to the dismay of a president<\/a> \u2013 seems unlikely.<\/p>\nThe Dodgers had hoped to have their usual stable of overpowering arms in the bullpen. They are spending more than $56 million this season (in average annual salaries) on six relievers who are injured or have been ineffective: Taylor Scott, Kirby Yates, Blake Treinen, Brusdar Graterol, Michael Kopech and Evan Phillips.<\/p>\n
The inventory of such high-powered relievers on most pennant-winners is the main reason for the demise of the World Series complete game. The best teams have several elite arms who can reasonably be considered better options for the back half of a game than a laboring starter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always felt like, at 110 pitches, there\u2019s nobody in the bullpen that\u2019s better \u2013 I\u2019m still the best option, unless you\u2019re gonna go to Mariano (Rivera),\u201d Hall of Famer CC Sabathia said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case anymore. There\u2019s four or five options down there that can probably get you out of a jam. So it\u2019s just the way that bullpens are constructed. If you have those weapons down there, why not go to them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabathia made 23 postseason starts and completed just one, to close out the Baltimore Orioles in a 2012 division series. In his World Series debut, in the 2009 opener at Yankee Stadium, he threw seven strong innings but lost to the Philadelphia Phillies\u2019 Cliff Lee, who threw a 122-pitch complete game.<\/p>\n
In the 93 World Series games since then, only one pitcher besides Cueto has gone all the way: the San Francisco Giants\u2019 Madison Bumgarner, who spun a shutout against the Royals in the fifth game in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in the playoffs, by nature, the starter has always been given a shorter leash because of what those games mean,\u201d said Merrill Kelly, who won Game 2 of the 2023 World Series for the Arizona Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably a reflection on the league in general, where we\u2019re at, right? The guy who leads the league in complete games every year throws what, two? Three? I think it\u2019s just on par with how we run bullpens now, and this 100-pitch mark that everybody seems so set on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, in the modern World Series, it is rare to see a pitcher last even that long. Only two pitchers in the last four have topped 100 pitches in a game: the New York Yankees\u2019 Gerrit Cole last year and the Houston Astros\u2019 Framber Valdez in 2022. Both times, they were done before reaching seven full innings.<\/p>\n
Kelly did, authoring one of just three World Series starts ever to last seven innings with at least nine strikeouts, no walks and no more than three hits. (The others: Roger Clemens in 2000 and Clayton Kershaw in 2017.) At 89 pitches that night, Kelly seemed a prime candidate for a complete game, something he\u2019d never done in the majors.<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
But Kelly had missed his location at times in the seventh, he said, and when that happens, it means he\u2019s probably fatigued, whether he feels it or not. The Diamondbacks had lost the opener in 11 innings, and Kelly was honest with manager Torey Lovullo about how much he had left.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong, I want the ball whenever it\u2019s given to me, for sure,\u201d he said. \u201cBut in that moment, especially after how we lost the first game, I cared more about handing it over to the bullpen with someone who\u2019s more fresh. I felt like that gave us a better chance at closing that game out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arizona soon rallied to put the game out of reach, and if those extra runs had come earlier, Kelly said he would have stayed in: \u201cIf it\u2019s 8-1, I\u2019m going back out there for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, Cueto only completed his start because the Royals turned a close game into a blowout in the bottom of the eighth. Otherwise, closer Wade Davis would have taken over.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohnny wanted to go back out,\u201d Royals manager Ned Yost said that night. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Look, you\u2019ve done your job very, very well tonight. And now we\u2019re going to let Wade do his. Keep your head in the game because if we score a couple of runs we\u2019ll let you go back out.\u2019 And we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
That game aside, the Royals of the mid-2010s set a model for future World Series pitching plans. After taking the Giants to seven games in 2014, Kansas City beat the Mets in five the next fall with Davis, Kelvin Herrera, Ryan Madson and Luke Hochevar each appearing at least three times and combining for 17 scoreless innings.<\/p>\n
The watershed moment came in Game 3 the next October, when both starters \u2013 the Cleveland Indians\u2019 Josh Tomlin and the Chicago Cubs\u2019 Kyle Hendricks \u2013 were pulled in the fifth inning of a 0-0 game. Ten pitchers would take part in a 1-0 Cleveland victory.<\/p>\n
By then, Cleveland manager Terry Francona had learned that a strong bullpen could be better than a traditional starter. In Game 3 of the ALCS in Toronto, starter Trevor Bauer \u2013 who had sliced his hand while fixing a drone \u2013 started bleeding on the mound in the first inning. It forced Francona into a bullpen game, and six relievers collected 25 outs in a 4-2 victory.<\/p>\n
