The Night the Indians Flipped the Bullpen Script

The bullpen revolution was televised in Cleveland. While Buck Showalter was reaching for a short iron to lay up on a par five within reach of the green from the fairway of a golf course somewhere in Florida, Terry Francona was walking out to the pitcher’s mound at Progressive Field in the fifth inning of a one-run playoff game to summon the world’s best relief pitcher and make the bullpen of the future a reality in the present.

Andrew Miller pitched a fifth inning for the first time since 2013, and then he pitched a sixth inning, too, and a seventh inning for good measure. The Indians’ go-to high-leverage relief weapon — that’s the closest thing you’ll find to a properly titled relief role in Cleveland — struck out four Red Sox batters in two scoreless innings of work while throwing a season-high 40 pitches. Miller faced eight batters, though Terry Francona was reportedly willing to let Miller face as many as 12, a strategy that would have allowed him to face David Ortiz twice.

“He didn’t put a number on it,” Miller said when asked of his pregame discussions with Francona regarding what inning he would enter. “But I knew to be ready early.”

Miller was seemingly ready to pitch the moment he stepped off the plane in Cleveland this August after having been acquired from the Yankees on the morning of the trade deadline. In 27 appearances with the Indians, Miller’s entered a game in the sixth, the seventh (eight times), the eighth (11 times), the boring old ninth (five), and now the fifth. During a season and a half with the Yankees, he appeared before the eighth just once.

“I think that certainly bullpens are kind of being adjusted right now,” Miller said. “They’re certainly something everyone talks about. Everyone wants to talk about the Royals the last few years, I saw what Boston did in 2013, I was a part of Baltimore in 2014. Maybe as more and more stats come out, we realize there’s bigger moments in the game than the eighth and ninth inning, and that can be appreciated.”

There’s the case to be made that the timing on Thursday actually didn’t make a great deal of sense, that perhaps Francona was being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. When Miller took the ball from starting pitcher Trevor Bauer, there were two outs and nobody on base with Brock Holt — perhaps the least-imposing hitter in the Red Sox lineup — at the plate. The leverage index of the situation was just 0.57; Miller had only entered 14 lower-leverage situations all year.

But of course, this is the playoffs, where the leverage is always high, and really, the line of thinking doesn’t have to be so difficult. It can be quite simple, really. The Red Sox have a fantastically deep lineup. The Indians had the lead. Their goal was to keep that lead, and so they made the choice that best put them in the position to keep that lead.

“The guy is an absolute stud,” Indians reliever Cody Allen said. “So from [Francona’s] perspective, why not go to him?”

The leverage wasn’t to be found in the particular situation, but the leverage could be found in the game itself. The leverage could be found in the lineup. Francona didn’t want Bauer facing the heart of the Red Sox order — Mookie Betts, Ortiz, and Hanley Ramirez — a third time, and with a one-run lead, why mess around with any other reliever when you’ve got the best one? Why do something that increases the possibility there won’t be a high-leverage situation in which to use Miller later in the game at all? Oftentimes, the high-leverage situation is the one that’s right in front of you.

“I hate waiting for the ninth inning,” Francona told The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh in September. “I never did understand that. You know, you wait around, wait around, and you lose a game in the eighth. Well, wait a minute, that might’ve been the most important inning of the game.”

Miller’s already unconventional appearance got off to an unconventional start once he took the mound. Holt immediately doubled and then Betts walked before Miller struck out Ortiz to end the inning. He retired each of the next five batters he faced. That’s the thing about bringing in the best reliever in the world: even when things don’t go as planned, they work out.

Miller gave way to Bryan Shaw, who gave way to Allen, who had an unconventional outing of his own. Allen recorded his first five-out save of the year after Shaw worked himself into trouble in the eighth, matching Miller’s pitch count of 40 in the process. In a game in which the starter, Bauer, threw 78 pitches, two relievers, Miller and Allen, combined for 80. Cleveland and Boston play again on Friday, and so of course it’s worth wondering whether Francona might have erred by potentially burning his top two relief options and rendering them unavailable for Game Two by allowing them each to throw a season-high number of pitches in Game One.

But at the same time, isn’t what Francona did simply a logical extension of the “use your best reliever in high-leverage situations and worry about what happens later” line of thinking, just stretched out to the scope of a full series? Cleveland had a game in front of them for the taking, and they took it. They can worry about what happens in Game Two when the time comes.

“We wanted to win the game tonight,” Francona said. “And we did.”

And with ace Corey Kluber taking the mound for Game Two, the hope from Cleveland’s perspective is that they won’t have to worry too much about the bullpen anyway. If they have to, Dan Otero is fresh. Shaw threw just 13 pitches. And Miller, who’s already declared himself available for Game Two, could still potentially be used to face Ortiz in a more traditional LOOGY-style role. But that can all be handled when the time comes. What’s more important for the Indians is that they won Game One. What’s more important for the future of the sport is the way they did it.

“Nobody ever said you have to be conventional to win,” Francona said.