How Yankees will try to break down Guardians' bullpen, which is one of the best in MLB history

When the American League Championship Series begins Monday night at Yankee Stadium, the Cleveland Guardians figure to again count down the outs until they can get their bullpen into Game 1, preferably with a lead. And why wouldn’t they? Cleveland had the best bullpen in baseball this season and one of the best all-time. By WAR, it was the best bullpen ever (13.7 WAR). The Guardians will need their bullpen to remain excellent to outlast the New York Yankees.

“I think the best thing that we do is that we plan the game every night, and we’ve done this all year long. We plan the game,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said about his bullpen after winning Game 5 of the ALDS. “Obviously there’s nights where you have to rip it up, but we’ve talked through exactly what we want to do and when, and using [pitching coach Carl Willis], using the pitching staff, using the analytics, using everybody. And I think I’ve just learned that there’s times where you can follow script when the game tells you to and there’s other times where you have to rip it up and go rogue, and you can’t be married to one idea.”

The Guardians have an excellent bullpen and they use it A LOT. Four Cleveland relievers were among the top 11 in appearances during the regular season, and righty Cade Smith and lefty Tim Herrin appeared in all five ALDS games against the Detroit Tigers. Smith got at least four outs in four of his five appearances. Closer Emmanuel Clase and setup man Hunter Gaddis also pitched four times in the five-game series. Cleveland’s starters threw 18 2/3 innings in the ALDS. Their bullpen threw 25 1/3 innings.

“It does speak, again, to the mentality of all hands on deck. In the bullpen, it’s whatever it takes,” Smith said after Game 5. “Everyone wants to prepare as best we can for our name to be called at any point, and as far as doing it every day, we have some days in between, it’s been a little bit of a different pace. But again, like just whatever we can do to prepare and really go out and compete. That’s what makes it fun is going out there, competing, and playing.”

As good as they were late in the season, the Tigers were not an especially dangerous offensive team. They ranked 29th with a .300 team on-base percentage despite averaging 3.94 pitches per plate appearance in 2024, seventh most in baseball. The Tigers just didn’t turn enough of those long at-bats into times on base. During their 31-13 run to a postseason berth, Detroit had a .314 on-base percentage, which is at least league average. The Tigers won because of their pitching, not their offense.

The Yankees, meanwhile, are a much different animal. They were among the most disciplined offenses in baseball during the regular season — Aaron Judge and Juan Soto ranked 1-2 in on-base percentage and no one was within 24 points of them — and they took it to another level against the Kansas City Royals in the ALDS. New York drew 27 walks against 28 strikeouts in the four-game series, and Kansas City’s starters — Seth Lugo, Cole Ragans, Michael Wacha — managed only 17 2/3 innings.

Here are the plate discipline numbers on New York’s offense during the regular season:

“That’s who we are. That’s our DNA. That’s what we try to do,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said about his team grinding out at-bats during the ALDS. “From Day 1 in spring training, that’s what we talk about, and these guys go out and live that. It’s like, we haven’t really broke through in a huge way yet, but we’re giving ourselves a lot of opportunities against a really good pitching staff… You’re not always going to get a hit, you’re not always going to get a result, but I feel like the quality of the at-bat has been there.”

With all due respect, Cleveland’s rotation is not Kansas City’s. Lugo and Ragans were two of the best pitchers in the game this year and Wacha is a more than qualifying No. 3. Tanner Bibee had a great regular season for the Guardians, though their No. 2 and 3 starters in the ALDS were Matthew Boyd, who functionally started a bullpen game in Game 5, and Alex Cobb, who threw only 41 pitches in Game 3 after missing time with a blister late in the season. It seems likely Gavin Williams will draw a start in the ALCS.

The Yankees wore down starters all year and they did it again in the ALDS. There’s no reason to think that won’t be their approach in the ALCS. Wear down Bibee & Co., then go to work on the bullpen. Against the Guardians, getting to the bullpen is not a good thing, though this late in the year, workload is a concern. These guys — Clase, Gaddis, Herrin, Smith, etc. — worked a lot during the regular season and again in the ALDS. To their credit, they’ve answered the bell. When does it become too much though?

The question is not will the Guardians lean on their bullpen in the ALCS. Of course they will. The question is whether they can continue to excel with this workload. The ALDS had an extra off-day this year. There was plenty of built-in rest. The ALCS schedule is less forgiving — there are off-days after Game 2 and Game 5, that’s it — and short starts and early calls to the bullpen could take their toll later in the series. This goes for the Yankees and their core relievers too, of course. This cuts both ways.

Cleveland’s bullpen has been so good under this heavy workload all season that I will need to see them crack to believe it’ll happen. If the workload catches up to the bullpen and it falters, then the jig is up. The Guardians will have a hard time overcoming that. They are here largely because their bullpen has been so good all year, it’s been the difference in so many close games, and Cleveland will need that to be true to overcome a disciplined Yankees team that gives away few outs.

“We’ve relied on our bullpen all year long, but now in a seven-game (series), 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. Obviously these are the guys that helped us get to this point. They’re going to be pitching.”