In an era of short starts, the bullpen is running out in MLB’s League Championship Series

CLEVELAND — For a generation, he was as much a part of October as fun-size Snickers bars and pumpkin-spice lattes. Andy Pettitte made 44 starts in baseball’s postseason, logging so many innings that nobody else comes within 50. And every time he took the mound, Pettitte knew the expectation.

“I was going to probably throw 100 pitches, no matter what,” Pettitte said late Friday in a familiar setting: the New York Yankees’ clubhouse on the precipice of a pennant. “It’s just a different game now.”

So it was in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, when the Yankees and Cleveland Guardians somehow escaped without every pitching arm in a sling. Surgeons nationwide must have been transfixed by the Yankees’ 8-6 victory.

Fourteen pitchers took the mound at Progressive Field, down from 15 in Game 3. The attrition has led to late-inning thrill rides in a series that’s been much tighter, game to game, than its National League counterpart.

Both series, though, have something in common: neither has featured a game in which both starters lasted five innings. And almost every reliever seems spent.

“The game’s built on bullpens now,” said Pettitte, now a special advisor for the Yankees. “(Teams) piece it together, and that’s tough. Now, being around all year, you kind of see how the game’s so different from when I played. It’s just a new brand of baseball. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but teams are built to do it now. Relievers weren’t built to do it back when I pitched.”

In the 1995 postseason, Pettitte’s first, there were 31 starts of at least 100 pitches. In the 2012 postseason, his last, there were 29 such starts. So far this year we’ve had two, by the Philadelphia Phillies’ Zack Wheeler and the New York Mets’ Luis Severino.

In the 2009 postseason alone, Andy Pettitte racked up 30 2/3 innings pitched over five starts. (Photo: Jared Wickerham / Getty Images)

It would make more sense if the relievers were dominating. That’s not what we’ve seen this month, yet teams keep trying to bullpen their way to a title.

For Game 4 on Friday, the Yankees planned to give a night off to Luke Weaver, who had pitched in every postseason game and surrendered David Fry’s walk-off homer in Game 3. Yet even without their best reliever — and with his replacement, Tommy Kahnle, throwing all changeups to get the save, as Weaver warmed up — the Yankees expected minimal work from starter Luis Gil.

Gil was as fresh as he could be, having not pitched for nearly three weeks. A leading candidate for the AL Rookie of the Year Award, Gil was merely adequate in September, with a 4.00 ERA, but he did last at least five innings in all five outings.

So it was startling — even to Yankees manager Aaron Boone himself, it seemed — to hear this after the game:

“What was big was Luis getting us four innings,” Boone said, adding that he knew it sounded light. “Really I was keeping him at like, 75, 80 pitches. I think he ended up throwing 80 (actually, 79), probably even more than we really like.”

It’s all an educated guess, but it underscores every pitching move a manager makes from March to November: how long will each pitcher be effective, given how much he has rested? Now add the complications of the postseason, where the competition is better and the stakes are more intense, and this is what you get.

The starters aren’t trained to pitch deep in games, anyway, and now they’re at the end of a long season. And the relievers are not only taxed, but they’re more familiar to the hitters due to repeat appearances.

“Guys have been throwing a lot of innings and guys can be tired,” said Kahnle, who acknowledged he should probably throw a fastball or two next time. “But I would say adrenaline does kick in big-time in these games, so you don’t really notice until you come out.”

Making this third appearance of the ALCS, Tommy Kahnle threw 18 changeups to earn the save in Game 4. (Photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)

You notice it, though, in the lack of command. A tired pitcher can often still throw as hard as usual. But the ability to repeat mechanics suffers, and that’s what leads to mistakes in the strike zone.

“It’s the middle, end of October,” said Austin Hedges, the Guardians’ veteran catcher. “Everyone’s been training since the offseason to prepare for a six-month season. As much as your goal is to win the World Series, there’s only a handful of teams that play this long and it’s exhausting.

“You can see it in the past. There’s plenty of pitchers that have pitched a lot in the playoffs and then they come back the next year and they’re just not the same, just because of that whole extra month, and also the pressure of each moment is tough. So that’s very real.

“But also it’s something that they have to be able to respond to. I feel like their team’s experiencing the same thing. They’ve got a good bullpen, but they’re not necessarily pitching the way that I’m sure that they would like to, as well.”

The Guardians’ bullpen had a 2.57 ERA in the regular season, the best by any team since the 2013 Kansas City Royals. In the postseason, though, Cleveland’s relievers have been far more ordinary, with a 3.83 ERA. The Yankees’ weary (but less so) group has been better, at 2.97.

Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase, who gave up just five earned runs in the regular season, has now allowed eight in October. After blowing the save in Game 3 and losing Game 4, his ERA is 10.29. Manager Stephen Vogt said Clase’s problems were pitch location and a Yankees team that led the majors in walks and waits for mistakes.

“That is what the Yankees do really well,” Vogt said. “They take a really good approach against your pitchers, and then they get pitches over the middle. They don’t miss them, and they really capitalized.”

Whether through loud home runs or soft contact, the Yankees have made short work of Emmanuel Clase. (Photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)

He’s right about that: the Yankees have taken extraordinary at-bats this postseason, with Gleyber Torres and Giancarlo Stanton as dangerous as Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. While Judge and Stanton homered off Clase in Game 3, it was Anthony Rizzo, Anthony Volpe, Alex Verdugo and Torres who nicked him with singles and soft contact on Friday.

Cleveland has gotten 15 outs from a starter just once this postseason, when Matthew Boyd held the Yankees to one run over five innings in Game 3. Tanner Bibee, the nominal ace, lasted only 39 pitches on Tuesday, such a brief appearance that he’ll start on short rest in Game 5 on Saturday.

“The strength of our team has been our bullpen all year, so we’re gonna lean on that,” said Shane Bieber, the former Cy Young Award winner who needed Tommy John surgery after two starts this season. “I think you see most of these teams doing that as well, because it happens quick and runs are at a premium. Starters are definitely able to go deeper in games, but when it’s such high stakes, man, the leash is a little bit shorter.”

It’s a credit to the Guardians that they’ve made it this far without their best starter. Boyd was a shrewd signing — a veteran with a fresh arm after his own Tommy John rehab — but they simply do not trust any of their starters to pitch very long.

It’s a formula that worked in the regular season and got Cleveland past an even more bullpen-heavy team, the Detroit Tigers, in the division series. But now, with the top of the mountain in sight, the little engine is sputtering.

“I mean, everybody is tired,” Vogt said. “I think we’ve used them a lot. We’ve had to. It’s who we are.”

The Guardians have one more chance to win with this identity. It’s a tough way to live, and they’re not alone.

(Photo of starter Gavin Williams exiting the game: Jason Miller / Getty Images)