Cleveland Guardians right-handed pitcher Emmanuel Clase was the most feared relief pitcher in baseball last year, posting a 0.61 earned run average across 74 games in the regular season. He recorded 47 saves, struck out 66 batters and allowed just five earned runs the whole season. He narrowly missed out on the American League Cy Young, finishing third in the race. However, Clase has had a horrible start to 2025. He’s already surpassed his earned run total from 2024 and has only recorded one save this season. So, what gives?

First, let's take a look at Clase’s stats in the month of April since he started playing for the Guardians in 2021. If we exclude his 2025 stats (through April 14th), Clase has actually been electric in April, posting a 1.55 earned run average across 50 games. He has an exact four-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio and has yielded an opponent batting average of .203. By looking at these splits, we can conclude that this is likely not the issue. 

Clase has made some changes through the first couple of months of the season. While still primarily throwing his cutter and his slider, he has changed the usage rates of both. In 2024, he threw 77.8% cutters and 20.5% sliders. This year, he is throwing the cutter 64.5% of the time and the slider 32.3%. 

While not a deliberate change, it is important to note that Clase’s velo has decreased from 2024 to 2025 on his cutter (99.5 to 98.9) and on his slider (91 to 89.9). While Clase is a pitcher who can get strikeouts, he does not rely on them. 

He relies on weak contact influenced by poor swing decisions and throwing pitches, hard pitches, that bleed into hitters swing paths and induce weak contact. His batting average on balls in play is .500, meaning that nearly 47% of Clase’s pitches put in play have resulted in hits. His fielding independent pitching, which measures what the pitcher has control over that don’t involve fielders, is a 4.22 compared to an 9.00 ERA. 

With this all being said, it can be said that Clase is just a recipient of an overdue regression from his 2024. After that historic of a season, it was bound to happen. It can also be said that Clase has been the recipient of poor luck and poorly timed defensive plays. However, baseball always evens itself out and we can look to expect Clase to return to his former self hopefully sooner rather than later.