters, Triston McKenzie and Logan Allen. Both pitched so poorly they were demoted to Triple-A Columbus after just five starts (Allen) and eight starts (McKenzie).
However, with the Plesac injury, Cleveland’s rotation is in such dire straits that McKenzie, who was optioned to Columbus on May 22, has been recalled before he even appeared in a game at Columbus. McKenzie will start the Indians’ game Wednesday night in Detroit, then will be optioned back to Columbus.
Francona and his pitching coach Carl Willis, with input from the front office, are trying to piece together some semblance of a rotation around Bieber and Civale. The rotation implosion comes at an unfortunate time for Cleveland, which has 10 games in the next nine days prior to the Indians’ next off day, which is on June 3. That cluster of games includes a doubleheader on Monday against the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox, the team the second-place Indians, despite a well-below average offense and now ruptured rotation, trail by only one game.
At the moment, the only thing certain about Cleveland’s rotation is that McKenzie will start Wednesday’s game against Detroit, and Bieber will start the series finale on Thursday.
After that it’s anyone’s guess, but it’s fair to say all of the possible starters will be reminded not to aggressively remove their undershirts.