Cleveland — Stephen Vogt, the manager of the Guardians, summoned the four relievers who had been most instrumental in Cleveland’s success this season by pointing a finger at each member of his bullpen one by one on Saturday night. Their performance collapsed as a result of their unprecedented workload, which was both astonishing and ultimately unsustainable.
Vogt remarked, “They carried us here,” “We wouldn’t have made it this far without those men. They are really deserving of praise.
Many people believe that Emmanuel Clase is the best reliever in baseball, the best reliever in the world, according to his manager, and the league’s best reliever by WAR.Cade Smith will probably receive a lot of votes for AL Rookie of the Year.Tim Herrin and Hunter Gaddis were outstanding. The top four combined for 290 innings pitched with a 1.49 ERA. Additionally, that trio gave up 11 runs in 13 innings during the Yankees series. In Game 5, Gaddis gave up Juan Soto’s game-winning three-run homer, and Clase was blamed for the defeat in Game 4.
The relievers’ motto is that they will take the ball if requested and that they won’t admit when they’re tired. The main reason the Guardians won the AL Central was because they had the best relievers. Their bullpen ERA was over half a run better than any other team’s, and Vogt continued to give them the ball into October because those four Cleveland pitchers were among the top 11 in appearances. Herrin and Smith both made nine appearances, Gaddis made eight, while Clase threw in seven of Cleveland’s ten postseason games. Cracks in performance also started to appear.
“I mean, everybody is tired,” Vogt admitted following the defeat in Game 4. We’ve probably used them a lot. We’ve been forced to. That’s who we are.
In this tournament, teams that have relied heavily on bullpens, like the Guardians, have not won the World Series. Only two teams won the World Series when their relievers threw more than 50% of their team’s innings throughout the last ten years, a period when teams have depended more and more on them. The Braves’ bullpen pitched 53.8% of Atlanta’s postseason innings in 2021, while the Dodgers’ relievers threw 52.3% of Atlanta’s innings in 2020. The Cleveland relievers had pitched an incredible 62.4% of the Guardians’ postseason innings going into Game 5 of the Yankees series.
In Game 4 of the series against the Yankees, Smith gave up a home run to Giancarlo Stanton for just the second time in 2024, despite throwing 152 pitches during the 15 days of the Guardians’ postseason. It was a fastball off the outside corner to Stanton, who is larger and stronger than almost all of his peers outside Aaron Judge, and he managed to stretch his arms to somehow pull a homer over the left-field wall, so by any measure, it wasn’t a horrible pitch. Austin Hedges, the catcher for the Guardians, spoke up for his pitcher.
“He’s the same Cade Smith he’s always been, and that Giancarlo Stanton guy is really good at baseball and hits a lot of homers in the postseason,” Hedges said. “He hit his best pitch. Cade’s fastball is the best pitch in baseball, and we went down with our strengths.”
But Smith’s fastball was not close to being his best fastball: Its velocity of 94 mph was markedly less than his regular-season average of 96 mph. Smith stood at his locker after Game 4 and answered every question in a quiet monotone, stringing together his words in run-on sentences. He indicated he was not aware of his diminished velocity. “But I’ll take a look at it, rewatch it, talk to the pitching coaches and see what’s going on,” he said, “and see if there’s something we need to correct.”
It was also the third time in five days that the Yankees’ hitters had seen Smith; they would see him a fourth time in Game 5. As Ron Darling adroitly noted on the TBS broadcast, managers will often yank starting pitchers out of games before opponents can see them a third time, but in the postseason, hitters often see the same relievers over and over. Hedges, who won a World Series ring with the Rangers last year, is as familiar with this as anyone.
“That’s one of the beauties of the playoffs, to get to face teams over and over again,” he said. “You’ve got to be creative in how you’re attacking guys in the batter’s box; they’re going to attack you differently. It’s a game of adjustments, and whoever wins the adjustment game is probably going to win the series.”
Hedges also acknowledged the fatigue of relievers at this time of year.
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