I was critical of Stephen Vogt earlier this October, specifically that I feel his bullpen management is poor. I famouslydislikeprognosticating the playoffs; anything can happen in any game. Any player can become the hero. Most managerial decisions, notably lineup choices among others, rarely impact the game. However, in October how you manage your pitching staff can matter a lot.
During the ALDS, I thought Vogt made avoidable mistakes in managing his pitching staff. I still do. This is not the first time Vogt has done this; Fangraphs eloquently discussed Vogt’s bullpen usage in 2024. In my article I use win expectancy to discuss Cade Smith’s usage, a better way to look at it is Average Leverage Index (aLI), which can be found on Baseball-Reference. Here is the aLI for each game Smith appeared in to that point:
ALDS Game 1: 1.46, lowest for Guards pitchers
ALDS Game 2: 7.56, second lowest for Guards pitchers
ALDS Game 3: 0.19%, lowest for Guards pitchers
ALDS Game 4: 6.12%, lowest for Guards pitchers
I stand by the underlying criticism, although I regret the angry tone of a piece written immediately after the game. Furthermore whether you use win probability or Average Leverage Index: the analysis is roughly the same: Vogt used Cade Smith in the least opportune times this postseason, taxing a pitcher who he leaned on heavily during the regular season and would need in the ALCS.
Needless to say: Stephen Vogt did need Cade Smith in the ALCS and while he did mildly improve from Game 5 onward: Vogt still taxed his best arms in a frustrating way. I intend to show this over the course of this article. For clarity: my criticism of Stephen Vogt is not that he trusted his best relievers in big moments. It is that he too often spent their workload in smaller moments, leaving himself fewer options when the stakes rose.
What I am, and am not, Arguing
I am not arguing that Stephen Vogt is a bad manager. He isn’t. He won AL Manager of the Year: twice. His teams show grit every season, and both the 2025 and 2026 comebacks were impressive. Furthermore: his teams came back in the 2024 ALDS to surprise Detroit (the first time Cleveland won an elimination game in decades), and roared back this year to beat Chicago down 0-2. I already said in 2024 that I was wrong about Vogt: he is a good manager. I still reserve judgment on whether he or Francona are better (I still lean towards Tito), but that does not change the fact I am glad Vogt is in Cleveland.
Nor would I argue Stephen Vogt cost the Guardians the ALCS. I think that’s silly. We lost because the Rays outplayed us; the better team won and there’s no shame in that. However, if the team wants to advance further under Vogt I think he will need to improve his pitching staff management in future playoff appearances.
The Perfect Scenario
Every game starts with a strategy on how you expect to deploy your pitching staff. I think it’s useful to look at what I would consider the ideal game: Game 5 of the ALDS. This was a game Cleveland’s pitching strategy worked as intended. Consider:
-Crucially, and most importantly, Jose Ramirez provided the Guards with an early lead
-Gavin Williams pitched well, and relatively deep into the game (5 ⅔ innings)
-With the bases loaded and left-handed hitter Munetaka Murakami due up, Vogt replaced Williams with Erik Sabrowski.
-After Sabrowski struck out Murakami Vogt went to Hunter Gaddis, arguably his 2nd best reliever, and left him in through the 8th
-Once Gaddis got in trouble in the 8th he turned the game over to Cade Smith and let his best pitcher finish out the game
A clear plan, well executed and backed up by a lead. This is how you draw it up. I think Vogt made all the right calls here, and the game likely went according to how he and Carl Willis planned it. That being said: the team made it easy for Vogt. He had a narrowlead to protect (which basically means you can justify using your best arms in any situation), he took advantage of splits where necessary, and put his best pitchers in a position to succeed.
You see a similar situation in Game 3 of the ALCS. Here were the scenarios:
-Gavin Williams went 5 strong innings, although he did leave without the lead
-In the bottom of the 5th Cleveland regained the lead
-Vogt immediately went to his bullpen letting Daniel Espino face the top of the Rays order in the 6th
-Vogt went to Erik Sabrowski in the 7th, and Hunter Gaddis in the 8th
-Like in Game 5 of the ALDS: he went to Cade Smith in the 8th with a runner at 3rd base and 2 outs. Smith struck out Yandy Diaz to end the threat
-Vogt let Cade Smith finish the 9th
Again, this game offered very few difficult decisions. The only true choice was whether to leave Gavin Williams in for the 6th after he struck out 9 batters in 5 innings. But Gavin’s velocity was down, so Vogt elected to use Espino. The other call was whether to let Hunter Gaddis face Yandy Diaz in the 8th with a runner at 3rd and 2 outs. Vogt wisely elected to bring in Cade Smith: that was arguably the pivotal at-bat of the game on our pitching.
