Game 1 of the American League Championship Series between the Cleveland Guardians and New York Yankees only reinforced the major storyline heading into the series: If the underdog Guardians are to pull off the upset, they're going to need their history-making bullpen to be pretty much perfect.
On a cool night at Yankee Stadium, it wasn't.
Cleveland starter Alex Cobb, who entered the game having thrown 41 pitches and three innings since Sept. 1, ran into trouble in the bottom of the third inning. He served up a towering home run to Juan Soto and eventually walked the bases loaded with two outs as he began suffering through tightness in his hip and back spasms.
To escape the jam, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt didn't turn to any of his five relievers who had an ERA under 2.00 in the regular season, but rather rookie Joey Cantillo, who has worked primarily as a starting pitcher. Cantillo uncorked two run-scoring wild pitches. In the fourth inning, a walk and two more wild pitches led to another run. It was too much to ask a Cleveland lineup to rally from a 4-0 deficit and the Yankees recorded a 5-2 victory.
No team relies on its bullpen for success as much as the 2024 Guardians. They won 92 regular-season games on the strength of perhaps the greatest single-season bullpen of all time, and if they're going to reach the World Series and end the franchise's 76-year championship drought, it will likely be on the backs of the top relievers -- who will now be well rested after none of them pitched in the ALCS opener.
It's early in the series. There is time for Vogt to make a quick adjustment and use his high-leverage relievers in any situation. Ahead of Game 2 of the ALCS, let's dive into what makes the Guardians' pen one of the best ever, who those relievers compare to and whether the bullpen can keep rolling all the way to a title.
The best bullpen ever?
The Guardians became the first team in the past 50 years to have four pitchers throw at least 60 innings with an ERA under 2.00: Emmanuel Clase (0.61), Hunter Gaddis (1.57), Cade Smith (1.91) and Tim Herrin (1.92). Eli Morgan just missed becoming the fifth: He had a 1.93 ERA, but in 42 innings. Going back to 1970, which is looked at as sort of the beginning of the modern bullpen era, only six teams had even three such pitchers. The Guardians led the majors this season with a 2.57 bullpen ERA -- and the gap between them and the No. 2 team, the Milwaukee Brewers (3.11 ERA), was a big one.
As for best-ever status, here's where the Guardians rank since 1970 in various categories:
Win probability added
2024 Guardians: 14.54
2024 Brewers: 14.25
2012 Orioles: 13.52
2015 Pirates: 13.21
2003 Dodgers: 12.65
ERA (minimum 400 innings)
1988 Dodgers: 2.35
1990 A's: 2.35
2003 Dodgers: 2.46
2013 Braves: 2.46
1983 Mets: 2.50
10. 2024 Guardians: 2.57
Win-loss percentage
1976 Twins: 33-9 (.786)
2024 Guardians: 42-12 (.778)
1974 Cardinals: 28-8 (.778)
1998 Yankees: 28-9 (.757)
1984 Tigers: 27-9 (.750)
Batting average allowed
1989 A's: .198
2001 Mariners: .201
2017 Yankees: .201
2022 Dodgers: .202
2024 Guardians: .203
That's across-the-board excellence. Clase, of course, leads the way as one of baseball's best closers. He allowed just five earned runs all season. He throws a nearly unhittable 100-mph cutter and a wipeout slider. He held batters to a .154 average in the regular season and had the third-lowest OPS allowed of all time for at least 50 innings pitched.
Gaddis, who was a starter for Cleveland in 2022 and '23, is in his first full season of relief work. He's a four-seamer/slider/changeup pitcher, and while his fastball plays up a little higher in velocity as a starter, an improved slider has keyed his success, as its swing-and-miss rate has improved from 16.4% in 2023 to 30.3% in 2024. Batters were also just 2-for-40 against his changeup in the regular season.
The rookie Smith has been the big revelation. Undrafted out of Hawai'i-Manoa in the five-round 2020 draft, he signed with Cleveland as a free agent. He throws a four-seamer, splitter and sweeper, and his four-seamer -- which gets terrific run toward third base -- registered as the single best pitch in baseball this year, according to Statcast run value (plus-28 runs). Herrin is a former 29th-round pick with a 96-mph fastball and four-pitch repertoire while Morgan is more of a control specialist with a great changeup.
That group of five will get most of the high-leverage innings.
As Vogt said before Monday's Game 1 against the Yankees, the club didn't necessarily know what to expect at the start of the season after losing its seventh- and eighth-inning relievers from last year in Trevor Stephan and James Karinchak during spring training.
"It just seemed over the next few months, no matter what position we put any number of our guys out of the bullpen in, they all got outs and all did their job," Vogt said. "We kind of knew about midway through May into early June that this was a really special group out there."
Which World Series-winning bullpens compare to Cleveland's?
It's not unique for a bullpen to step up in the postseason -- last year's Texas Rangers, whose bullpen wasn't good until October, are a perfect example. The thing that makes the Guardians unusual is not only has the Guardians' pen been dominant in October, it is what got them to the playoffs to begin with.
Check out their regular-season rankings via FanGraphs:
Position players: 21.7 WAR (13th), with a 100 wRC+ (league average)
Starting pitching: 6.0 WAR (27th)
Relief pitching: 7.8 WAR (first)
So, you have an average offense, weak starting pitching -- and a historically great bullpen.
