It took me a couple of days to bring myself to put a finger to key (the technology-aided version of putting pen to pad). Six and a half months of build-up culminated on Saturday night and unfortunately for those who care about the guys representing our lovely but humble city by throwing and hitting that pretty white ball with red laces, it didn’t end well.
In my objective prediction, I was one game off. Yankees in five. I wish I had been more wrong. Congrats to them. They haven’t been to a World Series since 2009. Just 15 years and $3.3 billion in payroll spent since then and miraculously they’ve found a way to make it back. Truly inspiring stuff. Money doesn’t buy baseball wins any more than it buys happiness. It means that technically, it doesn’t, but it sure does make the happiness (or baseball wins, or the same difference) easier to achieve.
Even so, those highly paid players on the field donning “New York” on their chests on Saturday night needed to execute. And they did. Better than the Guardians did. So while I am being a little sarcastic about it, they did win fair and square.
Simply put, the main event of this entire series was the Yankees offense against the Guardians bullpen- a matter of strength against strength. The Guardians had the best relief pitching in the sport. The Yankees had the best lineup in the American League if not all of baseball.
Looking back objectively and with a little bit of perspective, the outcome was entirely one-sided. The Guardians bullpen pitched 28 innings over the course of the series. In doing so, they allowed a total of 17 runs (including unearned runs, their fielding isn’t without blame either). That’s an RA (as opposed to ERA) of 5.46. For the regular season, the Guardians bullpen’s RA was nearly half of that, 2.96.
More specifically, the Yankees’ best hitters were able to star against the Guardians’ best relievers. Games two through five saw at least one prominent Yankee homer against a prominent Guardians reliever.
Game 2: Aaron Judge‘s 2-run homer off Hunter Gaddis
Game 3: Back-to-back home runs by Judge and Giancarlo Stanton against Emmanuel Clase
Game 4: Stanton’s 3-run home run off of Cade Smith
Game 5: The decisive three-run home run by Juan Soto off of Gaddis
The unit that manager Stephen Vogt and the rest of the Guardians had been able to lean on all season long finally collapsed. And it was probably, at least in part, that reliance on relief pitching that was its ultimate undoing. Losing in five games is a sizable gap from winning the series, but I have to wonder if Vogt and the organization decided the result of the ALCS with how they managed their preceding series against the Tigers.
If a perfectly effective Matthew Boyd isn’t removed in the 5th inning of Game 2 or after the 2nd inning of Game 5 of the ALDS, is Cade Smith having to figure out how to pitch to Stanton with lowered velocity a little over a week and a couple hundred pitches later? Is Emmanuel Clase rendered ineffective if he isn’t called upon time and again to start pitching in the 8th inning?
We will never know for sure, but a combination of fatigue and facing the same hitters over and over again definitely wasn’t a benefit to the Guardians’ best relievers. Vogt made a lot of great moves over the course of the season and playoffs. It is probably harsh to critique a first-year manager for getting his team to second-best record in the American League and then to the final four in the playoffs, but I do hope there is something the organization can learn about using an extreme level of bullpening in a more targeted fashion in the future.
And I acknowledge the future because there is reason to believe we will be back here again. For as sour as this ending was, the preceding six months include a lot of sweetness. Again, the Guardians finished second in the American League in wins. They not only made the playoffs, but they earned a bye from the Wildcard round. They didn’t just win the American League Central Division, they won an improved American League Central Division that sent three teams to the playoffs. They were just one of three teams in the AL to win more games against .500 or better opponents than they lost.
This is a team that took two of three from the Phillies- the team with the best record in all of baseball- in Philadelphia this year by just playing their game of fundamentally sound brand of baseball. They flat-out embarrassed the eventual NLCS-appearing New York Mets by sweeping them in a similar fashion. They bounced back from a wobbly 12-17 record in August against a tough schedule to play .600 ball in September.
And that rough August wasn’t their only adversity. This season felt lost about ten games in when it was announced that Shane Bieber was out for the season. I said as much right here in this space.