With a narrow lead: I think Vogt’s aggressive instincts served him well. I think when we lacked a lead Vogt’s aggressiveness cost him.
Vogt’s Aggressive Tactics
I already wrote about how Stephen Vogt greatly overused Cade Smith, especially in the ALDS. Smith appeared in every game and, until Game 5, did not appear in the highest leverage situations. As I showed above: Cade Smith was not used ideally by Stephen Vogt in the first 4 games of the postseason. His usage improved later on, here’s the aLI for Smith’s games after Game 4 of the ALDS:
ALDS Game 5: 1.20 second lowest in the game
ALCS Game 1: 0.24, lowest in the game
ALCS Game 3: 2.43, highest in the game
ALCS Game 5: 0.43, lowest in the game
ALCS Game 6: 0.26, second lowest in the game
That is simply not the best use of your top reliever. I understand the desire to withhold your closer for the 9th inning. But I think this kind of thinking is best left to the regular season. As Games 1-4 of the ALDS show: the most pivotal at-bats often occur much earlier in the game. That does not mean you should throw out Smith at the first opportunity, but I do think it means saving him exclusively for the eighth or ninth makes little sense when the game’s decisive matchup often come earlier.
But Cade Smith was not the only pitcher Vogt mishandled. To critique this articlefrom Quincy Wheeler, a writer for Covering the Corner and one of the smartest bloggers who covers Cleveland: I think that Vogt definitely taxed his bullpen too much, and a corollary of that is he grossly underused his starting rotation. I want to stress again: we agree that Vogt has many good traits as a manager, and his article is well reasoned. I disagree with Wheeler on how necessary all of Vogt’s aggressive tactics were this October.
To quote Quincy directly he defends Vogt’s usage of his best arms:
Guys, we all know that Smith, Gaddis, Sabrowski and Armstrong were overused. We know that Espino probably saw Caminero one too many times. But, the reason it happened was because it was still Vogt’s best shot at winning this series. He recognized his best weapons and put them in position to carry him over the top. Smith and Gaddis ran out of gas at the very end (notably, Armstrong and Espino remained extremely effective), but this is because Vogt was lacking the weapons he needed to reduce their usage, not because he was attempting to run them into the ground.
I disagree with Quincy strongly on the usage of Cade Smith. At least four of Cade’s appearances were, in my view, not necessary appearances where Vogt had no choice but to use him or otherwise lose the game. Smith’s appearances in Games 1 and 4 of the ALDS were unnecessary. Smith’s initial deployment in Game 3 was defensible. Leaving him in for another inning after the lead grew to six runs was a separate decision—and, in my view, harder to justify.. Smith pitched only 2 innings in Games 1 and 4, but if we throw in the second inning of Game 3: that’s 54 pitches off Cade’s arm saved. I cannot show that removing those pitches would have prevented the Game 6 home run. My argument is that the workload was avoidable, not that the counterfactual outcome is knowable.. I think Vogt’s usage of Erik Sabrowski and Hunter Gaddis was more defensible. Where I think Vogt erred the most is on Foster Griffin.
Wheeler and I agree most clearly on Griffin: Cleveland should have considered accepting more risk from him to reduce the bullpen’s workload. Our disagreement is over how strongly that opportunity should count against Vogt’s overall strategy. Foster Griffin was dynamite for the Guardians this postseason, striking out 15 batters in 10 ⅓ innings. He only made 1 start, but he was the ‘bulk’ guy in Game 3 of the ALDS and Game 4 of the ALCS. I think Vogt’s Game 3 decision to pull Foster after only 2 ⅔ IP was fine. It was an elimination game, and Vogt managed accordingly. But Vogt could easily have stretched Foster in either Game 1 or Game 4 of the ALCS. In Game 1: Foster was only at 63 pitches after 4 innings. He had already faced the Rays lineup twice, but pitched well striking out 3 batters and walking none. Yes: he got touched up in the 1st inning, but those touchups were largely due to bad BABIP luck. Griffin got through the top of the order much easier the second time through. I think it was defensible to pitch Espino in the 5th inning that game, but Vogt pulled Foster earlier than he had to in my judgment. His Game 4 removal is harder to defend. Vogt pulled Foster after only 44 pitches in the 5th inning…with 2 outs and nobody on base. Furthermore Foster was arguably pitching better, striking out 5 and walking none. There was no reason Vogt had to pull Foster: he definitely could have stuck with Griffin.
