Yankees Survive Battle of the Bullpens to Move Within One Win of World Series

With both teams relying on exhausted relievers, New York outlasted Cleveland to establish a 3–1 ALCS lead.

The Yankees are one game away from returning to the World Series. / David Dermer-Imagn Images

It might be time for the Cleveland Guardians to shorten their scouting report on New York Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle, whose scoreless ninth inning on Friday featured 22 straight changeups. This after a scoreless 1 2/3 innings on Thursday that featured 18 straight changeups. 

“Typically, I can’t be throwing 44 straight changeups,” Kahnle says. “I do have to kind of change the approach. I can’t just typically throw changeup after changeup, but if we tend to be getting away with it, we can’t stray away from it. But I would like to incorporate some more fastballs, definitely.”

So far, he has gotten away with it: Kahnle sealed an 8–6 win in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series that pushed the Yankees 27 outs from the World Series. Doing that math on Saturday in Game 5—the third straight without an off-day—might constitute manager Aaron Boone’s most difficult challenge yet. It had him in fits on Friday. 

When top setup man Clay Holmes faltered in the seventh inning—his second meltdown in two nights—Boone went to righty Mark Leiter Jr., who he had added to the roster only that afternoon. 

“We still had a long way to go to the finish line, and frankly I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to get there,” Boone says. 

Starter Luis Gil, pitching for the first time since Sept. 28, helped, pushing himself to 79 pitches in four innings and exiting with a 3–2 lead. That left 15 outs, and not quite enough pitchers to get them. The bullpen, which did not allow a run in the American League Division Series, is beginning to show signs of wear, starting with seven runs allowed through the first three games, five in Game 3. 

Closer Luke Weaver, top lefty Tim Hill and Holmes had each pitched in all three games of the series, and Weaver had thrown 62 pitches—just three fewer than Guardians Game 1 starter Alex Cobb. So Weaver was unavailable, and the others were limited. 

But not just because of how often they’d pitched—because of whom they’d faced. Many fans are by now familiar with the third-time-through-the-order effect, in which hitters facing a starter the last five postseasons raise their weighted on-base average from .310 the first time they see him, according to a study by The Score, to .315 the second time to .323 the third time. That’s why you see so many managers pull starting pitchers after 18 batters in October. At that point, they turn to their bullpen—where the effect is even more pronounced. The first time that hitters see relievers, they manage a .298 wOBA; the second time, .300; the third time, .321. (By the fifth time, that figure is .450—making hitters, on average, better than Shohei Ohtani.)

Some relievers try to mitigate the effects by mixing up their sequencing from one outing to the next, withholding a certain pitch in one situation in the first game only to break it out in the second or third game. Kahnle prefers the opposite approach: “I’m just trying to get three outs as fast as possible,” he says. 

Weaver has now seen the three most dangerous Guardians three times each: José Ramírez, Josh Naylor and Lane Thomas. After Game 4, Kahnle has also seen three Guardians three times each and another one twice; Hill has seen two three times each and two more twice; Holmes has seen three twice each. 

“The more you see a pitcher, the more comfortable you get,” Kahnle sums it up. He acknowledges that fatigue is a factor, too, but adds, “Adrenaline does kick in big time.”

So Boone turned to Hill against the top of the order. DH Giancarlo Stanton briefly made things easier when he blasted a three-run homer to center in the fifth against the Guardians’ second-best arm, Cade Smith, to make the score 6–2. 

Stanton's home run in the fifth gave the Yankees some breathing room. / David Richard-Imagn Images

Was Smith tired?

“Everybody is tired,” says Guardians manager Stephen Vogt. “I think we’ve used them a lot. We’ve had to. It’s who we are.”

Twelve outs to go. Boone brought in Jake Cousins for the first time this series and got a bit greedy when the righty made it through the sixth. “I tried to steal a couple outs with Cousins going back out,” Boone says. 

Cousins walked the first hitter of the seventh and allowed a single to the second. Boone summoned Holmes and watched him go strikeout-double-double-walk to score three. So in came Leiter with one out and the go-ahead run on first. 

“The thing I said to him before the game was: You might find yourself in the biggest spot of this game,” Boone says.

Leiter got Jhonkensy Noel, who hit a game-tying drive in Game 3, to fly to right and struck out Andrés Giménez to end the threat. He allowed the tying run in the eighth when he failed to make a play at first base, just one of half a dozen sloppy moments in the field for both teams. But that gave the Yankees a chance to face the best closer in the game—who is also suffering from overexposure. 

Emmanuel Clase just turned in one of the best seasons in history, finishing with a 0.61 ERA, but he has been positively mortal in the playoffs. The Guardians have lost five games; he has given up a lead in three of them. 

“He’s throwing a lot,” says Boone. “Like a lot of our guys, a lot of their guys have thrown in the postseason.”

The Yankees strung together two singles, a stolen base, an error and another single to bring their lead to 8–6. To hold it they turned to Kahnle. 

“I am cognizant of how much most of these guys have thrown,” says Boone. But he wanted to win the game, and he wanted to do it without using Weaver.

“It’s tough going into a game saying Weaver is down, but you’ve also got to have a little bit of that discipline as you kind of go through this,” Boone says. “That’s the challenge.”

Kahnle benefited from a questionable third strike call to get Thomas, then walked Noel and allowed a single to Giménez. With runners on first and second, he induced a flyout and a grounder to second to end it. 

Perhaps no one breathed easier than Boone, who had solved the equation for one more night. He would surely prefer to stay away from Kahnle in Game 5, although his reliever insists he’ll “do everything I can to be [available] tomorrow.” Maybe he’ll even throw a fastball.