The Guardians’ Outstanding Bullpen Trio Is Still Rolling

During the 2024 MLB season, the Cleveland Guardians easily had the best bullpen in all of baseball. The unit finished with the best with baseball’s lowest ERA (2.57), highest fWAR (7.7), and highest strand rate (78.5%) while also topping the charts in HR/9.

They didn’t just keep runners from coming around to score, they also finished seventh in K/9 and fourth in BB/9. Point being, there was very little that that bullpen didn’t do almost perfectly.

Fast forward to the current campaign, and the Guardians’ pen has taken a drastic step backwards as a whole. Entering Sunday’s action, they’re 15th in baseball with a 3.80 ERA, but they make up for this a bit by being seventh in FIP and sixth in SIERA.

Throughout all of last year, there were three pitchers in particular that kept the bullpen afloat. This year, the same exact threesome is back in action and doing what they do best: dominating the opposition. Granted, one of them got off to a dreadful start, but he’s since turned it around and the club is back to boasting a legitimate three-headed monster at the back-end of their ‘pen.

Let’s take a closer look at the three heroes who are somehow still criminally underrated in this Guardians bullpen.

The Guardians’ Outstanding Bullpen Trio Remains Lethal

Tim Herrin has taken a step back in 2025 after being the fourth relief stud for Cleveland last season. His decent-but-not-great performance, paired with the likes of Matt Festa, Nic Enright, Jakob Junis, and multiple other so-so contributors, have held this team’s bullpen stats back a bit.

However, Cade Smith, Emmanuel Clase, and Hunter Gaddis have remained elite. Despite the fact that they’re going on an insane run of over an entire season, this trio is still underrated. Last year, they quite literally took the Guardians all the way to the ALCS, where they fell in five games to the New York Yankees. A rock-solid bullpen can help propel a team to and through the postseason, as we’ve seen so frequently over the years.

Emmanuel Clase Has Bounced Back After Slow Start

On the surface, Emmanuel Clase’s full-season stats look great, but they hide the horrible start to the 2025 campaign he endured. The right-hander was coming off of a year in which he posted a dazzling 0.61 regular-season ERA through 74 games, but it’s possible that he was overused a bit last year and it started to catch up with him.

Between his first appearance of the year on March 27 to April 30, Clase surrendered 10 earned runs across just 13.1 innings of work. This led to a 6.75 season-opening ERA that had many more than a little bit concerned. Expectations had been set sky-high by him after allowing just 11 earned runs all year in 2022 and then improving that to five earned runs across last season’s legendary performance.

Seeing the otherworldly closer already allow 11 of them through 28 appearances certainly sounds like a step back, but he’s been turning his fortunes around in a big way.

Since that game on April 30, Clase has started to look like himself again. He’s made 14 more appearances (13.2 innings) and has struck out 16 batters, walked two, and allowed just one earned run.

To date, Clase basically has the 14 first-half outings and the 14 second-half ones to go off of. His H/9 remains over double what it was last year, but he’s also remaining stingy with the amount of home runs he’s allowed (one all year) and has raised his K/9 rate from 8.0 to 10.0 in the new year.

That the flamethrower was able to do so well last season without striking out a ton of batters just makes him more interesting, but he’s turned his performances around this year while simultaneously striking out more batters.

Clase is one of baseball’s best closers (he has the argument to be No. 1) when he’s got things going right for him. Before the first few outings of this year, he’d basically been on his A-game since debuting back in 2019. There haven’t been very many times where he’s struggled since breaking into the big leagues, but it’s a good sign that he overcame the adversity and found a way to rebound once he found his footing.

Cade Smith Has ‘Relief Ace’ Written All Over Him

He may have finished in the top-10 in AL Cy Young and fifth in AL Rookie of the Year voting last year, but there’s simply no relief pitcher more underrated than Cade Smith right now.

The right-hander made 74 appearances for last year’s Guardians and promptly posted a 1.91 ERA and 1.40 FIP while striking out over 100 batters and walking just 17 in 75+ innings of work. He was just about as efficient as anyone in the game.

