A few seconds after the ball came out of the hand of Emmanuel Classe and reached man, the eyes of everyone present at Progressive Field pointed to the video screen to find out what kind of throw was already how fast he was traveling .
It was a cutter, at 101 mph. Then came a straight at 100 mph. And then a slider, at 91 mph.
“It’s unfair,” stressed Indian opener Logan Allen after watching Class perform in Sunday’s duel against the Detroit Tigers. “This definitely makes one think: how is it possible for someone to beat this release?”.
Eight games of the new season have been completed and the Indians, who started 2021 with uncertainty about their bullpen, now intuit that they have someone very special. Class is a tremendous right-wing Dominican right, which arrived in 2019, through an exchange with Texas and who missed the previous campaign, suspended for drug use.
Class made everyone aware of his arrival the week before. His first pitch with the Indians reached 101.3 mph — the fastest of a Cleveland pitcher since that data began asking regularly in 2008.
Since then, he has performed another 35 pitches at over 100 mph. It is the highest number in the majors during the incipient campaign, and surpasses that achieved by all Indian pitchers in combined form over the past 13 years.
“It has a slider faster than most people’s straight,” stressed Indian reliever Bryan Shaw. “It’s obvious he’s brutally good. He has a really good arm. He has control of his throws, obviously.”
And that would be the most impressive thing about Class. In addition to throwing with power, he achieves it with precision.
It is the antithesis of the “Wild Thing”, the nickname given to Mitch Williams, a pitcher of the 1990s, which was characterized precisely by making shots as fast as erratic.
Advanced analysis statistics indicate that swingers who make the swing fail in the face of Class throws more than 94% of the time, inside and outside the strike zone.
According to more traditional figures, the right of Riu Sant Joan has tolerated a hit in four innings with six strikeouts. After accepting a single with an out in the ninth inning of Sunday’s meet, Class provoked a double-kill roll.
His second rescue was credited, and Cleveland completed the sweep in three games.
Manager Terry Francona has not formally named Classe as the taper. But they all agree that the 23-year-old reliever has the job assured.
“I love the way he attacks,” Francona said. “In the preseason I commented that he could have thrown too many strikes. If that’s a problem, we can fight him. His present and future are bright.”
On the two occasions that the door to the Bullpen at Progressive Field has been opened for Class to enter the field, expectation has been noticeable in the stands … and in the dugout.
“It’s something that turns me on. It’s like thinking, ‘Here comes someone big,'” classmate Franmil Reis, a classmate, commented. “One cannot detract from the merits of this type.”
Class was a mystery to the Indians, who acquired it from the Rangers in exchange for Corey Klüber, a two-time Cy Young winner. Classe was expected to help last year, but suffered a minor neck injury in the preseason and was suspended after 80 games, after giving positive doping.
The punishment imposed by the greats was adjusted to cover the 60 games that made up the 2020 campaign, abbreviated by the coronavirus. And although the radar gun says otherwise, Class claims it has had trouble regaining speed.
“It wasn’t hard to come back,” he acknowledged. “But I worked really hard for it. I’m ready to do it and I focused on getting to a point where I was ready to compete.”