All Hands on Deck: Yankees Prevail in ALDS Game 3’s Battle of the Bullpens

NEW YORK — The ovation that Devin Williams received from the crowd of 47,399 at Yankee Stadium as he departed in the eighth inning on Tuesday night after recording five crucial outs — his longest outing in more than two years — did not go unnoticed. “It’s nice to feel appreciated sometimes. It was definitely a lot better than what I’ve heard for much of the year,” said the 31-year-old righty in the wake of the Yankees’ dramatic 9-6 comeback victory over the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. Acquired from Milwaukee last December, the two-time All-Star was supposed to serve as the closer of the defending AL champions, but early struggles bumped him out of that role, and he was booed vociferously. Over the past month, he’s tried to salvage his season, and with the Yankees in danger of being swept by their division rivals, he was one of five relievers who held the Blue Jays scoreless over the final 6 2/3 innings while the Bronx Bombers bashed out eight unanswered runs, six of them against Toronto’s bullpen.

When starter Carlos Rodón left Game 3 with one out in the third inning, the Yankees trailed 6-1 and appeared perilously close to being eliminated. They quickly clawed their way back against a wobbly Shane Bieber, however, chasing the Blue Jays’ starter with two outs in the third with the score 6-3. From there, a unit that was torched for 14 runs in 10 1/3 innings in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto won the battle of the bullpens. While Fernando Cruz, Camilo Doval, Tim Hill, Williams, and David Bednar quieted an offense that had been humming on all cylinders, four straight Blue Jays relievers allowed runs, with Louis Varland serving up both Aaron Judge‘s game-tying three-run homer in the fourth inning and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s go-ahead solo shot in the fifth. Now, while the Yankees will call upon Wild Card Series hero Cam Schlittler to start Thursday’s Game 4, the Blue Jays — gulp — counter with a bullpen game started by Varland, a development that could help send this series back to Toronto.

“That’s just what’s on the table,” said Williams of the bullpen’s collective mindset given the situation when Rodón departed. “We really don’t have any other option but to put up zeros and give our guys a chance to take the lead.”

Williams, who posted an ugly 4.79 ERA (but a 2.68 FIP) in 62 innings during the regular season, has put up a whole lot of zeroes himself lately. After being charged with four runs in two-thirds of an inning against the Astros on September 3, he closed the regular season with nine consecutive scoreless innings, yielding five hits and two walks while striking out 12. During this postseason, he’s tacked on 3 1/3 scoreless innings, with two hits, one walk, and three strikeouts.

Williams entered Tuesday’s game in the seventh, after the Yankees scored their final run of the night against righty Brendon Little thanks to an intentional walk of Judge, a double by Cody Bellinger, and then a sacrifice fly by Ben Rice. He began by retiring Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — to that point in the series 8-for-11 with three homers and an intentional walk — on a popup, then kept Alejandro Kirk in the ballpark on a 101.6-mph drive to deep center field. Williams closed the inning by fanning Daulton Varsho (7-for-11 with three doubles and two homers to that point) on four pitches, the last a 97.1-mph four-seamer well above the strike zone.

Williams hadn’t worked more than one inning since September 1, 2023, but manager Aaron Boone sent him back out to start the eighth. While he allowed a leadoff single to Ernie Clement (his fourth hit of the night and seventh of the series), he punched out Anthony Santander before handing the ball off to Bednar, who retired the final five batters he faced to nail down the victory.

“I was honestly expecting to go a little further than I did,” said Williams. “But it’s all hands on deck right now, so we’re just trying to push it and get it to the next guy.”

As Michael Baumann noted last month while dissecting Williams’ rough outing against the Astros, despite his gaudy 5.60 ERA at the time, his underlying peripherals (a 2.90 FIP and 3.17 xERA at the time) were quite sound, with the gap between his ERA and other two indicators both among the four largest for a pitcher with 40 innings to that point. Odd splits, including a .904 wOBA allowed on changeups in the zone with runners on first and a .455 AVG on pitches outside the zone with runners on any base, helped account for the discrepancy.