Also, losing Bieber wasn’t the only setback within the team’s starting pitching. Expanding a bit, this team came into this year comfortably projected to have a strong starting rotation entailing Bieber, Triston McKenzie, Tanner Bibee, Gavin Williams and Logan Allen.
Disappointingly, McKenzie would struggle with command and would lead baseball in home runs and walks allowed before being demoted around the end of June, not being seen again this season. Logan Allen was equally ineffective and spent most of the second half of the season in the minors. Williams’s season was hampered by missing the entire first half with an elbow injury. He was woefully inconsistent upon his return, likely in part due to his body needing to play catch-up after missing so much time.
And yet, this team won 92 ball games. You know how?
All told Bibee gave the Guardians a 3.47 ERA in 173 2/3 innings, as he staked a claim as a potential ace moving forward. He would be entrusted as the Guardians’ best starter down the stretch and was arranged as their lead starting pitcher in the playoffs. The remaining four above-mentioned projected starters gave the Guardians an ERA of 5.03 in 261 combined innings (with Bieber pitching just 12 innings, albeit all scoreless ones).
The team was, in earnest, saved by what was thought of in spring as a minor move. The Guardians acquired Ben Lively on the free agent market for less than $1 million this season. There were questions about if Lively would even make the team out of Spring Training. While the start of his season was delayed by illness, he would eventually make a huge impact. Lively was the team’s second most dependable starting pitcher all year, throwing more Major League innings than in any other season of his career (151 innings). A journeyman who pitched for four MLB teams before the Guardians as well as spending time in South Korea, Lively really got his first full-time MLB opportunity with the Guards this year and made the most of it. His signing has paid off handsomely as not only did he perform so well in 2024, but he is still so early into his time vested in the Majors that his contract will be cost-controlled in 2025. If Lively plays out his arbitration years in Cleveland, he could be in a Guardians uniform through 2028, making him arguably the most underrated free-agent signing of all of last winter.
They also may not have all been the prettiest showing, but in 2024 at the age of 37, Carlos Carrasco did yeoman’s work and gave the Guardians more than 100 innings pitched. Only Bibee and Lively ate more innings. While his ERA wasn’t strong (5.64), the Guardians don’t survive this season without his contributions.
Of course, the biggest pitching contributions came from the bullpen that saw five relievers post ERAs below 2.00 while pitching at least 40 innings a piece.
Emmanuel Clase will get Cy Young ballot votes. I know October ended both poorly and a little weird for him, but he absolutely deserves the recognition. Clase, now Cleveland’s all-time saves leader, led the AL in Saves and pitched to a 0.61 ERA during the regular season. No other pitcher in baseball with 25 innings pitched or more had an ERA below 1.00. By comparison, Clase threw 74 1/3 innings. No one limited offenses from scoring better and it really wasn’t even close.
Cade Smith joins Ben Lively in the club of guys that we thought might make the team and turned out to be something way more. Smith was phenomenal, performing as the fireman who would put out the opposing team’s rallies. His fastball was statistically one of the hardest pitches to hit in the entire league. He has “future closer” written all over him.
Hunter Gaddis found a new and much better home as the 8th-inning set-up man. Once perceived as a spot starting pitcher who probably wasn’t long for the Majors, Gaddis was able to utilize all of his pitches to their maximum while pitching out of the pen. His stuff plays incredibly well in the role.
Tim Herrin went from being the backup lefty out of the pen behind Sam Hentges to being absolutely lock-down either as a lefty specialist or a 7th-inning guy. He was also the only one of the team’s big four to not surrender a high-profile home run against the Yankees.
And Eli Morgan is one of the bullpen’s unsung heroes, pitching just as effectively as the big four but doing so in lesser leverage situations, keeping games close or making sure comebacks didn’t start mounting.
Moving off of the sub-2.00 ERA guys, the Guardians found another good one in Pedro Avila, who they pilfered from San Diego and immediately found ways to improve his performance. The Padres gave up on Avila after just 8 innings this year. He posted a 3.25 ERA for the Guards, pitching in every possible role out of the bullpen and ended up eating more innings than any other reliever other than Smith.
Nick Sandlin looked like he was off to a monster season too before he never entirely found the same effectiveness after a mid-season injury.
