{"id":36524,"date":"2020-08-11T11:42:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T15:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=36524"},"modified":"2020-08-11T11:42:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T15:42:30","slug":"mike-clevinger-punished-for-breaking-protocol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/08\/11\/mike-clevinger-punished-for-breaking-protocol\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Clevinger Punished for Breaking Protocol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/cleveland-indians\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cleveland Indians<\/a> starting pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/clevimi01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Mike Clevinger<\/strong><\/a> was punished after breaking team protocols regarding the Coronavirus. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the news on Twitter.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Cleveland Indians pitcher Mike Clevinger went out with teammate Zach Plesac in Chicago on Saturday night in violation of team protocol, sources tell ESPN. Clevinger was scratched from his scheduled start Tuesday against the Cubs and will quarantine. He flew with the team Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1292968414307405824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 10, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Sunday, the team also sent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/plesaza01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Zach Plesac<\/strong><\/a> home for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/29629784\/indians-send-zach-plesac-home-leaving-hotel-go-chicago\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">breaking<\/a> protocol. That came on the heels of a report that he went out on the town in Chicago Saturday night. Furthermore, the Indians provided Plesac with a rental car to drive back and ensure that his exposure to the team was as limited as possible.<\/p>\n<p>As with anything that is related to the Coronavirus, teams and the MLB are taking it seriously. The last thing the Indians want is for a breakout to occur among their own team following the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/2020\/08\/06\/cardinals-virus-outbreak\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">breakouts<\/a> that have occurred for both the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/miami-marlins\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Miami Marlins<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/st-louis-cardinals\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">St. Louis Cardinals<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to a team <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/29635888\/indians-mike-clevinger-miss-start-violating-protocol\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">statement<\/a>, Clevinger will now go into quarantine. Plesac has already been quarantined. Additionally, both will undergo testing away from their fellow teammates and must test negative two separate times over a 72-hour window before being allowed to rejoin the team.<\/p>\n<h2>State of the Indians Starting Rotation<\/h2>\n<p>The Cleveland Indians starting rotation was very impressive at the start of this season. At the conclusion of play Monday, the team owns the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/stats\/team\/pitching?split=sp\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">best<\/a> ERA in all of baseball &#8211; 2.24 over 108 and one-third innings of work. A lot of that came from the contributions of Clevinger. Additionally, the innings provided by Plesac in the number four hole added to the success of the rotation.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the Indians have two-fifths of their starting rotation on the sidelines for at least the next 10 days. For a team that currently sits one game back of first place in the American League Central, having that starting pitching is going to be valuable down the stretch. Cleveland has always had a tremendous amount of starting pitching depth. However, with Clevinger and Pleaac out of the fold, that depth obviously takes a big hit.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/plutkad01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Adam Plutko<\/strong><\/a>, who was the team&#8217;s number six starter, will likely fill one of the spots for now. In addition, it would not be a surprise to see the Indians potentially fill one of those starts with a bullpen day. Cleveland has a deep enough bullpen that they could piece together one start following &#8220;The Opener&#8221; methodology.<\/p>\n<p>Main Image<br \/>\n<a id=\"FKu39FHfSUNnpeguYNRTCw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1227928619\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'FKu39FHfSUNnpeguYNRTCw',sig:'DVPWlKsigR7s0qosKl-fKoTx0YvgufohxO51SU5TDaM=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1227928619',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Mike Clevinger was punished after breaking team protocols regarding the Coronavirus. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the news on Twitter. Cleveland Indians pitcher Mike Clevinger went out with teammate Zach Plesac in Chicago on Saturday night in violation of team protocol, sources tell ESPN. Clevinger was scratched from his scheduled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3320,"featured_media":36540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1071,35],"tags":[3948,352,941,664,3415],"class_list":["post-36524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guardians","category-mlb","category-news","tag-adam-plutko","tag-cleveland-indians","tag-latest-mlb-news","tag-mike-clevinger","tag-zach-plesac"],"modified_by":"Jared Cantatore","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}