“That’s baseball sometimes, you know?” said Williams when asked about the contrast between his predicted numbers and his actual ones. “You hope that the math starts math-ing and stuff starts to go your way on balls that are typically outs. Instead of finding holes, they’re finding gloves.”

The math on the Yankees’ bullpen entering the postseason was not good. Ahead of the trade deadline, general manager Brian Cashman focused on upgrading the unit, acquiring Bednar, Doval, and Jake Bird, but the results were mixed at best. Yankees relievers put up a 4.74 ERA and 4.07 FIP from August 1 to the end of the regular season, with Bednar emerging as a strong closer, but every other reliever with at least 10 innings over the final two months (including Williams) carrying an ERA of 4.15 or higher. “If you’re looking for the Yankees’ Achilles heel, you’ve found it,” I wrote in my preview of the Wild Card Series between the Yankees and Red Sox.

Aside from Luke Weaver being charged with two runs while failing to retire any of the three Red Sox he faced in the Wild Card Series opener, the bullpen rose to the occasion as the Yankees won in three games, with Bednar, Cruz, Hill, and Willams combining to allow just one run in 6 2/3 innings. Weaver had another awful outing in the ALDS opener, again going 0-for-3 in retiring hitters and this time being charged with three runs, with Cruz and mop-and-bucketman Paul Blackburn yielding five more over the final two innings to turn what had been a tight 2-1 game into a 10-1 laugher. Weaver finally retired a hitter (Varsho) on his lone pitch in Game 2, but by that point starter Max Fried and starter-turned-long man Will Warren had combined to allow 13 runs.

Weaver, who displaced Clay Holmes as the Yankees’ closer late last season, was notably absent from the brigade that kept the Blue Jays in check on Tuesday night after Rodón was cuffed for six hits and six runs in 2 1/3 innings. Cruz took care of business, stranding the inherited runner on first by striking out Addison Barger on a foul tip and then getting Andrés Giménez to ground out. He returned to strike out George Springer and Davis Schneider to start the fourth, departing after yielding a two-out single to Guerrero. Like Williams, he’s been rolling lately, allowing just one run and six hits in nine innings since September 16, albeit with three out of 12 inherited runners scoring.

Doval recorded the final out of that frame on a Kirk groundout, then covered the first two outs of the fifth, sandwiched around a double by Clement. Though he put up a 4.82 ERA and 4.10 FIP in 18.2 innings after being acquired from the Giants, he’s riding a streak of eight scoreless innings, with just two hits, two walks and nine strikeouts dating back to September 14. Hill, the only lefty in the Yankees’ bullpen, struck out Barger to end the fifth, then worked a 1-2-3 sixth, the Yankees’ first clean inning of the night.

Given that the Yankees are still on the brink of elimination, Wednesday night will be another all-hands-on-deck situation, but Boone expects the five relievers he used on Tuesday to be available. Aside from Williams’ 26 pitches — a total he matched or exceeded six times this year, albeit usually while struggling — Bednar threw 21, Cruz 19, Hill 16, and Doval 13.

The first four Blue Jays who followed Bieber — lefty Mason Fluharty, righties Varland and Braydon Fisher, and then the lefty Little — each surrendered runs, while righties Yariel Rodríguez and Tommy Nance turned in scoreless outings. Fluharty took over from Bieber with two outs and runners on first and second, extricating the Blue Jays by inducing pinch-hitter Amed Rosario to pop foul to Kirk but getting a spot of bad luck when Barger dropped Austin Wells‘ wind-blown pop-up in the fourth; both he and Trent Grisham, who worked a walk, were on base when Varland served up the game-tying homer to Judge.

Varland was making his third appearance of the series. He faced just one batter in Game 1, striking out Giancarlo Stanton with the bases loaded, and then was called upon by Blue Jays manager John Schneider to restore order in the eighth inning of Game 2 after the Yankees had turned a 13-2 deficit to 13-7. Judge noted post-game that while he hadn’t faced Varland lately — not since April 14, 2023, when he was a starter for the Twins — he had been briefed by Stanton.