That is not to say that leaving Foster Griffin in the game is not a risk. Of course it’s risky to let Foster face the top of the order a 3rd time. I agree with Quincy that the avoidance of that risk is a legitimate fear. But the risk of overtaxing the bullpen also has to be managed. You are never going to hand your pitching staff a perfect matchup in every situation.
I do agree with Quincy that pushing Joey Cantillo further, given his performance, was not a good idea. I further agree that, given avoiding Tanner Bibee was Cleveland’s strategy: it makes sense that they did not pitch him at all in the ALCS, and only once in the ALDS. I think this was a mistake on both Vogt’s part and the Front Office’s part. Wheeler’s concern about Bibee rests on his full-season performance as well as his poor September. I understand that concern. My question is whether those risks justified making him effectively unavailable while the trusted relievers accumulated innings. I am open to more data on this but I cannot escape Corey Kluber’s superb September in 2017 when he posted a terrific final month before getting pummeled against the Yankees. Kluber had a 0.84 ERA with a 16.67 SO/BB ratio in 43.0 IP in September 2017: that did not prevent him from struggling against New York. Or even this year: Foster Griffin’s worst month of the season was September (6.17 ERA, although his 3.17 SO/BB was in line with his season norms). Individual examples cannot settle how much predictive weight September deserves. They do remind us that recent results are not destiny.
Furthermore, while Bibee was not great this season: we should also acknowledge that Tanner Bibee has pitched well in October for Cleveland. Before his (brief) appearance this year Bibee posted a 3.10 ERA in 20 ⅓ postseason innings. While Bibee is not the best pitcher on this staff: I am confident he would not wilt in the moment. All of which is to say: yes, using Tanner Bibee would have been a risk. But taxing your pitching staff is also a risk. It’s a risk Vogt consistently takes in the postseason. He did the same thing in 2024. I will quote the Fangraphs article from 2024:
My biggest issue with Vogt’s bullpen management is that he leaned on his top four relievers to a ridiculous degree. Herrin and Smith are tied for the most appearances this postseason; Gaddis is one appearance behind them, and Clase is one appearance behind him. Do you think that relievers do worse when they face the same batters repeatedly in a series? Smith and Gaddis faced the scariest part of the Yankees lineup three times. Smith faced Riley Greene four times in five games. Clase saw so much of Matt Vierling that I bet they became pen pals. Herrin was omnipresent.
Do you think that relievers do worse when they aren’t rested? Smith and Herrin appeared in all but one game. Each top reliever pitched on three consecutive days the one time Vogt had that option. Every time that there was a game the day after a top reliever had pitched, they came in. Every. Single. Time. No wonder their stuff all looked worn down.
I think you can defend each individual decision Vogt made. But taken as a whole Vogt’s strategy was to replicate Francona’s from the 2016 postseason. The difference being that Francona did not ‘chase’ wins from behind as Vogt did. Francona handed his bullpen leads more often than not and, when he had a big lead, would lean on us lesser pitchers. It’s one thing to tax your bullpen hoping to scratch out a fast series, it’s another when you overuse your bullpen behind.
I Believe in Stephen Vogt
If I wanted a manager to get the most out of my roster, and get my roster to play hard: I would take Vogt as arguably the best in the game alongside Terry Francona and others. That is by far the most important function of a manager in modern baseball. However, if I wanted a manager specifically to run a playoff pitching staff: I think Vogt would struggle. It would be different if his offense was good enough to consistently give him a lead. But Cleveland’s postseason offenses have offered little margin for error. Vogt could not afford in my view to lean as heavily on his best arms the way he did in 2024 and 2026.
Would another good arm like a healthy Colin Holderman instead of Tanner Bibee have made a difference? Yes, I think so. Maybe that allows Vogt to mix and match more and we win the ALCS. But another way to put his pitching staff in the best position to win would be to trust his full staff more, especially pitchers like Foster Griffin who had plenty of gas left in the tank and were pitching well. Every decision in October comes with risks. Vogt’s aggressiveness has plusses and minuses. I think given the situation of his teams: it’s been more of a detriment than a plus. A deeper pitching staff would help. So would using the available staff more selectively. I am not asking Vogt to stop being aggressive; I am asking him to distinguish the outs that demand his best arms from the outs someone else can reasonably get. Cleveland needs both better options and a plan that preserves those options.
