Thoughts For A Sunday Night - On The Way to New York Edition

 1. Game 5 vs Detroit

Vogt will be the AL Manager of the Year now that his top competitors have been eliminated.   That being said, I knew he was choking today's game before it even started when he decided to start Bo Naylor and Noel instead of Martinez and Hedges.  This is a sign of a guy overthinking it and, as expected, little Nalz and Noel went 0-7 with a bunch of Ks and weak contact.

Seeing that lineup made me also really sure that he would panic and remove Boyd at the first sign of trouble and then create a bullpen mess the rest of the game.  That's exactly what happened.   

Leave in hitters who don't hit, remove a SP who is dealing.  Check.

People will respond and say that the Guardians won the game.  That they did, but at what cost.

• Our relievers are way, way overworked
• Gaddis with his two largest pitch counts ever, coming in back-to-back games.
• Clase with a two inning save for only the second time in his career
• Smith, Herrin, Gaddis all pitching in all 5 games, many being overextended beyond anything they have ever done
• Pulling same handed pitchers and replacing them with opposite handed pitchers leading to unfavorable matchups.
• Our starters are underworked
• Our remaining pitchers either have their confidence damaged or destroyed.
• He failed to give young guys chances
• Manzardo for Fry in the 9th would have gone a ways to help in the next series
• Daniel Schneeman didn't get a touch
• Angel Martinez hardly got a chance
• Gavin Williams didn't get a chance
• It is going to take a village to beat the Yankees in a 7 game series.  The small war party of your best warriors will not get the job done.  

There is nothing that gives me the sense that Vogt will be able to flip the switch and actually manage and actually manage with his whole roster in the upcoming NY series.  His use of the bullpen has been almost criminal as it is now HIGHLY likely that guys will come up lame either next spring or during the season due to their overuse in 2024.  We need to limit that damage to the level it is now instead of having the misconception that the way he managed in the ALDS is the right way to manage and, especially not the right way to manage in a best-of-seven ALCS.  

Because he totally mismanaged this series and, to their benefit, the Guardians found a way to overcome his overmanaging and stll win the game and the series.  But what he did needs to stop.  More about that when I talk about who I think should be on the ALCS roster.

Before looking ahead, I have to give credit to Lane Thomas for his clutch play.  Ditto to the relievers for gutting it out and for Boyd, Bibee and Cobb for giving what they were asked and not complaining about being lifted early.  Ditto to David Fry who was did well while continuing to be overused.  Without him we don't make the playoffs and we certainly don't go to the ALCS.  Finally, it was GREAT to see Rocchio to silence his critics.   I hope this is what springboards him to being an elite offensive and defensive SS going forward.  

2. Looking Ahead - ALCS Roster

Tough choices are ahead for the Guardians in this series.  My guess is that they have to go 13 hitters and 13 pitchers given that this is a best of 7 series and with the way they used their bullpen in the ALDS. So...

Position players:

Hedges, Bo Naylor, Ramirez, Josh Naylor, Gimenez, Rocchio, Kwan, Thomas, Fry are locks. That's 9, leaving 4 spots.  The Yankees look like they may have 2-3 LHRP and 1 LHSP.  This would seem to imply that we should be LHH/SH-heavy in this round.  So, to me, the next 4 should be:

Brennan, Martinez, Manzardo, Schneeman,

I really debated Straw (to start in CF, pushing Thomas to RF, where he is much better defensively) instead of Schneeman and whether I could justify Noel if we needed a RH pinch-hitter.  Unfortunately, I just think Noel played himself off this team with his last month of the regular season and his first series and Straw doesn't bring any platoon advantages as I don't think he will be needed often enough against the Yankees (25% vs SP and maybe 25% vs RP, if the Yankees would even fear him enough to make a platoon switch.  Still, Thomas has no range in CF so if they surprised us and included Straw for defense, I wouldn't be surprised, even though I think Straw is becoming a shadow of his Gold Glove self.  He still, however, is much better than Thomas in CF.  I think, on the other hand, that Brennan, Martinez, Manzardo and even Schneeman may be better options given the pitchers the Yankees are likely to deploy.  This gives us a more LH slant to our bench but I think we already have enough RH and SH hitter guys to combat the LH RP the Yankees may throw at us.  I think we would sucker them into using their LH RP for matchups but I don't think those matchups would not prove favorable to them as this series would unfold.

Pitchers:

Bibee, Boyd, Cobb, Clase, Smith, Gaddis, Herrin and Sabrowski are locks, leaving 5 spots left.

For me, the 5 guys should be: Williams, Lively, Cantillo, Avila and Walters.

That last spot was tough for me because I had to choose Walters over Morgan and Sandlin.  Still, given how Vogt abused his leverage relievers in the ALDS, I was looking for length from Avila and, potentially, Lively or Williams, so I am willing to gamble on Walters for a 1 or 2 time usage in this series, hoping he gets it together.  The Yankees know Morgan more than well enough to abuse him just enough to maybe steal a game from us.  I think deploying Walters, a totally unknown quantity to the Yankees, 1 or 2 times in the series may get us better results.

The pitchers I suggest are only practical if we are looking for bulk relievers and realize we cannot use our leverage relievers in any way that is similar to how they were abused in the ALDS.  Some of these guys like Avila, Cantillo and Williams/Lively could bring us enough length as bulk relievers that we could bridge to Smith OR Gaddis in the 8th and Clase in the 9th, instead of trying to stretch out the 3 of them and risk long-term damage to their arms and short term downturn in their performance.

Summary

So, there it is.  My 26 for this series.  It is all a gamble as to what situations will present themselves but I have found that people work best when they know their role and you don't ask them to do more (or less) than they expect.  Doubt that the Guardians will go this way but this is what I would do.