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There's nothing complicated about Emmanuel Clase. The Guardians' closer is just a rear-back-and-fire guy. He throws a cutter and a slider, and the cutter hums in at very nearly 100 miles per hour. It takes little more than that to be an elite relief pitcher, and for the last three years, that's what Clase has been. He's been an All-Star the last two seasons and led the American League in saves each year. He's also had a rubber arm, with seven more appearances than any other pitcher in baseball since the start of 2022.
Nothing is ever quite as simple as it looks. Even though he's still touching triple digits with that cutter, Clase did lose half a tick in 2023, and with it went too many of his strikeouts. Somehow, he lost the mystical thing that makes one slider miss bats when dipping off the trajectory of a sizzling fastball, and fell in with the likes of the ones who make the same veer but don't earn the same result.
Even so, Clase pounds the strike zone in a way few other closers in the sport do, and he has one of the best ground-ball rates in the game. That cutter stubbornly resists being barreled up, and hitters manage lots of weak dribblers. Yet, he did get hit harder in 2023, as his command of the cutter got a bit loose against lefties (more balls out over the plate, away from them, rather than crowding them inside) and he left his slider up too often against righties (where hitters could get underneath it a bit). Between fewer missed bats and more high-value contact, it's no great surprise that his ERA rose from just over 1.30 for the two previous seasons to 3.22.
The very simplicity of his approach makes it a little hard to fix Clase, if we admit that he got broken last year. So much of his success depends on consistently executing those two dazzling pitches, with the intensity and physical electricity of his delivery, that the question of his value boils down almost solely to repeating well. It's not that he doesn't utilize sequencing or psychology at all; it's just that it plays a relatively small role in his game. Clase has extraordinary stuff, and the variable that controls his value is whether he can throw it where he wants to.
Perhaps the variable that controls that, in turn, is the degree to which Clase's arm is currently under the assault of such heavy use. In the last few years of Terry Francona's career, he rode Clase hard. That wasn't callousness; he had little choice. Still, calling on Clase so often surely led to some of his fraying in terms of command and control. With a bit more protection from appearances on back-to-back days and multiple-inning outings, Clase might bounce right back to his unassailably elite level in 2024.
That's why he'd be a great target for the Cubs. They can't count on Adbert Alzolay, alone, to hold down the back end of their bullpen. He, Julian Merryweather, and Mark Leiter, Jr. form the foundation of a decent bullpen, but Clase would round it out gorgeously. The team has enough pitching depth to keep the pressure of a heavy workload off Clase, and a better offense than Cleveland has had during his career. They also have Craig Counsell, who has plenty of experience keeping elite relief weapons fresh and who has proved exceptionally deft at it.
With three more seasons of guaranteed money left on his deal and another two club options beyond that, Clase is a phenomenally valuable asset. He'd cost the Cubs a huge haul on his own--let alone as part of a package with Shane Bieber, Josh Naylor, or both, as some have mused. The Cubs would have to let the Guardians pick at least two pieces from the top end of their farm system, and they might need to surrender a young player from the big-league roster, too.
Nonetheless, Clase's compelling. He's the rare closer with a truly transformational upside, and the combination of years and affordability on his contract means the impact would be long-lasting. Unless and until the Cubs expend trade capital to land a different star, he should be on your radar. The situation is a bit complicated, but the player himself and the value he promises are wondrously simple.
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