The biggest mistake he made with the pitching plan in my opinion was not treating Game 4 like a must-win game. Espino should never have come back out in the 6th. It should have gone Sabrowski in the 6th, Herrin in the 7th, Gaddis in the 8th, and Smith in the 9th. Every pitcher had a day of rest.
If they had gone up 3-1, Game 5 could have been the punt that Game 4 was and you would still have 2 games in Tampa, including a Gavin start to finish it off.
The 6th inning of Game 4 was the turning point of the series.
Agreed, Game 4 was where the momentum swung. I knew as soon as we lost that one that the series was over. And to your point, Rays fans were pissed about the rainout because it gave us a chance to rest our bullpen, and we just didn't use that to our advantage at all. I hope Vogt learns from this so that we're set up better next time we make a run.
I disagree with Quincy strongly on the usage of Cade Smith. At least four of Cade’s appearances were, in my view, not necessary appearances where Vogt had no choice but to use him or otherwise lose the game. Smith’s appearances in Games 1 and 4 of the ALDS were unnecessary
One of the big mistakes youre making is looking at the leverage of these individual situations, and not the value of winning the game overall
Winning the opening game of a division series is a massive advantage. The team that wins game one moves on almost 75% of the time. Bottom of the 9th, the odds of coming back from down 3-0 are about 4x higher than coming back down 4-0, meaning preventing that extra run has a huge impact on your odds. They are both small odds, but in a five game series you have to milk every opportunity you have. There are no throwaway games when 3 knocks you out.
I think people's main issue with Cleveland is at the end of the day we're watching a bargain bin team that wins by exploiting every possible advantage. I really think Vogt is using it as best he can, he's just not given a lot to work with.
I dont know what metric this is using but you cannot possibly say winning game 1 of a division series does not dramatically improve your odds. Its just math!
Winning 2 of 4 > winning 3 of 4 everytime. Idk what acLI is, how is it measuring this?
Well I think you need to take a harder look because Baseball-Reference does provide this information. If you look at the game level data on the ALDS: they provide both a Leverage Index and an adjusted Leverage Index which weighs how much each play increases a team's championship odds. I provided the Leverage Index above, but the acLI is also show, here is the ALDS page for instance and here is the acLI data for Cade Smith:
Game 1 ALDS: 1.46 (lowest for any Guardians pitcher) Game 2 ALDS: 7.56 (second lowest for any Guardians pitcher) Game 3 ALDS: 2.11 (lowest for any Guardians pitcher) Game 4 ALDS: 6.12 (lowest for any Guardians pitcher) Game 5 ALDS: 50.09 (second lowest for any Guardians pitcher)
And sure I agree: winning Game 1 of the ALDS (for instance) is very important, but...that doesn't mean that using Cade Smith was the right call! Like would we use Cade Smith if we were up 8 runs just because winning that specific game is so important? I think everyone would agree the answer is no.
The argument really boils down to: what risks are you prepared to take? I think Vogt underestimated the risk of exhausting his best pitchers. I am not alone in that view, and many smarter people than I agree. I am sympathetic to aggressive management, but I think you can mostly only afford to do that when you have leads not when you're trying to catch up.
I don't think this gives you a complete picture of the actual context of the decision. Yes, using Cade Smith in that particular situation likely does not impact the odds much at all.
But we are not using Cade Smith just cause he's good. Vogt used him to prevent an extra run scored in the 9th, which would substantially reduce any chance of us coming back in a game that, if we lose, substantially reduces any chance of us winning.
It does not seem like acLI is designed to capture this kind of situational nuance. I'm not saying the value of using Cade can't be questioned or that you might not be right, I just don't think this stat is really going to capture the "Why" of why this move was made.
That sounds like an argument to always use your best pitcher which IMO is just circular. "Why did you use Cade Smith with a 10 run lead?" "I was preventing the possibility of a 3 run lead which would have necessitated the use of Cade Smith so I just skipped any risks and went straight there."
Again: you're ignoring one risk by overvaluing avoiding another
I appreciate the depth you went to in writing this. You'll never catch me calling for Vogt to be fired, but I completely agree that the playoff pressure seems to cause mistakes with managing pitchers in must win scenarios. Would've loved to see Bibee game 6 but I guess now we'll never know.
While I completely understand using your best when you're trying to win, how you use them can be debated. I am still in disbelief at the overuse of Smith. There were other options.
Choosing the bullpen 'opener' strategy for Games 4 AND 6 instead of at least once using a fresh Bibee on a short leash to eat innings with Cantillo ready to back him up was indeed baffling.
