Maybe it was just three games. Three pivotal games, so it has our attention and, therefore, could motivate us to draw broad conclusions when all it really has been is three games.
But for the first three games of the LCS, those who would like to see the revival of the starting pitcher received, at minimum, a retro-ish 48 hours.
Those NLCS/ALCS games were won by Sean Manaea and Carlos Rodon, who made 32 starts each this season, and Jack Flaherty, who made 28. Flaherty authored seven shutout innings, Rodon one run in six, Manaea three runs (two earned) in five.
Conversely, those games were lost by teams hoping to get as much as they could from two “starters” who have hardly pitched this year and from the opener in a bullpen game.
The Yankees are the LCS team closest to a “traditional” rotation going right now — with caveats. ALCS scheduled Game 3 starter Clarke Schmidt has made six starts since returning from missing 10 weeks with a lat strain. Luis Gil — due mainly to the postseason schedule — will have not pitched in three weeks going into his scheduled Game 4 start.
Through Monday night, starters had covered just 265 of the 525 ²/₃ postseason innings — or 50.4 percent. Among the final four, the Yankees were at 58.6 percent, the Mets at 55.1 percent, the Dodgers at 44.6 percent and the Guardians at 40.4 percent.
Teams must adapt to the times and their own reality. The postseason used to be when starters like Bob Gibson and Madison Bumgarner took on heavy workloads and rose to legends. But the modernity of the game — metrics that show unleashing one big-stuff reliever after another better deflates offense and the overflow of pitching injuries perhaps caused by throwing/spinning as hard as possible all the time — has led to teams rushing to the pen. Particularly now with each game so precious and staffs so physically withered.
No team, for example, has lost more starting pitching this year than the Dodgers. They just are not in position to have four they trust start games.
The Mets, even down Paul Blackburn and Christian Scott, decided it was better to try to get what they could from Kodai Senga and keep David Peterson and Tylor Megill for bullpen bulk innings.
The Guardians, long a bastion of excellent rotation development, didn’t have that this year. They lost their ace, Shane Bieber, two starts into the season when he needed Tommy John surgery. Young starters Logan Allen, Triston McKenzie and Gavin Williams regressed, and Carlos Carrasco could not recapture his best form.
No team received as much high-inning, high-quality work from its pen than the Guardians through the season and then their five-game Division Series win over the Tigers. But even Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt conceded, “We’ve relied on our bullpen all year long, but now in a seven game [ALCS], traditional seven games in nine days, you have to do it a little bit differently. With the days off we had in the DS, it allowed us to really push the bullpen more than typically.”
So starter innings help — among other things — to protect a pen. And what had we seen through three LCS games:
The Mets lost their NLCS opener with Senga, who was making his third start in an injury-plagued season and allowed three runs in 1 ¹/₃ lack-of-command innings. The Guardians lost their ALCS opener with Alex Cobb, who was making his fifth start in an injury-plagued season and allowed three runs in 2 ²/₃ lack-of-command innings. The Dodgers lost NLCS Game 2 with Ryan Brasier the opener in a bullpen game.
Even if everything had gone perfect in those scenarios, the teams knew that they would need their bullpens to log heavy innings. They didn’t get the best scenario.
Instead, the Mets used so much pen in a lost-cause Game 1 that Carlos Mendoza was down Jose Butto and Peterson and it was tricky navigating the final four innings to win Game 2. The Dodgers were in a position of almost flat-out running out of pitchers in Game 2, saved by three shutout innings from Brent Honeywell, who was not even on their Division Series roster.
The Dodgers won a do-or-die Division Series Game 4 against the Padres with an eight-pitcher tag team opened by Brasier. But how often can those chains hold with so many pitching well? And what is the impact of turning to relievers over and over both physically and in showing hitters the same arms constantly?
To try to stay in its opener, Cleveland went mainly with its B relievers, which included: Joey Cantillo, a starter who did not make his debut until July 28 and was optioned to the minors four times thereafter; Erik Sabrowski, who did not make his debut until Sept. 4 and appeared in eight regular season games; and Andrew Walters, who made his debut Sept. 12 and appeared in nine games. Cantillo faced four batters, walked three and threw four wild pitches — two that scored runs.
There are always big arms now in the minors to summon. However, for a few days this month, at least, it was a little more like the old days — it was pretty valuable to have a proven, stretched-out starter.
