Cleveland Indians: T.J. House Has Made His Inglorious Return

After floundering for over a year, the left-hander has found himself back with the Cleveland Indians

When T.J. House last pitched in the major leagues, he was coming off a fantastic half-season in which he gave promise for the future. During 102 innings back in 2014, the lefty allowed just 38 runs while striking out nearly four times as many batters as he walked. Given his excellent ground ball rate and solid control, it seemed that the Indians had found a starter to solidify a questionable backend of the starting rotation. 

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Instead, House imploded the next season. He only lasted 13 innings in four starts, and he allowed 19 earned runs in that time. Even more concerning, he walked 12 batters while only striking out seven. He still had the same ground ball rates, but he had lost some velocity and hitters were squaring up his pitches for some serious damage.

Those four starts were more than enough for the Cleveland Indians to decide to go another way, and he found himself on the disabled list before returning to Triple-A Columbus to try to fix his issues. Unfortunately, he failed to get much better in what little time he had left in the season. Through 21 minor league innings, he posted a 3.86 earned run average, but advanced metrics thought that was about three runs too optimistic. His control issues continued, and even the worse batters in Triple-A slugged home runs at an alarming rate.

This season started pretty much the same way, except perhaps a little better in the home run department. He still walked nearly as many batters as he struck out, except this time the problem persisted across nearly 61 innings. Now that we are working with meaningful sample sizes, it is apparent that this may be a deeper problem than simply waiting for things to get better. His control issues are reminiscent of his earliest days in the Indians’ system when he would routinely walk over 10 percent of opposing batters.

To be fair, House did move to the bullpen with Columbus, and things did get a little bit better. Since the Indians will be using him out of the bullpen, it seems rational to believe that he should be okay, right? Well, maybe not. He only pitched eight innings from the bullpen. True, he has only allowed one run and no walks in the last seven innings, but it is still only seven innings and he struck out zero batters in that time. It seems foolish to believe in seven innings of okay work when he had 53 innings of horrendous work before them.

The fact that the Indians are now looking for a left-handed reliever in a pitcher who has been nothing short of a disaster for the past year is a tragedy. The Indians are in the middle of a playoff hunt; and yes, they have a large lead over the other teams and FanGraphs gives them an 85.8 percent chance of winning the division. Still, there are many alternatives out there that the Indians could acquire. In fact, I suggested that the Tribe should trade for Boone Logan just last week.

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It is understandable that the Cleveland Indians what to try all of their in-house options before making a trade for a better player, but this needs to be a quick fix. Unless Mickey Callaway works his magic T.J. House somehow fixes all of his problems, the Indians need to have a back-up plan ready to roll. Perhaps the market has unrealistically high prices right now, and the Indians are waiting for things to cool off before swinging a deal. Whatever the case, there is almost certainly a better way forward than gambling on a pitcher who has shown little promise.