Cleveland Indians: Beware the Josh Tomlin Trap

Josh Tomlin has been a highly productive starter for the Cleveland Indians, but that is unlikely to last for much longer

This post is going to get a lot of hate. Josh Tomlin has been with the Cleveland Indians for quite some time now, and he was never really that good. In fact, it took until last season for things to start working out for the right-hander, and he has been quite successful over the past year and a half. This said, beware of the Josh Tomlin trap: his success is not sustainable and vastly overblown. 

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Yes, this is certainly an inflammatory comment, and some readers are probably ready to rush to the comments section and unleash their rage. Truthfully, I completely understand why some might feel that Josh Tomlin has been a great pitcher. That is because, well, the results have been quite favorable. His 3.51 earned run average certainly seems like a positive, which it is, and old-school fans will point to his 9-2 record and say that he “knows how to win”.

So if the Indians have won when he pitched due to his run prevention and some fortunate offensive support, how on Earth is it fair to say that he is not a good pitcher? For one, his earned run average is a bit of a mirage. Metrics like fielder independent pitching (FIP) and skill-interactive earned run average (SIERA) strip away the defense and use a pitcher’s underlying skills to estimate his ERA. Unfortunately, these metrics do not like Josh Tomlin in the slightest. FIP pegs his work with a 4.94 ERA, and SIERA is only slightly happier with a 4.29 mark.

What has caused this gulf between his actual, real-life ERA and what formulae think is more realistic? One big reason is that he does not strikeout many batters. The fewer strikeouts a pitcher has the more balls in play and opportunities for the opposition to score. Even his excellent ability to limit walks cannot overcome his pitiful strikeout rate.

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The other reason for this divide is that Tomlin has been quite fortunate on his batted ball outcomes, as evidenced by his .259 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). For pitchers, it is pretty much impossible to sustain a BABIP other than the league-average one of .300. This means that we can expect Tomlin to start having more hit balls fall in for hits. As a quick aside, he has not induced more soft contact than a typical pitcher, so there is little room for arguing that he is an excellent contact manager.

As for the other big part of the argument supporting Josh Tomlin’s greatness, that he “knows how to win”, let’s take a look at a better measure of how much a pitcher contributes to winning: win probability added. Win probability added, or WPA, is a measure of how much a pitcher has changed the odds of his team winning a game, with a high positive number being a good thing. To give some context, an average player would have a WPA around one-half at this point in the season, and a better explanation can be found here at FanGraphs.

So how has Josh Tomlin helped the Indians win? Believe it or not, he has actually hurt the Indians and their odds of winning. Granted, his WPA of -0.05 is quite close to zero, meaning that it is fair to say that he has neither hurt not helped the Cleveland Indians. In a playoff hunt, however, it is perhaps more fair to say that not helping a team win his hurting that same team.

Now, this is by no means an unequivocal verdict that Josh Tomlin is a bad pitcher. After all, any major league pitcher is in the most elite group of pitchers on the planet. But for the Cleveland Indians, they can do better than what he is likely to do in the future. Steamer and ZiPS both foresee a big drop in performance that would render him as a considerably less useful pitcher than he is currently.

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Unfortunately, his surface statistics have been so good to date that it would be unthinkable for the Indians to bench him. With a 9-2 record and 3.51 earned run average, it would also be quite difficult for the front office to sell a trade to the media and fans when in reality it would be a smart decision to find a better fifth starter. If the Cleveland Indians are not careful, they may fall into the Josh Tomlin trap and find themselves alienating fans with either an unpopular transaction or a death sentence every five games.