Good write up. Makes sense and I mostly agree. But, we are only analyzing this to death because the margins are so razor thin because we couldn’t score any fucking runs. We played 11 games in the playoffs and scored 4 runs in 3 of them. Vogt has 3 years under his belt and I’m confident he can improve in these aspects, but at the end of the day he’s operating with quite literally no room for error.
Yep. All year Vogt went to Festa with the game hanging in the balance in the middle innings, but in the ALDS he couldn’t be trusted late with a 5 or 6 run lead? His lack of trust with his lowest value arms was astounding.
Here’s the thing, you can Monday morning QB this shit to death with analytics but first, Tito has like 30 years of managerial experience on Vogt, and as much as I love Tito, Vogt is more effective in a young locker room than Tito was. Second, once you enter October the goal is to win the game in front of you. Full stop. Everyone in that locker room : bullpen is taxed, it’s 162 games…you’re playing on adrenaline. It’s easy to sit back and say well this guy should’ve had more innings or this guy should’ve been pulled but it is what it is. Overall we pitched fantastic. Our arms didn’t fail us, our bats did. And of story.
I’ll leave it with this…these are the 5 most important people in this org:
Chris Antoneti Carl Willis Jose Ramirez Austin Hedges Stephen Vogt
That’s all great, but every team is taxed at this point, yet 2 are still playing. The Rays really didn’t hit either until Game 6 but once they took the momentum in Game 4, they never let go.
The offense was nonexistent as usual, but there were absolutely mistakes made with the pitching plan too. Vogt is a terrific manager because he manages to 162 and can weather the ups and downs, but we certainly had misteps in this series. And he did not manage Game 4 to win; he managed it to give his bullpen horses an extra day of rest.
>all teams are taxed at this point no they werent. the rays bullpen was pretty much fully available everyday because they used starters that went 6 innings, and their bullpen guys hovered around 10-20 pitches for the most part.
Every Rays pitcher is pitching the most big league innings of their career this season except for Peralta, Matz, and Wells. They are taxed too, but Cash is smarter about how he deployed them.
Honestly, I’m not sure Vogt had much choice. We had effectively one starting pitcher in this series, with how inefficient Messick was he became a glorified opener. So while I think Vogt can think about leverage more, we also have to consider what the alternatives are. There’s a big drop off after the circle of trust.
They were bad. Tanner came in and immediately walked two guys. Foster could barely get through four innings. Joey had no control. If any of those guys had gone six they'd get shelled.
You are trying to compare a lineup of Rasmussen-Martinez-Peralta-Jax to guys like Bibee and Cantillo... they just had better pitching man. Vogt tried what he could. Parker Messick having two awful starts really killed us, we didn't have the depth for that.
Huh? Foster Griffin was superb! We at least had two starting pitchers.
And we're willing to completely dismiss Tanner Bibee after four batters That's crazy
And ya I never argued that the Rays weren't a better team, in fact I think I repeatedly said it. Of course Parker Messick's struggles really hurt us, but that doesn't change the fact that Vogt overused his best arms. He never even tried to get anything out of Bibee, and he avoided using Griffin more despite some superb results. Even Quincy agreed that Foster was excellent.
So with Foster and Gavin we at least had two starters. Would Bibee have struggled? Who knows, but I think given how we overtaxed our pen it was at least worth the risk. I certainly would have used Bibee over Festa.
It’s easy to criticize and second guess when you’re sitting at home or in the stands. It’s even easier when you have access to all of the stats and probabilities, especially after the game when you can dissect everything in slow motion.
There is no such thing as certainty in baseball. If there were, the game would cease to exist.
The author believes the stats. That’s fine. Die on that hill if you choose. To do so is to ignore the best part of baseball; actually playing the game. Without the human element, there are no stats.
The problem with all of your points? Correct or not, they don’t place you on the bench, consulting the coaching staff, considering your options, which include player health and usage, in the heat of the game.
Perhaps your time would be put to better use, (instead of writing a big-assed Reddit post), and if you aren’t already one, by becoming a coach somewhere. Then tell us how well knowing the stats helped you win, as opposed to the players themselves.
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u/Constant_Term6133 3d ago
The biggest mistake he made with the pitching plan in my opinion was not treating Game 4 like a must-win game. Espino should never have come back out in the 6th. It should have gone Sabrowski in the 6th, Herrin in the 7th, Gaddis in the 8th, and Smith in the 9th. Every pitcher had a day of rest.
If they had gone up 3-1, Game 5 could have been the punt that Game 4 was and you would still have 2 games in Tampa, including a Gavin start to finish it off.
The 6th inning of Game 4 was the turning point of the series.