Out of the gates in 2025, Smith’s continued to be as advertised. He’s 29 appearances deep this year and has a 2.63 ERA with a ludicrous 1.39 FIP. He gives the Guardians a legitimate fallback option in the event that Clase falters again for any stretch of time, but it’s hard to see that happening anymore.

Still, Smith’s about as solid of a No. 2 as you’ll find in any team’s bullpen. He’s struck out 13.5 batters per nine innings this season and has found a way to still dominate opposing hitters despite working through a higher H/9 and BB/9 rate than he had in his outstanding rookie season.

The 26-year-old was initially a 16th-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft by the Minnesota Twins. Seeing him perform the way he has at the game’s highest level is made even more impressive when you consider the fact that he was absolutely not a well-regarded prospect coming up through the minor leagues.

Now, Smith’s doing his thing for a second consecutive season in the big leagues. He used a lethal fastball as his primary out pitch, but he’s got a splitter and sweeper as his secondary offerings that induce a ton of whiffs (42.6 and 42.9%, respectively).

Batters are hitting .276 and .375 off of his secondary pitches this year, which he’ll have to see improve so he isn’t a fastball-only type of arm, but Smith’s been a ridiculously good “backup closer” for the Guardians this season.

Hunter Gaddis Gives Cleveland a Great Setup Option

Don’t worry, there’s still more!

Gaddis took a bit longer than Clase and Smith to find his footing in the big leagues; but now that he’s arrived, he’s here to stay. The right-hander was starting games for the Guardians in 2022 and 2023, but a full-time move to the bullpen has helped him find his mojo.

Last year, the burly right-hander made 78 appearances with a 1.57 ERA, 2.82 FIP and 258 ERA+ through 74.2 innings of work. The fact that all three of these arms made over 70 appearances last year just put an emphasis on how hard the Guardians leaned on them last year. No wonder why Clase battled some fatigue from the excessive amount of innings on his arm.

To open the new year, Gaddis has a 1.40 ERA and 3.15 FIP through 28 appearances spanning 25.2 innings of work. He’s striking out 12.3 batters per nine innings, which is a significant improvement over the 8.0 K/9 he finished last year with.

Similarly to Smith, Gaddis boasts a three-pitch repertoire, but a four-seam fastball is not his primary pitch. Instead, that goes to his slider, which he has thrown just about 52% of the time this year. Hitters have recorded a .213 batting average against the pitch while whiffing 38.4% of the time. His fastball is definitely his second-best weapon, though, as Gaddis has thrown it just over 30% with a .214 average and .199 xBA against it.

Where Gaddis differentiates from Clase and Smith is that he’s not ever used as a closer by Cleveland. In fact, he’s 106 games into his full-time relief-pitching career and he has yet to notch a single save.

Fortunately for the Guardians, they don’t need him to be a closer.

With Clase installed as their top option for the ninth inning, it was already a luxury to have Smith on hand as one of the game’s best fallbacks for the closer’s role. Having Gaddis available as a lights-out seventh- or eighth-inning arm leads to what can only be classified as an embarrassment of riches for this ballclub.

Closing Thoughts

It’s easy to look at where the Guardians’ bullpen ranks in ERA and many other categories this year and come away unimpressed. However, it’s complete insanity how solid the “big three” at the back-end of the ‘pen have been for over a year now.

While the rest of the relievers are falling short compared to the three studs, the fact of the matter is that the Guardians have bigger needs than relief pitching to address around the roster.

Entering Sunday’s action, Cleveland’s offense is 21st in baseball with a 94 wRC+ and their .233 batting average is good for 24th. They’ve scored just 246 runs through their first 63 games, which also comes in 24th, just one run above the Baltimore Orioles.

Yet, the Guardians are 33-30 and just a half-game out of the Wild Card picture. It’s entirely too early to start putting too much stock into the WC hunt, but the Guardians are above .500 and absolutely not stuck in a hole they can’t get out of.

It just appears that they’re going to need to be aggressive buyers at this year’s deadline if they want to try and get back to playing meaningful October baseball for the fourth time since 2020.