For Guardians’ Trevor Stephan, April and May were like day and nightmare

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The difference between April and May for Guardians reliever Trevor Stephan has been like day and night, and it’s a trend Cleveland’s eighth inning setup man needs to reverse quickly.

Entering Friday’s series opener in Baltimore, Stephan carries a 4.00 ERA in 19 appearances, which isn’t too bad for a 26-year-old former Rule 5 draft pick just two months into his second full major league season.

The problem is, Stephan’s ERA was a spotless 0.00 at the end of April. In 10 May outings he surrendered eight earned runs and a whopping .921 opponent OPS. More telling is his base-outs runs saved of -1.98.

Base-outs runs saved, per Baseball Reference, represents the runs saved by a pitcher given the bases occupied and based on the resulting play. It’s a league average stat, with zero being average and a negative figure representing below-average performance. In April, Stephan’s base-outs runs saved was a sparkling 3.45, but it sunk to -5.43 for his May outings.

What that tells us is Stephan didn’t just give up more runs in May than April (obviously), but that he was unable to prevent runs when he entered games at crucial times.

Stephan’s May featured an outing against San Diego where he walked three and allowed two earned runs in a game the Guardians rallied to win despite his inability to finish the eighth inning. On May 30 Stephan suffered a blown save when he was unable to record an out in the eighth, allowing a pair of runs and requiring Nick Sandlin to finish the frame.

Manager Terry Francona said there are a few factors that go into Stephan’s recent struggles.

First, on a couple of occasions, Stephan was unable to field his position effectively. In a May 19 loss to Cincinnati, Stephan’s errant throw up the first base line allowed Matt Reynolds to score what turned out to be the game-winning run from second base on a grounder by Albert Almora.

But more telling is the way his splitter has profiled over his last 10 outings. The pitch, which was dominant for him early in the season, has flattened out, despite Stephan’s eagerness to use it in a variety of counts.

“In general that split became such a weapon and he kind of fell in love with it,” Francona said. “Now, instead of going down it’s starting to work its way (sideways).”

The graph below shows that Stephan’s splitter has steadily lost some of the devastating vertical break that it had in April as he used it up to 29% of the time in his May appearances.

Francona said Stephan has also gotten away from throwing his slider, which was a bread-and-butter pitch during his rookie season before he developed his splitter.

“We’ve just got to get him back to being three pitches and locating his fastball,” Francona said. “He’s gotten himself to where he has to throw a fastball in fastball counts and that gets him in trouble.”

In April, Stephan’s splitter had a 2.4 outs above average according to FanGraphs. That figured dropped to 0.3 after May. It’s led to a .387 slugging percentage against his fastball, a pitch which now features a 39.3 hard hit percentage.

But Francona indicated that such fluctuations can be expected with a young reliever getting his first real taste of pitching in leverage situations on a regular basis. And it doesn’t appear that the club is going to run away from Stephan pitching with the game on the line any time soon.

“We’ve given him a lot,” Francona said. “This is a Rule 5 kid last year that all of a sudden is pitching in the eighth inning. To think it’s going to be seamless probably isn’t fair.”

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