Back in March, before a new baseball season bloomed, we ran our preseason MLB Power Rankings. The Los Angeles Dodgers were second, behind the then-healthy Atlanta Braves, but you had to scroll a while to find the three other teams still alive in MLB’s playoffs: the New York Yankees (10th), New York Mets (17th) and Cleveland Guardians (tied for 20th).
There’s a lot we didn’t know six months ago, like the extent of Gerrit Cole’s elbow issue, the injuries awaiting the Dodgers, and the legend of Grimace.
Now, as the Yankees, Guardians, Dodgers and Mets square off in the ALCS and NLCS, let’s take a look at a lesson we can learn from how each team reached baseball’s final four in 2024.
Cleveland Guardians
The lesson: Maybe an elite bullpen is enough
By the stretch run, it wasn’t hard to sell the idea the Guardians had the best bullpen in baseball. This season, they led all MLB bullpens in ERA (2.57), WHIP (1.05), holds (122) and opponent batting average (.203), all by a margin wide enough to drive a bullpen cart through it. Closer Emmanuel Clase built a Cy Young Award case around a 0.61 ERA, and his set-up guys — Hunter Gaddis, Cade Smith and Tim Herrin — all had sub-2.00 ERAs.
6 MLB pitchers pitched in at least 74 games during the regular season and had an ERA under 2.00. That’s very good.
4 of them were Cleveland Guardians. That’s ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/UKvP68yoA4
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) October 14, 2024
Could one super-strength really paper over the Guardians’ rotation concerns?
The answer is, more often than not, yes. Guardians relievers have thrown 63.4 percent of the team’s innings pitched this postseason, most among all teams that reached the Division Series. As the Tigers learned in Game 5 of the ALDS — when the Guardians used eight pitchers and one mighty swing from Lane Thomas to take the series from Tarik Skubal — sometimes you commit pitching chaos, and other times you get pitching chaos’d.
To say the Guardians relievers are doing the heavy lifting is an understatement. They are doing almost all the lifting. Alex Cobb recorded only eight outs in Game 1 of the ALCS, and Tanner Bibee was yanked after four outs in Game 2. Building an elite bullpen will not prevent catastrophe if a starting pitcher melts down early. But it’s clutch in October to have a bullpen capable of locking down leads and, when trailing early, keep the score close enough for a comeback.
Los Angeles Dodgers
The lesson: When you have a glaring need, address it emphatically
Still experiencing heartburn from the Dodgers’ bullpen game in Game 2 of the NLCS? Just imagine how you’d feel without Jack Flaherty in the fold!
There’s a world in which the Tigers held on to Flaherty at the trade deadline, or flipped him to the Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Brewers or (gasp) Guardians. But Andrew Friedman correctly assessed that the rotation was the Dodgers’ limiting factor, so he got a deal done (at a good price) for Flaherty.
Acquiring Flaherty looks even smarter now than it did at the end of July. Flaherty has a 3.46 ERA in 12 starts since the trade, and the Dodgers are 8-4 in those games. With Yoshinobu Yamamoto returning to full health, Walker Buehler struggling, Landon Knack getting hit around Monday and seven other starters sitting on the injured list, Flaherty taking the ball every fifth day is a massive relief for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
So, if you’ve got a need in July (and everybody knows it), skip the half-measures and address it aggressively. The same is true, by the way, of the Guardians getting Lane Thomas and the Yankees trading for Jazz Chisholm Jr. Take a big swing. You’ll be glad you did in October.
New York Mets
The lesson: In the playoffs, recency is more predictive than reputation
I was dead wrong about the Mets pitching staff. When Chad Jennings and I ranked each team’s postseason pitching core, we had the Yankees sixth, the Dodgers seventh, the Guardians eighth and the Mets … 13th. We felt that despite its run of success this staff would falter once the postseason began and every matchup was best on best. It seemed Kodai Senga might not pitch in the playoffs, and beyond Senga and Edwin Díaz the Mets staff was a group of pitchers the baseball world had given up on as impact players.
Reputation said Sean Manaea and Jose Quintana are good, but not great, lefties. Reputation said Luis Severino has not been both healthy and effective since 2018. Reputation said Phil Maton, Reed Garrett and Ryne Stanek are useful relievers if you need someone to cover the sixth inning.
But ranking on reputation over results — which said the Mets had one of the best pitching staffs in the sport since June — leaves you looking foolish when your bottom two teams, the Mets and Tigers, last as long or longer into October than your top two teams, the Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres. Sure, the postseason is best-on-best. October brings a different atmosphere. But it’s not a different game. The Mets didn’t get by with smoke and mirrors this season. It wasn’t a trick that would stop working when September ended.
New York Yankees
The lesson: Juan Soto is worth the price of acquisition
That’s the first lesson, anyway. After a few quiet offseasons, the Yankees made a splash in December by depleting their rotation depth — packaging Michael King, Randy Vásquez, Jhony Brito and Drew Thorpe with catcher Kyle Higashioka — to get Soto and Trent Grisham. Soto looked, on paper, like the perfect hitter to place ahead of Aaron Judge in the Yankees lineup. He was, in reality, exactly that. Soto had a .419 OBP and .989 OPS in the regular season while playing a Gold Glove-caliber (?!) right field.
But there’s another lesson here: Don’t stop adding.
Guaranteed only one year with Soto, Yankees GM Brian Cashman continued shaping the roster, in big and small ways, to cash in on this season. There were moves that made headlines, like signing Marcus Stroman and trading for Chisholm and Alex Verdugo, and then there were many more (seemingly) minor additions who have had outsized impacts: Luke Weaver, Jake Cousins, Tim Hill. Once they had the pieces assembled, the Yankees put them together in a way that would once have looked outlandish — Weaver closing? Chisholm at third base? Jon Berti starting at first in the postseason? — but has been a winning combination.
Ten of the players on the Yankees’ ALCS roster were not in the organization at this time last year. Soto has been brilliant in pinstripes, but the Yankees wouldn’t be here without other new guys playing their parts, too.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Keith Birmingham / MediaNews Group / Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images; Patrick Smith, Nick Cammett, Alex Pantling; Getty Images)
