PHILADELPHIA — One day, long before they became anchors on the Cleveland Guardians’ pitching staff, Cade Smith and Gavin Williams were playing catch before a minor-league game. Smith was working on a new pitch and hoping his teammate could give him some feedback.
“I just remember the first time he started throwing the splitter,” Williams said. “He was like, ‘I don’t know where it’s gonna go.’ And it was the grossest thing I’ve ever tried to catch.
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“I told the pitching coach I would never throw with him again if he was gonna throw the splitter because I could not catch it.”
For a while, that splitter lagged behind Smith’s fastball as an intriguing but inconsistent secondary offering. Today, it’s one of the best offspeed pitches in the sport, the latest example of Smith leveling up in an unlikely career built on enormous developmental gains. Driven by intense commitment to maximizing his potential and unrivaled dedication to his preparation, the 27-year-old has vaulted out of obscurity to become an MLB All-Star.
Williams, a starter, was a first-round draft pick, and he moved through the minors with the hype of a top prospect. Smith, a reliever, wasn’t drafted at all, signing with Cleveland in 2020 as an undrafted free agent out of the University of Hawaii following the shortened, five-round draft during the pandemic. That unusual entrance to pro ball made Smith something of a mystery early in his career. But it didn’t take long for his peers to recognize that the big right-hander from British Columbia had the ingredients to become something special.
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“Especially when I got into learning about the metrics, and it’s like, ‘Oh, Cade’s got 99th-percentile extension?’” Williams said of Smith’s ability to get far down the mound before releasing the ball. “And it’s like, how is he not a bigger name than what he is?”
“It happens a lot in Cleveland, where it’s like, ‘I’ve never heard of this dude,’ and then he’s amazing,” said Guardians teammate David Fry, who first caught Smith in the Arizona Fall League in 2022. “And [Smith] was one of those guys.”
‘From the moment that I first met him, he was really a pro’
That knack for uncovering hidden gems made Cleveland an appealing landing spot for Smith when he made the choice to leave college after three years and sign as an undrafted free agent. But that opportunity was only the first step along a daunting climb to the big leagues, and Smith did not take his chance lightly.
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“When I left college and signed, I knew that I was dropping out of regular school to go to baseball school,” Smith said. “That was the mindset I entered in, knowing that Cleveland is renowned for pitching development — I have an opportunity to learn here. There was no part of me that was like, ‘My 88 to 92 [mph] with no offspeed pitches is gonna be good enough.’ So I knew that things had to change.”
Smith had the talent to earn a spot in a major-league organization, but how far he ascended would depend entirely on his own willingness to take advantage of the resources available to help him improve.
“I wouldn’t say it was ever a super-confident or unshakable assertion that I was going to make it to the big leagues,” he said. “The approach was more so that I have an opportunity here, also that God has given me some talent and some physical ability, and so I have an opportunity to try and maximize that. And if I can turn over every stone in the process of doing that and get to the point where I’ve maximized my potential, even if I don’t stack up, I can walk away with no regrets.”
In the Guardians’ organization, Smith’s focus and determination were evident to even his earliest teammates. Outfielder Angel Martinez has shared clubhouses with Smith longer than any current Guardian, as two made their full-season debuts together with the Lynchburg Hillcats in 2021.
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“Since the first day that I was able to play with him, I knew that he could accomplish whatever he wanted in his career,” Martinez said. “Because of how professional he was. Like, it was Low-A, we were still figuring out routines … and from the moment that I first met him, he was really a pro.”
Said Guardians bench coach Tony Arnerich: “He’s about as consistent of a person that you can be around, whether it’s his eating habits, his routines in the weight room, his routines in the training room. He leaves no stone unturned, and he’s committed to everything that he does.”
“From the moment that I first met him, he was really a pro,” Angel Martinez said of his teammate Cade Smith.
(Joseph Raines/Yahoo Sports)
‘That’s all you can ask for as a closer’
With the ideal attitude and work ethic, Smith’s stuff began to tick up as a result of his diligent developmental pursuits. The velocity climbed into the upper-90s and played up brilliantly due to his outlier release traits. His secondary pitches started to come along, too, first a modified slider that was much better than the clunky curveball Smith was throwing in college and then the splitter that began to baffle teammates and opponents alike.
