Episode 484: ALDS Game 4 Reactions

Jared Carrabis (0:00)

You asked for it, you got it. The Baseball is Dead Patreon is now open for business.

Dallas (0:05)

What's a BID Patreon without drafts? You can draft absolutely anything, and that's what we're doing, we're drafting everything.

Jay Hayes (0:10)

Well, we've got the blog, we've got nugs on the blog, we've got a book club, that's meeting once a month, here we go.

Jared Carrabis (0:15)

I'll be right there with J-Hey writing, and you can catch us with gaming streams, old games, new games, all of it. patreon.com/baseball is Dead, we'll see you there.

I mean, this is a sport that's on the precipice of irrelevance.

SPEAKER_4 (0:29)

The games are taking over three and a half hours, playoff games are taking over four hours.

Dallas (0:34)

Games too long, too slow, who cares?

Jared Carrabis (0:38)

This is a situation where baseball is in trouble to begin with.

SPEAKER_4 (0:42)

I hate to bring it to you, baseball is dead.

Jared Carrabis (0:44)

Baseball is dead.

Dallas (0:45)

Rest in peace.

Jared Carrabis (0:49)

There will be a Game 5 There will be a Game 5 You will have tonight off, Friday, enjoy your off day.

It's been a while since I've said that, I've just had a lot of baseball to watch a lot of baseball to consume, digest, analyze, bitch about, celebrate everything in between all the emotions during the postseason in October. But the Cleveland Guardians, Jay Hayes, Cleveland Guardians were victorious tonight by a final score of nine to five over the Chicago White Sox. A home team has yet to win a ball game in the series.

It looked like the White Sox will be sitting pretty. They just had to win one out of three after taking the first two in Cleveland. And this series is heading back to Cleveland for a decisive game five on Saturday night at 8 p.m. And Gavin Williams will take the ball for the Guardians. But he also took the ball tonight. And in real time on the stream, we were talking about whether or not that that was the right decision. I can tell you right now we have differing opinions on this very podcast. Is that where we want to start?

Dallas (2:03)

I think this is what you have to consider.

How have we watched the postseason and how have we watched the usage of starting pitchers even before the postseason started play out on their bullpen days instead of watching these guys throw or fire meaningless bullets in a bullpen, they have fired them in game situations. And when you look at the Guardians and their usage, there were two people who they had down there in the bullpen tonight that they didn't pitch. And guess what? One of them started the ball game yesterday, and the other came in and was supposed to serve as the bulk or long relief guy in Cantillo. Those are the only two guys that did not enter the game today. So as far as options down there, yeah, there were options. But like I said, one of them was the guy who started the game and couldn't make it out of the first inning. The other guy was the guy who was supposed to give you significantly more outs than he gave you the day before. So if your next option in a must win game is arguably your best pitcher and one of the best pitchers in baseball on his bullpen day with a day of rest ahead of you.

Yep. Give me Gavin Williams.

Jared Carrabis (3:12)

The game will Matt Festa was available to, but I think that's my thing. Cantillo threw what? An inning in two thirds. We talked about we were surprised he didn't go four or five. Like all of those options. If it's a close game, it's do or die. I'm willing to hear it a little bit more. It just felt unnecessary. Sometimes you can get the right result. They won the game, they moved to game five, but you can question the process.

I still think game five, he goes out there and gets smoked or it goes wrong pretty quickly. This is going to be the first thing people point and look at and say, you probably shouldn't have thrown him game four. Did he need to be used in that spot? And that's what the conversation will be. If he goes out and shoves game five, and you tip your cap and you say, it worked, you can't hate on it, scoreboard, that's all it is. It just felt unnecessary. That's the only word I would put on it.

Jay Hayes (3:52)

The distinction I would draw between this time and the last time we had this conversation was that it rendered Chris Sale unavailable to be used in the next game. That's not the case here.