Indians: Mike Clevinger pitching quality games, waiver wire add

The Indians do a great job developing pitchers. Mike Clevinger seems to be the most recent by-product of their training and could be worth an add.

The Cleveland Indians will start the second half without their second baseman Jason Kipnis. I wrote about that here. The good news is that the starting rotation looks to be intact. One pitcher that could make a huge impact in the final months is Mike Clevinger and is worth adding to your team.

Looking at the Indians starting pitchers, Clevinger has the second-best ERA and third-best WHIP. While he has made fewer starts, the peripherals are in line with the rest of the rotation.

Clevinger has a 3.00 ERA, 1.150 WHIP and 5-3 record in 11 starts. He has a 9.9 K/9 but the 4.7 BB/9 is outrageous. There have been some starts where he walked more batters than hits allowed.

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Though, over his last three starts, Clevinger looks to be settling in and being a solid No. 5 starting pitcher for the Indians and fantasy owners. He pitched 18.0 innings, allowing two earned runs on seven hits and nine walks while striking out 20.

It does help that he faced the Detroit Tigers in back-to-back starts but he was able to hold the Texas Rangers to one run as well. Clevinger gave up five walks to the Tigers in the first meeting, which skewed his strikeout to walk ratio.

Clevinger doesn’t pitch deep into games. In his 11 starts, he has just one start that went seven innings. He does have a 6.2-inning start under his belt but averages just under 5.5 innings per start. That’s long enough to be eligible for the win but barely misses the quality start minimum.

Clevinger’s major league batted ball stats have been pretty much in line with his minor league numbers. He has a 22.9 line drive, 38.6 ground ball and 38.6 fly ball rate. I wish his ground ball rate was a little higher but it’s solid for 21 MLB starts.

He is already 26 years old, which doesn’t give him much longevity in baseball, as bad as that sounds. I don’t think he gets much higher than a No. 3 starter but there is still a lot of value to be had at that level.

Next: 100 first half fantasy baseball stats

Clevinger will likely make his first second-half start against the San Francisco Giants. With the struggles that team has had, this is a good matchup to continue his winning ways. Clevinger is owned in just 35.5 percent of ESPN leagues. As a streaming starter or flyer, he’s worth the roster spot.

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