Andrew Walters and Eric Sabrowski gave quality innings down the stretch and are sure to be part of the club’s future plans as well. And while speaking about the bullpen’s future plans, I would be remiss if I did not mention that Trevor Stephan (remember him?!) should be ready to return for next year’s Opening Day as well.
While the Guardians were certainly led by their bullpen, it wasn’t their only success story. 2023’s dreary and despair-inducing offense was replaced with some punch. The Guards finishing 12th in baseball in home runs won’t create click-bait headlines, but it was a significant improvement from being in dead last the previous season with a noticeable chasm between themselves and the rest of the league. They hit 61 more home runs in 2024, the equivalent of turning one Myles Straw into one Aaron Judge. Better overall results followed as the Guardians finished in the top half of baseball in runs scored.
On a more individual level, Jose Ramirez nearly went 40-40-40. Josh Naylor put up 30 homers and 100 RBIs for the first time in his career. Steven Kwan was legitimately playing at an MVP level and flirting with a .400 batting average before injuries brought him back down to earth. He looked as healthy and as menacing as ever in the playoffs. We were introduced to All-Star David Fry whose hot first half was temporarily slowed by injury before providing us with October heroics. We were given the gift of obliterated baseballs by Big Christmas. If you extrapolate Jhonkensy Noel‘s home run pace over 150 games, he would have hit about 30 home runs this year.. Lane Thomas joined the team at the trade deadline like a lamb but by September had morphed into a lion (.264 AVG, seven homers, six doubles from Sept 1st on, two homers nine RBI in the ALDS).
The wildest thing though is that nearly everyone I just mentioned: Bibee, Lively, all the bullpen guys, Hosey, Naylor, Kwan, Fry, Noel and Thomas are all set up to return next season.
You know what that is called? That’s called “a core”. That’s the kind of thing we’ve been talking about needing to create over the course of the last few years. This team has been searching for its next core of talent. And while I may be jumping the gun a little there are certain guys like Fry or Noel or even Smith or Lively that you would like to see replicate what they did again. There is some really encouraging stuff going on with this roster.
Let’s look at that Yankees’ series one last time but through a slightly different lens. I know that losing in five games leaves a lot of distance between what happened and the outcome we were hoping for, but outside of Game 1 where the Guardians beat themselves by walking and wild-pitching their way out of the game, every game in the series was winnable and had positives.
What was most noticeable to me though is that following ALDS Game 5 vs. Tarik Skubal (or perhaps it was even Fry’s Game 4 home run), the existential dread of trying to figure out how the Guardians were going to scratch runs across the board that I have felt in previous playoff years was gone. The Guardians went toe to toe with a World Series-caliber team and were in every ballgame. They chased Gerrit Cole earlier than planned. They were tied in the ninth or later of two of their losses. The Guards put up a five-run inning in a winner-take-all game against the likely AL Cy Young Award winner. They had arguably the most exciting playoff victory any Cleveland baseball team has had in my lifetime in Game 3 of the ALCS.
More simply put, this didn’t feel like a team winning a lowly division and just hoping to get lucky. This felt like a team that belonged. In past playoffs, the Guardians’ opponents had to look out for Ramirez and maybe Kwan… that’s it. As this playoffs progressed though, it felt like our opponents had to watch out for Ramirez, but they also had to watch out for Naylor… and Fry… and Manzardo… and Kwan… and Thomas… and Noel. Even in their failures, the bullpen was still vaunted. It just ended up overused.
Admittedly, the only drawback is that while there is always next year, next year is never guaranteed. There’s going to be a whole other 162 games to get through, with their own adversity and their own surprises.
But compared to the feeling we had 12 months ago about this team’s standing in the baseball world, I will absolutely take the feeling we have right now. Even if that feeling includes the bitter aftertaste of watching the Yankees represent the AL in the Fall Classic.
The manager is in place and I think he learned a lot. The core is in place, and they proved they can play on a grand stage. This doesn’t feel like “scrape into the playoffs and see what happens” anymore. For the first time in more than half a decade, this feels like we are one of the true contenders in the American League moving forward.
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