“Big G saw him in Toronto… I wanted a brush-up,” said Judge. “I’ve seen all the videos, seen all the appearances, but it’s a different perspective when you step in the box and see him live. So I was talking to [Stanton] about what certain pitches were like, what it felt like. Any info you can get like that kind of helps you sharpen your game plan a little bit and gets you locked in a little bit better.”

As Ben Lindbergh wrote at The Ringer two years ago, just as there is a times-through-the-order penalty for starters, studies (including one by PitchingBot creator Cameron Grove) have shown that there’s a repeat-reliever effect, though it pertains to facing the same hitter multiple times in a postseason series. Still, that’s of particular relevance with Schneider anointing the 27-year-old Varland, whom the Blue Jays acquired from the Twins on July 31, to open Game 4 given that he’s guaranteed to face Judge, who bats second for the Yankees.

Gerrit Cole, who while recovering from a March Tommy John surgery has served as a quasi-assistant pitching coach, spoke to colleague Matt Martell about the repeat effect with regards to both starters and relievers. “There is a sense of familiarity and generally, I’d bet the numbers would suggest that OPS climbs the more often you see a player, the more often you see the pitch,” he said. “Pitchers can use it to their advantage too. But with that comes execution and being creative and staying one step ahead. Sometimes we see how a [starting] pitcher can face a team… and then five days later face the same team. Generally, I’d guess the OPS would rise, but at the same time, I personally have had games where I’ve pitched well and stayed ahead of them, pitched poorly and then responded, [or] pitched well and then didn’t.

“The nature of a postseason game is the deeper you get, that’s the reality for both teams. And still it’s about execution regardless of how familiar you are.”

In Cole’s view, the fact that most relievers work primarily with two pitches and may be called upon to handle the same sequence in the lineup multiple times during a series is a factor with familiarity. “A reliever faces the same lane over the course of five games, you’re likely to be looking at five at-bats over five days. It’s probably comparable to back-to-back starts,” he said. “The deeper you go, the more you’re going to have to throw strikes when you want to throw strikes [and] throw balls when you want to throw balls. [You] pay attention to how you got to this point, but the hitters are doing the same thing.”

Of the other relievers Schneider used, Fluharty, Fisher, Little and Nance were all making their second appearance of the series. Little faced the top four hitters in the Yankees lineup (including Grisham, the leadoff man) in Game 1, working around a one-out double by Judge. Nance faced Judge, Bellinger, Rice, and Stanton in Game 2, retiring only Bellinger while allowing hits to the others, two of whom scored (as did an inherited runner). Though he loaded the bases in the eighth inning on Tuesday, Nance kept the Yankees off the scoreboard; among the batters he had previously faced in this series, he retired Judge and Stanton on either side of an intentional walk of Bellinger.

The Blue Jays chose a bullpen route for Game 4 after leaving both Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt off their roster. Scherzer struggled down the stretch, including in a September 7 start against the Yankees, while Bassitt hasn’t pitched since September 18 due to back inflammation that required a cortisone shot. After Tuesday’s loss, Schneider declared that all of his relievers would be available for Game 4. Varland’s 20 pitches were the most thrown by any of them, with Fluharty adding 19, Nance 18, Rodriguez 15, Fisher 13, and Little nine.

Schneider will have to hope that the Yankees hitters haven’t grown familiar with that bunch; in an ideal scenario, he’ll call upon closer Jeff Hoffman (who pitched a scoreless inning in Game 1) and setup man Seranthony Domínguez (who retired Anthony Volpe and Wells in that game, and worked around walks of Judge and Rice as he tackled the top of the lineup for a scoreless ninth in Game 2). The Blue Jays’ familiarity with the Yankees’ A-list relievers could help their lineup as well, but Schlittler’s potential to work deep into the game, as he did against the Red Sox, may prove to be the Yankees’ biggest advantage — and the key to extending this series.