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| Via SBNation |
In the race to the World Series, efficiency late in the game is crucial.
As a clear and brisk October afternoon faded to dusk, Tim Lincecum stepped to the mound. Roughly 44,000 onlookers dotted Cincinnati's gleaming Great American Ballpark, hoping this next pitch would prove a turning point.
A failed pickoff attempt had just allowed Dioner Navarro to advance to second, and now what had been a lost day for the Reds looked a little brighter. A solid single could score him, and maybe that would cascade into a rally. Maybe Cincinnati could shake Lincecum and open the door to a comeback. After all, he was no longer the Freak, that Cy Young-winning dervish. Here in the fading light of Wednesday, Oct. 10, he was just another reliever.
Lincecum came set, then vaulted into his signature pre-pitch contortion before letting fly an 0-2 missile toward pinch hitter Chris Heisey. Heisey swung, the ball whistled past, and just like that the door was slammed shut.
***
Later that same night, long after Lincecum's 4 1/3 innings of relief helped the San Francisco Giants tie their playoff series at two, a 27-year-old Alabama native found his seat in the Yankee dugout. David Robertson had just polished off his second inning, mowing through the heart of the Orioles' lineup. Two innings is normally a good night's work for the young reliever, but tonight he had to stay warm. With just 24 pitches under his belt and tied at 2-2 in the 12th, there was some question of whether he'd be rewarded with a third trip out there.
No more than five minutes later, Yankee outfielder Raul Ibanez deposited that question and the baseball into the right field seats. Robertson ran back out onto the field, but this time to celebrate the win that gave New York back control of the series.
***
Tigers closer Jose Valverde witnessed a similar scene that night, but at his expense. Asked to record the final three outs of a 3-1 game, he promptly allowed a two-strike single. Oakland A's third baseman Josh Donaldson then slashed a double, and Seth Smith followed with one of his own. In eight pitches, that two-run lead had evaporated. It would take just six more pitches to turn a sure win into a crushing loss.
***
Which is something rookie Trevor Rosenthal wouldn't know much about. The Cardinals reliever pitched in each of St. Louis' three ALDS wins, racking up six strikeouts as he cruised through 3 1/3 innings. On Oct. 10, while Lincecum toiled through half a game and Robertson and Valverde sweated out close finishes, Rosenthal was moseying toward an 8-0 win, likely wondering what all this "high-pressure playoffs" fuss was all about.
The fuss is this: As four teams resume their race to a title tonight, Lincecum, Robertson, Valverde and Rosenthal are perhaps the most important men in the postseason. They are the main cogs in their teams' bullpens, those collections of high-profile flameouts, unknown youngsters and quirky specialists who will make or break a World Series run.
Relievers have always played a crucial role in the playoffs, but none more so than this year. The Giants, Yankees, Tigers and Cardinals are stacked with a brutal combination of home-run hitters and high-contact connoisseurs; players that can either hit it out or refuse to get out. That means that the squad whose pitchers can retire the opposing side most efficiently, and especially late in the game, will hold the razor-thin advantage that often separates the league's final four.
All of the remaining teams have shown they can reliably get opposing hitters out. After all, they wouldn't be here if they consistently lost the race to 27 outs. But the key at this point in the season is efficiency, as in, who can reliably get opposing hitters out while also minimizing those hitters' chances of even making contact.
Nowhere was this more true than in the just-completed divisional series. With each going to the full five games, the margin for error was minuscule. And often those errors came late in games when relievers couldn't secure a final strike. Ten of the 20 divisional games were decided by runs in the seventh inning or later, including four of the five contests between the Yankees and Orioles. By the time New York squeezed the final out of its Game Five win, Yankee relievers had allowed just one run in 11 1/3 innings, equal to a 0.79 ERA. The Orioles? Seven runs in 19 2/3. Not bad, but not nearly good enough to keep pace.And while Washington Nationals fans will moan about the Strasburg shutdown or Bryce Harper's struggles or even about the difference in payrolls (Oakland says Hi and Suck it up), none of that would have helped out the bullpen's woeful performance. Even before allowing six runs in that devastating final-game loss, the Nationals' relievers had pitched to a 5.29 ERA, worst among the eight playoff teams.
So what does that mean for the remaining teams? For one, high-quality pitching out of the pen will become even more crucial. Teams like Detroit and San Francisco were able to compensate for some of their relief deficiencies by having their best starters go deep into games. Tigers ace Justin Verlander almost singlehandedly won the series, throwing 16 dominant innings in two wins. Likewise, the Giants jumped ahead early and then hung on late in two of their wins, cutting down on the need for efficiency in getting the last 12 outs.
But each team will now face a bona fide ace in those crucial games. Verlander will duel C.C. Sabathia, who threw a complete game to finish off the Orioles on Friday. San Francisco's Matt Cain will face Chris Carpenter, he of the 2.88 career postseason ERA. The defending champs are 13-3 in playoff games that Carpenter starts. With such even matchups starting the game, there's a higher likelihood that a winner will be decided late.
Which is bad news for the Tigers, and particularly good news for the Yankees and Cardinals, at least given what we saw in the divisional series. The Tigers not only had the second-worst overall relief ERA (5.00, eclipsed only by the Nationals), they had an even worse relief ERA when measured from the seventh inning on (5.40).
On the flip side, the Yankees and Cardinals finished tops in relief ERA, relief ERA after the seventh inning, and efficiency. Relievers Robertson and Rosenthal had a lot to do with that, recording multiple scoreless, high-strikeout innings.
The best relieving corps will square off against the worst tonight in the opening game of the league championship round. You can bet that coverage will focus on anything but those collections of high-profile flameouts, unknown youngsters and quirky specialists. Robertson is eclipsed even within his own pitching corps, much less by the white-hot glare of stars like Derek Jeter and media lightning rods like Alex Rodriguez. Across the way, Valverde's failure in Game Four of the ALDS is an afterthought, minor collateral damage in the life of a closer. And across the nation, Lincecum is still just a former-Freak reliever and Rosenthal anonymous even on the streets of St. Louis.
But over the next week, the stars will hand the ball to these four men and their ragtag bands of bullpen-mates, and they will be asked to handle the game's highest-pressure situations. What they do in those moments will determine more than anything the course their teams take.
Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.
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