Another bullpen that repeatedly pitched well in the postseason was, like last year's Rangers, a Bruce Bochy-managed group: The 2010, '12 and '14 San Francisco Giants, winners of the World Series those years. In those three postseasons, the pen compiled a 2.42 ERA over 156 innings. (Jeremy Affeldt led the way, allowing two runs in 26 innings.) Those pens didn't necessarily dominate in the regular season, though:
2010: Second in ERA, third in WAR
2012: 15th in ERA, 26th in WAR
2014: Fifth in ERA, 24th in WAR
The Giants also played in an extreme pitchers' park, so the pitching wasn't really quite as good as the raw numbers suggest. Those teams actually featured underrated offenses to go with decent starting pitching (especially in 2010, and then with Madison Bumgarner during his run in 2014) -- but their bullpen always showed up in October.
The most comparable team to this year's Guardians would be the 2014-15 Kansas City Royals, who were similarly constructed to Cleveland and reached back-to-back World Series, winning in 2015 with a great pen, mediocre offense (but great defense) and so-so starting pitching. The Royals, however, still had better starting pitching than Cleveland: 14th in WAR in 2014 and 20th in 2015. The bullpen ranked 10th in ERA in 2014 and second in 2015.
Mostly, the Royals had a push-button trio for manager Ned Yost to go to in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings: Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland in 2014; then Ryan Madson, Herrera and Davis in 2015 (after Holland got injured). The 2015 Royals, however, had enough quality starters who got deep into games to hand the ball to that trio and the offense featured six regulars with an OPS+ of 119 or higher. The Guardians have just four with an OPS+ of 118 or higher in Jose Ramirez, Steven Kwan, David Fry (who had 355 at-bats, but has been a full-time player in October) and Josh Naylor.
The Royals' bullpen was certainly their exclamation point, but they had a few more pieces up and down the roster than Cleveland does.
What will be the bullpen's biggest challenge moving forward?
The interesting thing here is that Cleveland didn't beat the Detroit Tigers in the ALDS just because of the bullpen. In fact, Clase had a rare hiccup in Game 2, when he served up a game-winning three-run home run to Detroit's Kerry Carpenter, the first homer Clase had allowed on his slider all season. The Guardians won Game 4 even though the pen allowed two runs in five innings and won Game 5 despite another three runs in seven innings of relief work.
That division series also featured three off days to play five games, however, and Vogt knew going into the ALCS that he wouldn't be able to manage quite as aggressively with just two off days to play seven games if the series went the distance.
"We've relied on our bullpen all year long, but now in a seven-game, traditional seven games in nine days, you have to do it a little bit differently," Vogt said Sunday. "With the days off we had in the DS, it allowed us to really push the bullpen more than typically."
That helps explain the decision to use Cantillo, but it's also important to realize that you don't want to give away any high-leverage situation in October -- even if it's the third inning. Vogt could have used one of his key relievers for four outs and -- if he was then worried about the long-term aspects of the bullpen fatigue -- brought in Cantillo for the fifth inning (or, the second-line relievers like he did, with Pedro Avila, Erik Sabrowski and Andrew Walters, who did fine over four innings except for a Giancarlo Stanton home run).
These decisions will be the strategic test for Vogt.
Game 2 starter Tanner Bibee is the staff ace and in theory has a longer leash than the other Cleveland starters, but with a rested bullpen heading into the game, Vogt should be as aggressive as possible once the Yankees turn the order for the third time.
That was certainly the case with Bibee against Detroit, when Vogt pulled him after 19 batters faced in the first game (even though he hadn't allowed a run) and again after 16 batters in Game 4. (The Guardians were leading 2-1 in a must-win game.)
The third time through means running through the Soto-Aaron Judge-Stanton gauntlet again (with Austin Wells batting between Judge and Stanton). That's left-right-left-right, so there is no obvious platoon advantage to gain.
Yes, you have to worry about Judge breaking out at any time, but he's still just 2-for-15 in the postseason with one RBI on a sac fly. He has drawn six walks so he's at least showing his usual patience, but the pressure on him is only going to mount the longer he goes without a big hit. For now, it feels like Soto is the guy to focus on. His numbers in 2024:
Fastballs: .347/.466/.728
Breaking balls: .213/.364/.373
Offspeed: .253/.390/.404
That feels like lefty Tim Herrin's domain. He throws his curveball 35% of the time and his slider 28% of the time. Lefties hit .143 against him without a home run (and righties hit only .194 against him). I'm using Herrin through the Soto-Judge-Wells trio and figuring out Stanton when you get to him.
Clase, of course, looms at the end of games. With his cutter, he's compared to the great Mariano Rivera, but what we don't yet know is whether Clase can deliver game after game and, like Rivera, do it with saves of more than three outs. His loss in Game 2 against the Tigers came in his second inning of work. He allowed another run in getting the save in Game 4, getting five outs. He did register a hitless, six-out save to close out the series -- but none of those appearances came on back-to-back days.
Clase doesn't seem worried about the potential workload.
"I think somehow my body has adjusted to the rhythm of the season," he said before Game 1 against the Yankees. "So sometimes when I pitch two, three days in a row, I actually feel more comfortable. I feel like I have more control over my pitches. I know it's kind of counterintuitive, but I feel more comfortable the more I pitch in a short period of time."
He -- and his bullpen mates -- will also have to figure out how to beat the Yankees without issuing seven walks like the team did on Monday.
"We talked about this before the series started, these guys work the count," Vogt said after the Game 1 loss. "They don't chase a whole lot. I think, if I take something away from tonight, we just need to attack the zone better, and we didn't tonight. They made us work."
The good news is Clase, Gaddis, Herrin and Smith didn't work. They'll be ready for Tuesday, with an off day to follow. They'll need to attack the zone and get outs -- just like they've done all season.