Cleveland History: #24

The Guardians optioned Triston McKenzie this week to the minors after several bad starts. It’s been an ugly season for Sticks: he leads the American League in walks (and walk rate) and leads the league in home runs allowed. Not a winning combination, and despite his velocity returning to career norms recently, he has struggled to command his pitches. A trip to the minors may set Triston right, he would be far from the first player to go back to the minors to figure himself out even late in his career. Cliff Lee infamously got sent down in 2007 after an awful season, and returned in 2008 as the best pitcher in baseball. His career is far from over.

But Saturday does lead to an ironic day: a player featured with a bobblehead while not on the team due to performance or trade. The silliest one I have ever seen is when the Texas Rangers gave away a Corey Kluber bobblehead…with Kluber pitching for the Yankees. Kluber threw a no-hitter against his former team. Baseball’s a funny game.

Cleveland Players Who Wore 24: 40

Player Who Wore 24 the Longest: Early Wynn (9 Seasons)

24 feels like a hitter’s number, an outfielder’s number, largely because so many historically great outfielders wore 24. Willie Mays wore 24, Barry Bonds wore 24, Rickey Henderson wore 24, Ken Griffey wore 24. Cleveland boasts a trio of its own superb outfielders who wore 24 as well (we’ll get there in a separate article), so it stunned me that instead it’s Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn who wore 24 the longest in Cleveland history, and while Wynn is probably the least remembered pitcher of Cleveland’s Hall of Fame trio of Feller, Lemon and Wynn: he is no less great.

Wynn made his career as a competitor. Wynn was not a fireballer like Feller, nor was he an expert of movement like Lemon. No, Wynn went right at you, tried to hit the corners, and never feared knocking you off the plate. Nicknamed "Chief" by his teammates (and "Gus" by fans). He famously declared he’d hit his own grandmother in the batter's box (but "only if she was digging in" of course). "He’d throw at anybody whether it was Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams" said his pitching coach, Mel Harder, who taught him the finer points of the curveball after Washington traded him to Cleveland.

Throughout his career Wynn made a living by pitching at batters, working day in and day out, and not missing any starts. Early started over 30 games every season from 1950 to 1960, and ferociously competed for his teammates. In 1949 a Tigers pitcher floored Larry Doby, and Wynn proceeded to knock the pitcher down four times (each on a single pitch). "Doby is on my team," said Wynn, a Hartford, AL native. "If they hurt him they hurt me. I got to teach them manners." This ferocity helped Wynn ‘win’ an average of nearly 20 games a year over that stretch.

For me, what impresses me about Wynn is his longevity: he pitched forever. After his first nine seasons in Cleveland he went to the White Sox where he continued to pitch well and won a Cy Young Award (back when only one Cy Young was awarded) at 39. He kept on trudging, kept on providing quality innings, and returned to Cleveland at age 43 in an attempt to finally reach 300 wins (in the middle of the season). It took him four tries to finally get there; and he lost his first game (a complete game losing effort) before finally surviving through five innings to earn a win in his fourth start. When asked how he felt after the game he only said: "tired" and Wynn earned the right to feel tired.

But throughout his 30s, Wynn’s competitive spirit is what drove him. Despite averaging 20 wins a season between 1950-54 he never made an All-Star team (that honor went to Bob Lemon), but finally got chosen in 1955 when his own manager picked the pitchers for the ‘55 AL All Stars. Wynn felt Castey Stengel (who managed the AL All Stars every year the past five years) may have snubbed him, and Early told this story:

"Wynn greeted Casey and extended a hand. Raising a shaggy eyebrow, the Yankee manager glared at Wynn for a moment, then turned on his heel and walked away without acknowledging the greeting.

"I don’t know if he recognized me or not," Wynn recalls, "but I made up my mind he would know me the next time we met. I think he does now."

Andrew Miller: The Lord of Darkness

The other great pitcher who wore 24 for Cleveland is Andrew Miller, and I will never forget the awe Miller left you every time he got on the mound. A lanky and towering left hander with a blazing fastball and an insane slider with a ton of tilt. I recall when Miller was a hot prospect which Detroit first traded to Miami for Miguel Cabrera; and he struggled as a starter. He bounced around and became the best reliever in Major League Baseball (well, not named Mariano Rivera). We traded for him in 2016 and he absolutely powered us, alongside Corey Kluber to the World Series.

The crazy thing about Miller is just how freaking silly he made batters look. He’d throw you a perfectly placed fastball and then throw this wacky slider which starts two feet off the plate then just touches the zone at the end. He made David Ortiz look ridiculous on at least two occasions, he bulldozed his way through the Blue Jays, and then the Cubs. The even crazier thing about Miller? His durability: his stuff didn’t fall off a cliff after an inning: he’d face as many batters as needed to get the job done, he wasn’t just a bridge to the closer: he was a gigantic pontoon fording the raging river.

Just look at his stuff from the 2016 postseason: he was electric, easily the MVP over Corey Kluber in the ALCS and an unstoppable force on the mound. But the silly thing that for whatever reason sticks in my mind? Is how he stuck his glove against his right hip after every strikeout and when he walked off the mound (along with his great beard). The insane swagger of the man who Joe Posnanski dubbed the Lord of Darkness. The best reliever I’ve ever seen in a Cleveland uniform, even greater than Emmanuel Clase.

Triston McKenzie

Which brings me to Triston McKenzie. What surprises me about Triston is his youth: I feel like he’s either been pitching for Cleveland, or a top prospect for Cleveland, forever. But McKenzie is only 26, quite young for a pitcher with now five Major League seasons under his belt. What sticks with me most about Triston, is one word: possibilities. McKenzie’s stuff is electric, with a lively fastball and superb offspeed pitches.

But throughout his career Triston was always up and down. He came up in 2020 and looked good, and then stumbled in his sophomore season in 2021. In 2022, after years as a prospect and an up and down start: he pitched an All-Star caliber season, and was superb against the Rays in his second career postseason start. Things looked up for Triston heading into the 2023 season, when disaster struck.

2023 went about as poorly as you could imagine. First: Triston started the year on the Injured List, making his first start in June, after his second start he wound up back on the Injured List and eventually it was confirmed: Triston had a UCL tear, and after a second opinion he elected to avoid surgery. So far this year the results have not been there for McKenzie, but one thing is certain now: he’s fully healthy. In his last start for Cleveland he reached a season high velocity of 96 MPH on one of his fastballs, a mark he has not reached in some time.

But Triston has been superb for Cleveland frequently for Cleveland and was an integral part of the ‘22 AL Central winning team. Triston pitched two superb games against Tampa Bay and New York, with the game against Tampa clinching the Wild Card Series for Cleveland (their first postseason series win since 2016). We shall see how Triston’s career looks in the fullness of time, I am rooting for him to return, and hope he rediscovers what made him a dynamite pitcher.