Developing Cleveland Saved Its Three Best Relievers for Sunday. They Threw Four and Two-Thirds Scoreless Innings in a 3-1 Loss, and the Series Goes to Florida at 3-2

Stephen Vogt made a decision on Saturday night that was easy to defend and will be hard to live with. With Game 4 of the ALCS tied 1-1 after five innings and his opener-and-bullpen plan already into its third arm, he did not go to Hunter Gaddis, Erik Sabrowski or Cade Smith. He used Daniel Espino, Tim Herrin, Slade Cecconi, Matt Festa and Joey Cantillo instead, and Cleveland lost 7-3. "Now, it's a three-game series," he said afterwards, which was the point: the three best relievers would be fresh for Sunday, Monday and, if needed, Tuesday.

On Sunday the three of them, plus Shawn Armstrong, threw six scoreless innings. Cleveland lost 3-1. The Rays lead 3-2 and the series goes to Florida.

Saturday: the arms Vogt did not use

Cleveland's Game 4 plan was Armstrong for an inning, Foster Griffin behind him, and then whoever was needed. Armstrong was clean. Griffin went 3 2/3 on 44 pitches and gave up one run. Then it came apart in the way bullpen games come apart, one third of an inning at a time: Espino got one out and walked two and took the loss, Herrin gave up a run, Cecconi gave up two, Festa gave up a two-run homer to Yandy Díaz in the ninth, and Chase DeLauter let Jonathan Aranda's seventh-inning single roll under his glove so that two runs scored on a play that should have produced one. "A couple unfortunate plays for us tonight that we usually complete," Vogt said. Steven Kwan was blunter: the team "didn't play fundamental baseball."

The Rays' side of Saturday is the part Cleveland could not control. Through three games Tampa Bay's top four hitters were 7-for-41 with three RBI, and the AP says Kevin Cash was not worried; on Saturday they had six hits and drove in six. Aranda, 0-for-10 in the series, went 3-for-4. Junior Caminero, who had struck out four times in Game 3, hit a 110.7-mph fly ball that Petey Halpin caught at the wall and then a 110.2-mph double off Espino that put the Rays ahead for good. Nick Martinez, on a 46-degree night the Rays say is the coldest postseason game in their history, gave up one run in 5 1/3 and finished the season 3-0 against Cleveland with one run allowed in 18 1/3 innings. Freddy Peralta came out of the bullpen for the first time since 2024 and escaped a sixth-inning jam on nine pitches.

Sunday: the start that ended the plan

Parker Messick had thrown 198 innings this season between the regular season and the playoffs, per MLB.com, far past anything he had done before, and he had been knocked out before the end of the third in one of his three previous postseason starts. On Sunday he did not get out of the second. Díaz led off with a double over Halpin's head, and Messick walked Jonny DeLuca with the bases loaded. Aranda singled home Ben Williamson in the second. Messick's line: two innings, five hits, two runs, 57 pitches, 34 strikes. The AP calls it the shortest outing of his major-league career. Herrin gave up a third run in the third on Liam Hicks's looping single. Tampa Bay's leadoff hitter reached in each of the first four innings and six times in all, and, by the AP's count, in 10 of the 14 innings since Saturday's first pitch.

Then came the plan. Armstrong 1 1/3, Sabrowski 1 2/3, Gaddis 1 2/3, Smith 1 1/3. Six innings, four hits, no runs. The saved bullpen did exactly what it was saved to do.

It did not matter because Drew Rasmussen did the same for seven. He gave up a two-out single to DeLauter in the first and then retired nine in a row, allowed one more baserunner through six, and left after 95 pitches with a 3-1 lead and six strikeouts. He is 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA in three postseason starts, with 23 strikeouts and three walks. Cleveland's run came in the seventh, on singles by Kwan and José Ramírez and DeLauter's grounder between first and second. Tyler Wells struck out Ramírez to strand a runner in the eighth, and Bryan Baker converted his 35th straight save chance, his fifth of this October, with Jo Adell on second when Travis Bazzana grounded out. Kwan, who had two of Cleveland's five hits, threw out Taylor Walls at the plate in the fourth and took a run off the board with a leaping catch at the wall in the eighth. Without him it is 5-1.

Was the sequencing wrong?

The argument against Vogt writes itself. He conceded a game in which he could have used his best relievers in a tie, lost it by four, and then got nothing for the concession because his starter could not give him three innings and his lineup could not give him two runs. Cleveland has scored four runs in two games this weekend, on 13 hits. Saving the bullpen for a lineup that does not score is saving it for nothing.

The argument for him is better than it looks from 3-2 down. Gaddis, Sabrowski and Smith cannot throw nine innings on consecutive nights; a seven-game series with no travel day, which this one has because Friday's rainout erased it, is a question of which innings the elite arms cover, not whether they cover all of them. Saturday's loss was not the B-bullpen's alone. It was DeLauter's glove and an offence that had three hits off Martinez. Sunday's loss was Messick's 57 pitches and five Cleveland hits off a pitcher with a 1.29 postseason ERA. The decision to hold the three relievers back cost Cleveland, at most, the innings Espino and Cecconi pitched on Saturday, three runs across 1 1/3 innings, in a game it was already losing. The decision bought six scoreless innings on Sunday. The lineup wasted them. That is a different failure, and Vogt does not swing the bats.

What settles it is Monday. Cleveland's Game 6 plan is not public; MLB.com says Gavin Williams is in line for a Game 7 on normal rest, which implies another bullpen day in St. Petersburg against a Rays team that is expected to start Peralta, who threw nine pitches on Saturday. If the saved arms are tired by the sixth inning on Monday, the sequencing failed. If they are fresh and Cleveland still cannot score, it was never the problem.

The number

DraftKings had the Rays at -120 for Game 5 with a total of six, per ESPN. On October 14, with the series at 1-1, Sports Illustrated had DraftKings' World Series board at Brewers +105, Rays +340, Dodgers +350 and Guardians +550; the Rays had been +475 before Game 2. We have not seen a post-Game 5 board and will not guess at one. The AP notes that since the ALCS went to seven games in 1985, road teams that win Game 5 for a 3-2 lead have won the series four times in five, and that Cleveland has never come back from 3-2 down in an ALCS. Milwaukee, which has not played since Thursday, gets at least two more days off before Friday. Whoever arrives will have thrown a great deal more than the Brewers have, and only one of the two bullpens at the Trop on Monday has an obvious excuse.