Managing in the playoffs is all about balancing immediate payoffs and long-term sustainability. Not ultra long-term, mind you, but managing a bullpen for a seven-game series is trickier than simply pressing the same buttons every day until you win or lose. ALCS Game 4 featured three momentous bullpen decisions. The managers chose differently; they both paid the price. In the end, the Yankees got the better of the Guardians in a 14-pitcher, three-and-a-half-hour, 14-run shootout. But a few early decisions absolutely shaped the way the game went, and so they take center stage here tonight.
No Rest for Cade Smith
Cade Smith was one of the best relievers in baseball this year. If he didn’t play on the same team as Emmanuel Clase, we’d call him a lockdown closer. Instead, he’s a dominant fireman, capable of coming in whenever Stephen Vogt needs him to ice the opposition. And Vogt has needed him a lot. He pitched in all five games of the ALDS. He got the first game of this series off, but then he faced the meat of the Yankees lineup in Game 2 and Game 3.
He’s been pitching nearly every day, which hurts. He’s facing the same batters over and over, which hurts. But what are you going to do, not use your best option against a team that has two MVP-level bats stacked together in an otherwise navigable lineup? Juan Soto had already homered and the Yankees were up 3-2 when the top of the order came up in the sixth inning. On came Smith, for the third time in four days.
In an ideal world, Vogt would give Smith a day off. But the exigencies of the present outweighed the utopian ideal of reasonable rest, at least in Vogt’s mind. If it’s a diminished Smith or a rested arm further down the hierarchy, Vogt has selected Smith at every turn. Friday might have been one too many times.
Smith’s fastball was down two ticks on average. His location was scattershot; he walked Soto on five pitches and then gave up a laser beam single to Judge. Without his customary late fastball life, he seemed to be grasping for the strike zone. That’s not where you want to be against an assortment of elite hitters seeing you for the third game in a row.
Smith had faced Giancarlo Stanton twice already this series, throwing him four fastballs in five pitches. He came back tonight with four straight fastballs, and Stanton was nowhere near fooled. He took one for a strike, swung through another, took one for a ball, and then got one he liked. You know what that means for Stanton:
The Other Guys
That blast stapled Aaron Boone to a 6-2 lead, and he immediately had a decision to make: use his normal circle of trust relievers, or try to squeeze out a win while resting his top guys. He chose the latter approach, an eminently reasonable decision. Luke Weaver had pitched in every single Yankees playoff game and thrown nearly as many innings as Smith; Clay Holmes had appeared in every game too. Boone was probably looking for any excuse to rest his guys, and a four-run lead in the fifth qualified.
Jake Cousins pitched a clean inning. But Boone got greedy and tried to stretch Cousins out for a second frame. His reward? Two baserunners and no outs, and a panicked call to the bullpen for Holmes, who wasn’t getting the night off after all. That didn’t work out even a little. Holmes had no feel for the strike zone. He left everything up. He hung a slider to David Fry that befuddled Fry so much he took it for strike three. He hung one to José Ramírez, who slashed it to right for a run-scoring double. And then he left his sinker middle-high to Josh Naylor, who ripped it to the wall to drive two more home.
That undid the advantage the Stanton home run had given the Yankees, making it a 6-5 ballgame. Boone didn’t have a lot of great backup options, either; the next man out of the bullpen was Mark Leiter Jr., who only got added to the playoff roster today as an injury replacement. But that’s what Boone was down to after Luis Gil’s short start and the quick churn of relievers behind him.
Leiter looked like a guy who was on the fringes of the playoff roster. He gave up a warning track shot to Jhonkensy Noel on the third pitch he threw. After escaping the inning, he gave up a leadoff double to start the next one. Then he didn’t get over to the first base line quickly enough on a two-out squibber. He tried to recover with a last-minute flip to Anthony Rizzo, and tossed it right through Rizzo’s legs, scoring that pesky leadoff double. It was 6-6, new ballgame, and the Yankees had given back that four-run advantage in the name of protecting two relievers, one of whom pitched anyway.
No Rest for Emmanuel Clase, Either
Okay, this one wasn’t quite so tough of a decision. The game was tied heading into the ninth inning, so Clase came in to keep things that way. He gave up two homers last night, and he’s already given up more homers and earned runs this October than he did in the entire regular season. But what was he gonna do, not pitch here?
Like Smith, Clase didn’t have it. His velocity and location were both missing. Rizzo and Anthony Volpe each hit center-cut, 98-mph cutters for singles to lead off the ninth inning. That must feel like a walk in the park compared to Clase’s normal arsenal of 100-mph cutters on the edges of the plate. After a steal, Clase produced one of those 100-mph darts, but Brayan Rocchio couldn’t get a grip on it, and he wouldn’t have stopped the run from scoring anyway. Gleyber Torres tacked on an insurance run with a line drive single. For the second time in as many days, Clase didn’t quite have enough mustard to put the game away. And that was that. The Guardians threatened in the bottom half of the inning, but they couldn’t plate a run. Tommy Kahnle locked down a nerve-wracking save. Both bullpens were wrecked, though New York’s is in slightly better shape, and there’s another game tomorrow. I wouldn’t bet against Smith and Clase appearing, even given how poorly they fared today.
Odds and Ends
– Both starters were coming off long rests – 25 days for Gavin Williams and 19 for Gil. They both looked rusty, and Williams was clearly only in for 10 batters; Vogt had no interest in letting Soto and Judge see him twice. Gil lasted a bit longer, but he couldn’t find his command, always a weakness and particularly so after so much time off.
– There were two bunts in this game, and I’m not sure which was worse. In the bottom of the fourth, Austin Hedges laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt… with no one on base, against a pitcher who had walked him his previous time up. Gil looked absolutely shocked as he fielded the ball for an easy out. Jazz Chisholm Jr. might have one-upped Hedges by dropping down a no-out bunt against Smith just before Stanton’s home run. You get a laboring opposing pitcher on the ropes, his fastball is down two ticks, and your cleanup hitter bunts despite the platoon advantage? At least Hedges did it in a low-leverage situation; I was shocked by Chisholm’s decision, particularly with a strikeout-or-homer guy like Stanton up next.
– Vogt pinch-hit for lefty Daniel Schneemann – with lefty Will Brennan. Then he pinch-hit for Brennan with righty Jhonkensy Noel – against a right-handed pitcher. It might be the strangest sequence of pinch-hitting in one spot in the lineup I’ve ever covered. I’m sure there was some pitch shape reason for the first substitution, and the Noel one was based on Leiter’s reverse platoon splits, but man, weird.
– Kahnle threw 18 pitches in the ninth inning, and all 18 were changeups. It’s a spectacular pitch, but really, zero fastballs? I wouldn’t be keen to throw him again tomorrow, and particularly against the same batters.
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