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Posted at 10:25 AM EST. 

4:05 PM EST. Michael Clevinger was called up to replace the injured Cory Kluber and in his first start of the year five days ago, he threw 5.2 innings of one-hit ball and did not allow a run. That’s nice but it was in Kansas City on a cool night against the lowest scoring team in MLB. The Royals have scored 106 runs this year. The closest team to the Royals in futility is the Giants with 120 runs scored. Clevinger struck out five but he walked four. Last year, Clevinger went 0-3 with a 5.26/4.94 ERA/xERA split in 53 innings for the Indians. Clevinger has some upside with a decent K-rate and this now becomes his second full year back from TJS. He’s done pretty well versus lefties and he’s also a winner in the minors with an 11-1 W/L record. However, his walks are way up and that’s never a good thing at this level. Righties continue to hit him hard and he’ll see a bunch of those here. Clevinger’s heavy fly-ball lean led to serious HR issues last year and this is not the park to serve up hard hit fly-balls. There are some skills here but he’s inexperienced, he’s not had much success at this level in 150 MLB innings and at least for now, we’ll leave him alone to learn while he’s the chalk.

Jose Berrios is an enigma. Dude came in highly touted last year and was absolutely torched in 58.1 innings before mercifully being sent back down. In those 58.1 frames for the Twins last year, Berrios allowed 74 hits and 52 earned runs for an ERA of 8.04. He walked 35 batters and struck out 49. All of it was uncharacteristic including the walks. In 591 minor league innings, Berrios walked just 164 batters while striking out 610. His oppBA in the minors in five-plus seasons was just .218. It would appear that he’s thrown a lot of minor league innings but this kid is just 23-years-old so he's been pitching in the minors since he was 18. By any measure, it was a horrible debut for this top prospect. Was it nerves? Perhaps so because he’s been lights-out in AAA since with a 2.51 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 125/36 K/BB split in 111 innings. With nearly 200 innings at AAA under his belt, the foundation for growth is there. This kid has pure strikeout ability and he’ll now get his second chance at this level so we’re willing to gamble that his first exposure was all nerves with expectations being too high. His stock has dropped dramatically since his MLB debut and now expectations are tempered so now would be the time to buy. 

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