Mark Whicker: Cade Smith putting up Monster-like numbers for Guardians

Former Chiliwack Cougars right-hander Cade Smith (Abbotsford, BC) of the Guardians.

September 28, 2025

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

It’s always nice when someone brings the name of Dick Radatz out of the file cabinet. In the mid 60s there was no one quite like him.

He was a 6-foot-6, 230 pounder, and in Boston he was known as The Monster. From the mound, he frowned upon American League hitters and seemingly struck out most of them. When he came into a game against the Yankees he was told he had to face Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Elston Howard.

Radatz told Earl Wilson, the departing pitcher, to “pop me a beer in the clubhouse, because I’ll be right in.” After eight pitches and three strikeouts, he was.

Radatz struck out more than 100 batters in each of his first four years in the big leagues. He did it exclusively as a reliever. In 1964 he struck out 184, which ranked him seventh among all American League pitchers, and pitched 157 innings and faced an inhuman 635 batters.

It was no surprise that Radatz was done in seven years, at age 32, but on bad Boston teams, he and Carl Yastrzemski were the reasons to ride the T to Fenway.

Now there’s Cade Smith. Nobody calls him a monster, although he has kind of an unsettling stare when he leaves the Cleveland bullpen, and even when he hugs the catcher after his work is done. He is 6-foot-5 and 230, almost as big as Radatz was, but he’s only another face in a Stepford line of pitchers, except he doesn’t have a beard. But Smith is the first pitcher since Radatz to strike out 100 or more in his first two major league seasons.

Radatz did it in 1962-63, Smith did it last year and this year, as he completed his journey to the big leagues from Abbotsford, BC via the University of Hawaii. He wasn’t drafted from college, but he has struck out 12.6 batters per nine innings, and his career WHIP is a shiny 0.964.

And when Emmanuel Clase, at one time the best closer in the game, was suspended on suspicion of gambling July 28, Smith inherited the ninth inning and treated it pretty much the same way he handled the seventh and eighth, giving the Guardians 16 saves down the stretch.

On Saturday he pitched to five Texas Rangers, retired them all, and watched the Rangers’ Robert Garcia hit C.J. Kalfus with a pitch in the bottom of the ninth. Cleveland won, 4-3, and finished one of the great late-season drives in baseball history, really. They qualified for the playoffs and can win the AL Central if they beat Texas Sunday, or if Detroit, which also qualified for the postseason, loses to Boston. Either way, it seems likely that the Guardians and Tigers will play in the Wild Card session, after Cleveland had punctuated its run by beating Detroit five of six times over two weeks.

History? Cleveland trailed Detroit by 15 1/2 games on July 8. No team has ever come back that far to reach first place. That was right after a 10-game losing streak but long before the Guardians were shut out three consecutive times. But on Sept. 10 Detroit still led the division by 9 1⁄2. Two weeks later the Guardians had tied the Tigers for that lead. Last Tuesday the Guardians scored three runs off Tarik Skubal on the Tigers without batting a ball out of the infield, although Skubal, channeling retired Lions center Frank Ragnow, attempted to “hike” a sacrifice by Angel Ramirez to first base, and the ball sailed over Spencer Torkelson’s head.

Two of Cleveland’s runs came off a balk and a wild pitch, and when Skubal tried to come inside on a bunting David Fry, the pitch bounced off Fry’s bat and into Fry’s face, causing what doctors called “multiple and nasal fractures.” It jangled Skubal’s nerves, although he was generous enough to visit Fry in a hospital the next day.

A game like that can convince you that the Baseball Gods are not only functioning but angry. But the Tigers pulled out the third game of the series and then beat Boston Friday. Everybody knows the standings go back to 0-0 when the postseason starts, and lots of slumping teams have found their footing when they finally qualify.

The Tigers and everyone else will have to figure out Smith, who at one point worked 10 of 15 Guardians’ games. He is not trying to trick anybody. Generally, he leans on a four-seamer and a split-finger, and has given up five home runs in his entire career. All of this progress has come in the Cleveland organization, which contains baseball’s most renowned pitching lab.

Smith was 4-4 in his three years at Hawaii and was never a regular starter. Because the draft was cut down to five rounds in the Covid-19 year of 2020, Smith was not picked by anyone. But he signed with the Guardians as a free agent and, in 2022, their instruction seemed to click. Smith struck out 99 batters in 61 innings, on two minor league teams.

Today the Guardians have the second-best bullpen ERA in the AL In one 10-game span, their starting pitchers, none of whom are older than 26, had a 1.30 ERA.

Smith is eyeing some landmark moments, but he might never have a thrill quite like his major league debut. He had applied for US citizenship.. Then his dad Tim needed open-heart surgery back home in Abbotsford. Smith wasn’t allowed back to Canada because he was in the midst of his citizenship process.

Doctors wouldn’t let Tim get on a plane for 90 days. So Smith made the Guardians roster in spring training, and their game in Oakland was on the 97th day of Tim’s convalescence. He and the rest of the family came south, saw Cade for the first time in over a year, and watched him get six outs, five by strikeout.

Closers don’t dominate postseasons anymore. Too many series, too many pitches, too many opportunities for the other dugout to pick up your patterns. But there are enough off-days for a closer to catch his breath, and figure out how to take away a hitter’s advantage.

Cade Smith doesn’t have to be a Monster. But in his dreams, he’s pitching on Hallowe’en.