From the Collection: Vinny Pestano, p, Cleveland Guardians
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Building a good bullpen is never easy. Getting at least five pitchers to all coalesce into a dependable unit of arms that can be called in at irregular intervals, often in stress moments, to carry a game over the line is a challenge. What’s worse, even if you achieve this goal, relief pitchers are fickle creatures, and there is a good chance that at least a couple of those pitchers you depended on to bridge the gap from starter to closer one season will be pitching batting practice the next.
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Enter Vinny Pestano. For two seasons, from 2011-2012, he was an excellent arm in an exceptionally good Cleveland relief corps that included Chris Perez, Joe Smith, Rafael Perez, and Tony Sipp. During those two seasons, he averaged 66 innings and carried a 160 ERA+, and over 132 total innings had 160 K’s. Not bad for a 20th-round pick.
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But, as is the way with many great pen arms, he burned bright–but ran out of gas quickly. He struggled in 2013, likely due to elbow problems from pitching in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, and he never quite recovered.
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In 2014, Cleveland traded him to the Los Angeles Angels for a young AA-ball right-hander named Michael Clevinger. It was a good trade for Cleveland; Pestano last season in the majors was 2015, while Clevinger developed into a solid middle-of-the-rotation pitcher for a couple of seasons.