That was an emergency, so Francona had little choice. In theory, the more you change pitchers, the more likely it is that one will falter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe (danger) for me is, you are taking out a guy that\u2019s having a good day and now you\u2019re going to ask three, four, five, sometimes six or seven guys to go in and not have a bad day,\u201d said Andrew Miller, who dominated for Cleveland in relief that October.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s inevitable that somebody slept wrong or just doesn\u2019t have the feel that day. I think it\u2019s really risky. When it works, you look like a genius, but you\u2019re asking the whole fire drill of relievers to come in and do their jobs \u2013 and you\u2019re facing the best lineups in baseball at this point. It\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of today\u2019s strategy, naturally, is based on data models that predict how a pitcher\u2019s repertoire will match a hitter\u2019s swing. Besides the methodology, though, there\u2019s nothing really new about that.<\/p>\n
In the 1929 World Series, Philadelphia A\u2019s manager Connie Mack used only right-handed starters against the Chicago Cubs, whose offense leaned right. In doing so, Mack shifted Lefty Grove \u2013 the greatest pitcher of his era \u2013 to the bullpen, deploying him as the games dictated. Grove closed out two victories (once with 13 outs, once with six) and the A\u2019s prevailed in five.<\/p>\n
When Casey Stengel led the Yankees to a record five consecutive World Series titles, from 1949 to 1953, he used relievers in more than half of the victories. The more modern Yankees have not relied on complete games in the World Series, either \u2013 they currently have a 50-game streak without one, dating to rookie Jim Beattie in Game 5 against the Dodgers in 1978.<\/p>\n
The Yankees used their Hall of Fame closer, Goose Gossage, to finish that World Series, and since then, just five starters have gone the distance in the clincher: Scott McGregor, Bret Saberhagen, Orel Hershiser, Jack Morris and Josh Beckett, in 2003.<\/p>\n
Starters still grab the last out now, but they usually do it in a relief cameo. The last four Dodgers World Series have ended this way, with Charlie Morton (2017), Chris Sale (2018), Julio Ur\u00edas (2020) and Walker Buehler (2024) throwing the final pitches.<\/p>\n
From 1962 through 1971, though, every World Series finished with a complete game by the winning team. Sometimes, even the pitcher himself was surprised to stay out there. In 1971, Pittsburgh\u2019s Steve Blass allowed two singles to start the eighth inning of Game 7, with the Pirates leading 2-0 in Baltimore.<\/p>\n
Surely, he thought, manager Danny Murtaugh would call for Dave Giusti, who had led the league with 30 saves and closed out the NLCS. Blass stayed in and allowed a run.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd even in the ninth inning, I went back out,\u201d he said a few years ago, in an interview for \u201cThe Grandest Stage.\u201d my book on the history of the World Series. \u201cIt was the heart of the order, the 3-4-5 guys, Boog Powell, Frank Robinson and Merv Rettenmund, and I think it took eight pitches and it was over.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoog Powell bounced out, and Frank Robinson, who had hit a slider for a home run for their only run in Game 3, is up. My first pitch to him is the same slider, hung up in the hitting zone, that he\u2019d crushed in Game 3. You ever have those dreams where everything slows down? I let the ball go and everything slowed down \u2013 and he popped it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was unbelievable. I used to see him when he managed and he came into Pittsburgh. He\u2019d say, \u2018You got away with one!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine a modern starter being allowed to face a future Hall of Famer for the eighth time in a World Series \u2013 especially as the tying run in the ninth inning of Game 7. In 1971, though, chances are Murtaugh had few choices better than a 15-game winner who was rolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re asking a lot out of these bullpen arms now, (but) they are probably better than ever,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI mean, the talent in every position, every fact of the game, is through the roof. The idea that you get a fresh look constantly \u2013 we\u2019ve heard about this third-time-through-the-order penalty so much, you don\u2019t even get to watch the guy in the dugout the previous half inning. It\u2019s a new pitcher every time you come up. It\u2019s got to be a challenge for hitters. It makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a way, it always has. In that very first World Series \u2013 which was best-of-nine \u2013 Pittsburgh\u2019s Deacon Phillippe worked five complete games. He won the three, but lost to Young in Game 7 and dropped the Game 8 clincher, too.<\/p>\n
In \u201cAutumn Glory,\u201d his book about that World Series, author Louis P. Masur<\/a> wrote that critics of the time recognized that Boston had gotten too many looks at the same pitcher.<\/p>\nPhillippe \u201cwent up against the Bostons once too often,\u201d The Sporting News reported. \u201cIt is natural to suppose that after a team has faced a pitcher three times in less than two weeks, that they should have time to familiarize themselves with that man\u2019s style of pitching to sufficiently hit him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third-time-through-the-order penalty now, the fifth-time-through-the-game penalty then. The World Series evolves, but the past always echoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2013 In the very first World Series game, at the Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds in Boston…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":326306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2502,1266,62,1290,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-326305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115423155215595401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}