Playoff management is all about balancing immediate payoffs and long-term sustainability. Not ultra in the long run, mind you, but managing a bullpen for a seven-game series is trickier than simply pressing the same buttons every day until you win or lose. ALCS Game 4 featured three memorable bullpen decisions. The managers chose differently; they both paid the price. Ultimately, the Yankees prevailed over the Guardians in a 14-pitcher, three-and-a-half-hour, 14-run shootout. But a few early decisions absolutely shaped the way the game went, and that’s why they’re front and center here tonight.

No rest for Cade Smith

Cade Smith was one of the best relievers in baseball this year. If he wasn’t playing on the same team as Emmanuel Clase, we’d call him a lockdown closer. Instead, he is a dominant firefighter who can step in when Stephen Vogt needs him to freeze the opposition. And Vogt really needed him. He pitched in all five games of the ALDS. He got the first game of this series off, but then he faced the meat of the Yankees lineup in Game 2 and Game 3.

He throws almost every day, which hurts. He faces the same batters over and over again, which hurts. But what are you going to do, not use your best option against a team that has two MVP-level bats stacked together in an otherwise navigable lineup? Juan Soto had already homered and the Yankees led 3-2 when the top of the order came up in the sixth inning. Smith arrived, for the third time in four days.

In an ideal world, Vogt would give Smith the day off. But the demands of the present outweighed the utopian ideal of reasonable tranquility, at least in Vogt’s eyes. If it’s a diminished Smith or a rested arm further down the hierarchy, Vogt has selected Smith on every turn. Friday was perhaps one too many.

Smith’s fastball was behind by an average of two ticks. His location was scattered; he walked Soto on five pitches and then gave up a laser beam single to Judge. Without his usual late fastball life, he seemed to reach for the strike zone. That’s not where you want to be against a bunch of elite hitters seeing you for the third game in a row.

Smith has already faced Giancarlo Stanton twice this series, throwing him four fastballs in five pitches. He came back tonight with four straight fastballs, and Stanton was far from fooled. He took one for a strike, swung through another, took one for a ball and then took one he liked. You know what that means for Stanton:

The other boys

That blast gave Aaron Boone a 6-2 lead, and he had to make an immediate decision: use his normal circle of trusted relievers, or try to grind out a win while his top guys were rested. He chose the latter approach, an eminently reasonable decision. Luke Weaver had pitched in every Yankees playoff game and thrown almost as many innings as Smith; Clay Holmes had also appeared in every game. Boone was probably looking for an excuse to rest his boys, and a four-run lead in the fifth qualified.

Jake Cousins ​​pitched a clean inning. But Boone got greedy and tried to stretch Cousins ​​for a second frame. His reward? Two runners and no outs, and a panicked call to the bullpen for Holmes, who didn’t get the night off after all. That didn’t work even a little. Holmes had no feel for the strike zone. He left everything behind. He hung a slider on David Fry that so confused Fry that he considered it strike three. He hung one to José Ramírez, who hit the ball to right for a runscoring double. And then he left his waist-high sinker to Josh Naylor, who ripped it into the wall to drive home two more.

That negated the advantage the Stanton home run had given the Yankees, making it a 6-5 game. Boone didn’t have many great backup options either; the next man out of the bullpen was Mark Leiter Jr., who was only added to the playoff roster today as an injury replacement. But that’s what Boone had to deal with after Luis Gil’s short start and the rush of relievers behind him.

Leiter looked like a man on the fringe of the playoff roster. He gave up a warning shot to Jhonkensy Noel on the third pitch he threw. After escaping the inning, he gave up a leadoff double to start the next. Then he didn’t reach the first base line quickly enough on a two-out squibber. He tried to recover with a last-second tag to Anthony Rizzo and threw it straight through Rizzo’s legs, scoring that nasty opening double. It was 6-6, a new game, and the Yankees had given back that four-run lead in the name of protecting two relievers, one of whom was pitching anyway.

No rest for Emmanuel Clase either

Okay, this one wasn’t that hard of a decision. The game was tied in the ninth inning, so Clase came in to keep things that way. He gave up two home runs last night, and he has already given up more home runs and earned runs in October than in the entire regular season. But what was he supposed to do, not pitch here?

Like Smith, Clase wasn’t having it. His speed and location were both lacking. Rizzo and Anthony Volpe each hit center-cut, 98-mph cutters for singles to open the ninth inning. That must feel like a walk in the park compared to Clase’s normal arsenal of 100 mph cutters at the edges of the plate. After a steal, Clase produced one of those 100-mph darts, but Brayan Rocchio couldn’t get a handle on it and he wouldn’t have been able to stop the run to score anyway. Gleyber Torres scored an insurance run with a line drive single. For the second time in as many days, Clase didn’t have enough mustard to put the game aside. And that was that. The Guardians threatened in the bottom half of the inning, but were unable to score a run. Tommy Kahnle made a nerve-wracking save. Both bullpens are trashed, though New York’s is in slightly better shape, and there’s another game tomorrow. I wouldn’t bet on Smith and Clase showing up even if they did so poorly today.

Odds and Ends

– Both starters had a long rest – 25 days for Gavin Williams and 19 for Gil. They both looked rusty and Williams clearly only had 10 batters in; Vogt had no interest in Soto and Judge seeing him twice. Gil held on a little longer, but he couldn’t find his command, which was always a weakness, especially after so much time off.

– There were two bunts in this match, and I’m not sure which one was worse. In the bottom of the fourth, Austin Hedges laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt… with no one on base, against a pitcher who had walked him the previous time. Gil looked absolutely shocked as he set the ball up for an easy out. Jazz Chisholm Jr. might have given Hedges an edge by dropping a no-out bunt against Smith just before Stanton’s home run. You get a struggling opposing pitcher on the ropes, his fastball is two ticks behind, and your cleanup hitter bunts despite the platoon advantage? At least Hedges did it in a low-debt situation; I was shocked by Chisholm’s decision, especially with a strikeout-or-homer guy like Stanton next.

– Vogt pinch-hit for lefty Daniel Schneemann – with lefty Will Brennan. Then he pinch-hit for Brennan with right-hander Jhonkensy Noel – against a right-handed pitcher. It might be the strangest series of pinch-hitting in one spot in the lineup that I’ve ever covered. I’m sure there was a reason for the first change, and Noel’s was based on Leiter’s reverse platoon splits, but man, weird.

– Kahnle threw 18 pitches in the ninth inning, and all 18 were substitutions. It’s a spectacular field, but really, zero fastball? I wouldn’t want to throw it again tomorrow, especially against the same hitters.