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Smith started piling up strikeouts at an absurd degree, punching out 37% of opposing hitters across his three years in the minors. A high propensity of walks limited his overall effectiveness and prevented him from climbing too high on Guardians top prospect lists, but entering 2024, Smith had pitched himself to the doorstep of the majors.
That spring training, it quickly became clear that Smith was one of the best arms Cleveland had. A strong showing in camp earned him one of the final bullpen spots on the Opening Day roster. And in his major-league debut in Cleveland’s third game of the season, Smith immediately demonstrated that he belonged, striking out five of the seven batters he faced across two hitless innings.
“The first game he threw, it was just a bunch of heaters and a few split-fingers, like, ‘Oh, this guy’s unbelievable,’” Fry recalled. “And it feels like ever since, he hasn’t stopped. He’s been incredible.”
Indeed, by fWAR, Smith has been the most valuable reliever in MLB since that eye-opening debut on March 30, 2024, even ahead of fellow fire-ballers Mason Miller and Jhoan Duran. Yet it took until this year for Smith to be selected by his peers as an All-Star, largely due to the less glamorous role he occupied for the majority of his first two MLB seasons.
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Smith previously served as manager Stephen Vogt’s preferred fireman, a luxury bullpen weapon to be deployed in the highest-leverage situation before the save arrived in the final frame. Such a strategy was enabled by the outsized presence of closer Emmanuel Clase, who kept the ninth-inning duties largely to himself, making Smith a more fungible piece to be called upon earlier in games.
Smith thrived in this role but racked up only a handful of saves, which prevented him from garnering the kind of attention that his numbers otherwise warranted. And then last summer, Clase was suddenly removed from Cleveland’s bullpen equation — and long-term plans — when he became a central figure in a federal investigation into his alleged involvement in a pitch-rigging scandal. With that, Smith was thrust into the closer role and the spotlight, a move he has handled without missing a beat. Since Clase was placed on the restricted list last July, no reliever in baseball has recorded more saves than Smith’s 41.
“He’s going to take the ball whenever his name’s called, and he’s gonna go out there and give you everything he’s got until he doesn’t have it anymore,” veteran reliever Shawn Armstrong said. “And that’s all you can ask for as a closer.”
‘If you do nothing and you stay stagnant, I think you’re falling behind’
Before his career evaporated in scandal, Clase cemented his status among the game’s great relievers at his first All-Star Game in 2022, when he closed out a 3-2 victory for the American League by striking out the side on 10 pitches. Two years later, he became just the fifth reliever to record multiple saves in the All-Star Game, tossing a scoreless ninth in another AL victory.
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Fry hopes this year’s Midsummer Classic can provide a similar platform for his team’s new closer to get the shine he deserves.
“He leads the league in saves, but we’re still not a team that’s talked about a lot — it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that one Smith guy’s good,’” he said. “But if he got to close out an All-Star Game, just throw as hard as he can for eight pitches and get three quick outs, it’ll be like, ‘Oh, this guy’s the real deal.’ That’d be cool to see.”
Whether such a sequence unfolds remains to be seen; American League manager John Schneider has several dynamite closers at his disposal, including his own in Toronto’s Louis Varland. But no matter who pitches the ninth, Fry hopes his teammate embraces the All-Star festivities as a chance to take a breather from his routines and enjoy the rewards of his hard work.
“There are a lot of cameras,” Fry said, having gone through the All-Star media gauntlet two years ago. “Cade will be great — he’ll be funny. He’ll probably get to go multiple times. I hope he’s not too serious. I hope he enjoys it.”
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Smith, for his part, is not one to crave attention. He is not on social media. His personality is stoic and serious, inviting playful jabs from his teammates about his robot-like tendencies — excellent traits for a closer but less so for someone scheduled to appear on a red carpet.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that even as his standing around the league grows, Smith’s focus remains on the leveling up yet to come.
“I’m still trying to improve, still trying to learn,” he said. “If you do nothing and you stay stagnant, I think you’re falling behind. So … it’s trying to figure out how do I continue to make my slider better, continue to make my splitter better, continue to make my fastball better, continue to command the ball better, and how do I mix and pitch and keep hitters off-balance?
“And that’s the constant beauty in this game.”
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