Clase named AL's top reliever for second time

CLEVELAND -- Every year, the same question is asked: How can Emmanuel Clase get better? And yet somehow, he does.

Maybe he took a slight step back in 2023, watching his ERA rise and his blown saves number escalate, yet he still had the most saves in the Majors that season. Well, he blew that performance out of the water in ’24, posting a mere 0.61 ERA in 74 appearances. On Thursday, he was honored for his efforts with the Mariano Rivera Reliever of the Year Award as the best relief pitcher in the American League.

• All-time Reliever of the Year Award winners

“He’s putting together as dominant of a season as I can remember for a reliever,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said in September. “It’s exceptionally hard to do what he’s doing, and there aren’t many parallels for guys that have done it as consistent as he’s done it.”

It’s true, there are only a handful of comparable seasons by relievers. You think back to 2016, when Zack Britton was nearly perfect with a 0.54 ERA in 67 innings, earning him a fourth-place finish in the AL Cy Young vote. Blake Treinen had a 0.78 ERA in 80 1/3 frames that placed him sixth in the 2018 AL Cy Young vote. Outside of that, there aren’t many sub-1.00 ERAs with as many appearances as Clase had this season.

That’s why he’s a finalist for the Baseball Writers' Association of America Cy Young Award. It’s also why he’s the Mariano Rivera Reliever of the Year.

This is the second time Clase has received this award. The last came in 2022 after boasting an MLB-best 42 saves in 77 appearances (the most of any pitcher that year) with a 1.36 ERA.

The saves total kept rising, as did his overall performance. He was as close to perfect as any reliever could be during the 2024 regular season. His strikeout total dropped, but it helped him with efficiency, only having four of his 74 outings last longer than 20 pitches. Fifteen of them were fewer than 10.

“As every pitcher, he just exudes confidence when things are going well,” Guardians pitching coach Carl Willis said.

That confidence carried him through the season. Clase set the Guardians’ all-time saves record this year in just his fourth season with the club. He also nailed down a save in the All-Star Game, making him the fourth pitcher in MLB history to record saves in multiple All-Star Games, joining Rivera (four), Dennis Eckersley (three) and Bruce Sutter (two). Clase is the first reliever in baseball to earn three straight 40-save seasons since Craig Kimbrel did so in four straight seasons with the Braves from 2011-14.

It all started with his intent to make some mechanical changes this past offseason, and resulted in him putting on a pitching clinic through the regular season.

“He plays around with his fastball,” Willis said. “It obviously cuts, we’ve seen a couple two-seamers come into the mix. Not a lot, but I think it speaks a lot to how much he really hasn’t changed in terms of his stuff, but his willingness and understanding that at some point in time he may have to do something a little bit different and there’s just a lot of confidence there with that.”

When you look at Clase’s Baseball Savant metrics, he finished in at least the 97th percentile in seven categories:

• Pitching run value (98th)
• Fastball run value (99th)
• Expected ERA (99th)
• Chase percentage (98th)
• Walk percentage (98th)
• Barrel percentage (97th)
• Hard-hit percentage (98th)

Guardians catcher Austin Hedges joked at the end of the season about how he could tell every batter that Clase’s cutter or rookie reliever Cade Smith’s heater was coming and still no one would be able to hit it. Clase relied on the cutter 77.8% of the time -- more than any other season.

It worked and it helped him take his game to the next level.

“I think hitters come up there and they know what they’re going to get,” Willis said, “but because of his ability to put the ball where he wants, it is still extremely difficult for them.”

So how will he get better in 2025? The baseball world is eagerly waiting to see.