By: Grant Brisbee

Game 1 of the 2016 American League Championship Series blew my mind. It was like dropping the needle on Rubber Soul for the first time; just a total head-melting experience. I’d spent the month of September feeling bad for the Indians because they lost starting pitchers Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco at the worst possible time. But Game 1 of the 2016 ALCS made me realize who was really replacing those innings: Andrew Miller.

Sure, Miller pitched twice in a three-game ALDS, both for two innings at a time, but I really thought that was something of a fluke — a perfect storm of in-game situations. It turned out that the Indians were trying to win the World Series with a one-man rotation, and it looked like it had a chance to work. When Trevor Bauer (?) or Josh Tomlin (!) would get into trouble, there was Miller, one of the greatest clothespin-shaped players in baseball history, ready to calm everything down.

When the Indians had a one-run lead in the fourth inning, it was assumed that Miller, Bryan Shaw, and Cody Allen would pitch five spotless innings. Miller was the fireman, Allen was the closer, and Shaw was the ... surprisingly funny emcee who killed time between acts? Still working on the official designations, but it was the official plan, and it was a damned good plan. It’s how the Indians won the pennant.

Game 3 of the 2017 NLCS blew my mind for a second time. This one was more like Pet Sounds, a response to the original breakthrough. The Dodgers had a three-run lead and Yu Darvish was rolling with a low pitch count, and they just ... took him out? On purpose?

Yes. This wasn’t the Dodgers relying on their bullpen because circumstances conspired against them, like they did for the Indians the year before. This wasn’t just a collection of single-inning relievers of localized brilliance, like the Royals in the two World Series before them.

This was a plan, a combination of the 2015 Royals and the 2016 Indians. The Dodgers had been burned by overworking their starters in previous postseason runs, and this total reversal of strategy didn’t just apply to Darvish. When Clayton Kershaw made it through five innings this postseason, his clock was audibly ticking. Rich Hill was constantly pulled early, and he usually took it out on his mitt or the closest cup of water.

But it was all by design. The Dodgers were emboldened by their stable, post-Baez bullpen, and Brandon Morrow was going to be their Andrew Miller. That is, until they figured out that Kenta Maeda’s slider was devastating if he didn’t have to pace himself.

This was a team that took the Indians’ blueprint of desperation and folded it into a pointy paper airplane that could take your eye out. They intentionally weaponized the idea of the bullpen, and national audiences became familiar with the phrase “third time through the order.” It’s how the Dodgers won the pennant.

And that’s the story of how every team in baseball decided to invest in super-deep, hyper-talented bullpens because that’s the only way to make it through the postseason gauntlet intact. You can’t win a postseason series without a dominant bullpen these days. Just look at the Indians last year and the Dodgers this year. Baseball solved the mystery of how to win in the postseason, and the answer is to shorten every game with a dominant bullpen.

...

...

...

...

...

[loudly slurps hot tea from cup]

...

...

...

...

...

...

Ahhhhhhhhh.

...

...

...

...

...

Oh, you’re still here. And some of you are yelling and pointing to something. I can’t quite make it out; please, one at a time.

Ah, yes, apparently the Indians and Dodgers did not win their respective World Series, so I can see how this is a relevant quibble. When the Indians reached the World Series, the plan didn’t collapse, but it was hardly infallible. Bryan Shaw lost his command, and Miller walked as many batters in his 7 2/3 innings as he had in his entire regular-season Indians career. Maybe it was because they were tired, or maybe it was because bullpens are always, always, always prone to weirdness. Maybe it was a combination of both.

The Cubs won the seven-game World Series with just two relievers throwing more than 2 2/3 innings: Aroldis Chapman and Mike Montgomery, both of whom had wonky control and moments of extreme sketchiness.

In Game 2 of the 2017 World Series, the Dodgers were an inning away from a commanding 2-0 series lead. It was the ninth inning, and one of the most dominant relievers in baseball history was pitching, up 0-2 on the leadoff hitter. This was the plan. This was the easiest part of the plan. This was the part of the plan that Felipe Alou or Cecil Cooper or Ron Roenicke or Jeff Van Gundy or LITERALLY ANYONE could have executed.

The Dodgers’ bullpen lost the game for them that night, and it wasn’t the last game it would cost them in the postseason. Josh Fields, who threw 13 pitches over three spotless October appearances to help the Dodgers win the pennant, is one of the unlucky few with a World Series ERA of ∞.

No one blamed Brandon Morrow for his abysmal Game 5 performance; they just lit votive candles and whispered quietly about his elbow. Kenley Jansen threw the second-most innings for the entire team in the World Series, and he had the line of a pretty good starter: 8 2/3 IP, 3 ER, 2 BB, 8 K. But the difference between him and that hypothetical starter is that two out of those three earned runs were absolutely devastating.

The Astros won the seven-game World Series with a bullpen that smelled like sulphur and burning hair. Their closer gave up as many earned runs in 1 2/3 innings as Justin Verlander did in 12. They were deathly afraid to use two of their other relievers, Francisco Liriano and Luke Gregerson, and one of their main setup men, Chris Devenski, was maddeningly erratic in all three of the Astros’ postseason series. Their bullpen almost murdered me. I can’t imagine what it did to the people who were emotionally invested in the team.

But it worked. The Astros won. They won with big hits, and they won with well-timed hits. They won with strong starting pitching when they needed it. They won with the surprising heroics of Charlie Morton, who appeared in exactly -12 of the Players To Know sections published before the World Series started.

The moral of the story: Baseball hasn’t figured out shit.

There is no path to instant success, no blueprint that will work for the Division Series, LCS, and World Series seamlessly. There are things you can do to improve your chances (Step 1: employ Andrew Miller and/or Kenley Jansen), but even those can fail at the worst possible time.

Here’s what we’ve learned from the last two postseasons:

• Bullpens are notoriously erratic.
• The postseason is notoriously erratic.
• Bullpens in the postseason are exponentially erratic.

We have learned nothing, in other words. The Astros don’t win without Morton. The Dodgers might have won with Fernando Rodney closing. None of this makes sense. Baseball doesn’t make sense. Good luck trying to build a World Series winner on purpose.

So run along, kid GMs, and build your fancy bullpens. Expect your games in October to be competitive for five innings before your relievers get in. See what happens. In the case of the 2017 World Series, the winner was the team with one of the least trustworthy pennant-winning bullpens in recent memory. This has taught us nothing.

Nothing.

(Maybe get a few awesome relievers when you’re at Costco, just in case.)