What To Do About Josh Tomlin & Zach McAllister

Among the roster decisions to make this season, two of the hardest will be the starting pitchers turned reliever in 2014, Josh Tomlin and Zach McAllister. Like already done with Lonnie Chisenhall and Mike Aviles and as will be continued with Corey Kluber, Bryan Shaw, Marc Rzepczynski and Carlos Carrasco in the coming weeks, we will discuss what the Indians should do with McAllister and Tomlin during this off-season.

It turns out that the saying, “you can never have enough pitching” is not entirely accurate. What it should say is that “you can never have enough good pitching.” The Indians currently have plenty of pitching from the starting five of Kluber, Trevor Bauer, Danny Salazar, T.J. House and Carrasco with McAllister and Tomlin also on the 40 man roster and a group of rookies possibly ready for their MLB debuts in 2015 including Cody Anderson, Gabriel Arias and Shawn Morimando among others. Unnecessary to mention, the Indians have even more relievers than starters as they ended the season with 11 pitchers in the bullpen and have plenty more MLB ready in the minors. There is no question that the Indians have plenty of pitchers, but there is a question if they have enough good pitchers.

Two players that are in a similar situation are McAllister and Tomlin. Both have been starting their entire careers to this point, but were used as part of that eleven man bullpen to end the season. Both pitchers are out of minor league options going into the 2015 season and so would have to be placed on waivers if they were to be sent back to the minors in the future. In addition, Tomlin will be entering into his second arbitration season and McAllister his first, meaning they are both under team control through at least 2016, but will now be paid what they “deserve” rather than the league minimum. Since Tomlin went through the process this Spring, we can expect him to make near a million dollars as he was given $800K for the 2014 season after losing his case. A year behind, McAllister would likely make around the $800K that Tomlin did for this season.

The chart above shows the two pitchers’ 2014 seasons split into two parts, the first being when both were in the starting rotation (from April through the beginning of August) and the second part being when both pitchers were pulled from the rotation and used exclusively in relief and in spot starts. These split stats tell even more than either pitcher’s full season numbers. Here the two pitchers split ways with McAllister becoming dominant in any situation, pitching between 0.1 and six innings and Tomlin getting even worse, mostly due to a single five run, one out appearance against Detroit in early September. One thing that was unquestionable was that Tomlin was better in the rotation, throwing the Indians first complete game shut out of the season, a one hit affair against the Mariners while McAllister was completely lights out from the bullpen.

Comparing the two pitchers further, Tomlin just finished his first season back from Tommy John surgery and is more of a fly ball pitcher compared to McAllister who is a strike out/ground ball specialist. Tomlin has generally had better control, walking 1.6 batters per nine while McAllister has walked three. Removing the Tribe’s poor defense from the equation, McAllister has been considerably better overall with a 3.93 career FIP (3.45 in 2014) than Tomlin, who has a 4.44 career FIP and a 4.01 the past season.

Considering the plethora of pitching options available to the Indians for the upcoming seasons, they have a few choices with these two in particular. They could sign them through their arbitration seasons (2016 for Tomlin, 2017 for McAllister), sign them one season at a time, trade or release one or both. Due to the inconsistency of their previous seasons and low price expected for 2015, there seems little reason at all to sign either long term. The real decision here is actually whether they should be kept around at all.

This is essentially a problem of roster management. At the moment, the Indians have five MLB quality starters in the rotation and a bullpen that will actually need to be trimmed down going into 2015. With that, there is little to no room for either pitcher on the Major League staff, yet, their lack of options puts them in the same position that Carlos Carrasco was in coming into this year. Neither Tomlin nor McAllister have the potential that kept Carrasco in the rotation despite better options, but it would appear to be a waste to just allow them to leave to another team without exploring their abilities a little further. This is especially true given that the Indians have only five other starters with MLB experience and with a high risk of injury, that isn’t a very comfortable position to be in. The best option would be to begin the year with both Tomlin and McAllister in AAA, waiting in reserve for the inevitable injury, but as already mentioned, that isn’t realistic.

Another hiding place for a potential replacement starter would be in the bullpen, but with Cody Allen, Bryan Shaw, Marc Rzepczynski, Kyle Crockett and Scott Atchison virtually guaranteed spots and Nick Hagadone and C.C. Lee deserving of consideration, there is legitimately room for just one of the two starters. This would be the perfect place to stash McAllister for the moment as he has proven that he can be a solid relief pitcher (unlike Tomlin) and he would be available for use in a spot start or in case of injury. If a pitcher was forced to the DL, the Indians would still have Lee, Austin Adams, Bryan Price and Shawn Armstrong among others to go to in AAA to fill the hole in the bullpen.

This still leaves Tomlin as the odd man out and little looks to be changing about that during the off-season. If anything, the Indians can be expected to add even more pitching, most likely in the type of AAAA starters they have added in recent seasons, like Aaron Harang and Scott Kazmir. With that being the case, they should attempt to move Tomlin now, even if all they get in exchange is a low level minor leaguer. The fact is that by the end of March, they will likely have to expose him to waivers anyway so at least this way they can remove him from the 40 man roster prior to the rule five draft and attempt to get best value back for him. McAllister, on the other hand, should be retained. He is three years younger than Tomlin and heading into what should be his prime. He has also been a superior pitcher for the Tribe and should fit well with the rotation the Indians are currently building. McAllister will also likely be better than any low risk starter they are able to bring in through free agency, so keeping him around in case of emergency will likely be the best option the Indians have.