Cleveland Indians: Triston McKenzie Shredding Opponents for Lake County

A Cleveland Indians farmhand is proving unhittable in his second professional season. Has the Tribe found a potential future ace?

The Cleveland Indians are the envy of much of Major League Baseball because of its pitching. Not just the performance of the club’s starting rotation, August’s struggles notwithstanding, but because it is young, talented, cheap, and under control for seasons to come.

There is a reason the Tribe has balked at trading the likes of Trevor Bauer, Carlos Carrasco, or Danny Salazar in recent years, despite occasional fan outcry. The market for starting pitching has become astronomically expensive, and the three names just mentioned are all under team control until at least 2021 at reasonable cost.

Cleveland farm system is also stocked with talent, with some 13 potential starters landing in MLB Pipeline’s Top 30 organizational prospects. This despite the Indians having included their top pitching prospect, Justus Sheffield, in the Andrew Miller trade to the New York Yankees.

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Among the names on MLB Pipeline’s list, one pitcher in his second professional season has been opening eyes, both within the Tribe’s organization and around MiLB. At just 19 years old, right-hander Triston McKenzie, the No. 42 pick in the 2015 MLB draft, has vaulted up to the seventh spot in the rankings, and is beginning to push for top mound prospect.

McKenzie is a still a few years away from even sniffing the big leagues. Listed at 6-foot-5 and just 165 pounds, the young man has a good deal of filling out to do. But his stuff is undeniable, and it’s been electrifying the Single-A circuit for the past two months.

Beginning with the short season Mahoning Valley Scrappers and progressing to the Lake County Captains, the Brooklyn, New York product has a 1.37 earned run average with a .183 opposition batting average and 0.90 WHIP in 79 innings. McKenzie has struck out 98 batters in that span, a rate of better than 11 per nine innings, and has walked just 20, giving him a nearly 5-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

His strikeout total is tops in the entire organization, and has come in far fewer innings than much of the competition. For comparison’s sake, here is how McKenzie stacks up to some of the other top pitching prospects in the Cleveland system:

McKenzie: 98 K in 79 IP

Mike Clevinger: 97 K in 93 IP

Rob Kaminsky: 87 K in 122.2 IP

Michael Peoples: 86 K in 153 IP

McKenzie is currently fifth in all of MiLB in strikeouts among pitchers under the age of 20, and again the innings pitched total isn’t even close. In his past two stars for Lake County, he has tossed 11.2 innings of scoreless ball, yielding just six hits while walking three and striking out 17. No that’s not a misprint.

McKenzie was given a signing bonus of $2,302,500, a full $800,000 over slot value, a year ago, giving up a baseball scholarship at national powerhouse Vanderbilt. Thus far as a pro, he has posted a 1.29 ERA with a .172 batting average against, a 0.86 WHIP, and 115 strikeouts in 91 innings of work, so it appears he made the right decision.

Next: Catching Up with the Indians' 2016 Draft Class

While the Indians of today are considered to have one of the premier starting rotations in the game, the future may be even brighter, and McKenzie is a big reason why. If the kid who’s just three weeks removed from his 19th birthday continues to develop at his current pace, he could be inflicting the same pain his minor league opponents are experiencing now on big leaguers for years to come.

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