National Sports

In today’s MLB, especially in the playoffs, the fifth inning is the new seventh

BOSTON -- At the end of another strong, 1-2-3 inning Saturday night in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, right-hander Masahiro Tanaka returned to the New York Yankees' dugout, received word from his manager that his night was over and accepted the congratulations of his teammates on a job well done. But the inning that had just ended was the fifth. Tanaka’s pitch count was at just 78. And across the old-school baseball community, another pang of melancholic nostalgia cut through the soul.

In today's game, especially as it is played in the postseason, the fifth inning is the new seventh. Built from the back of the bullpen forward, modern pitching staffs are designed to cover the second half of games with a parade of flamethrowing relievers, rather than relying on so-called aces and workhorses to carry a lead into the late innings.

"One of our overwhelming strengths is our bullpen," Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said late Saturday night, after the 6-2 win over the Boston Red Sox in Game 2, which tied the series at one game apiece entering Monday night's Game 3 at Yankee Stadium. "When you get into these postseason games, especially when you have some off-days sprinkled in, you don't worry as much about workload. You know you can protect guys. You just weigh which matchups you like better, especially as you get to the second or third time through [the batting] order.

"If you're lined up in the bullpen with the kind of guys we're able to run out there, we're going to do that on a lot of different nights."

The Yankees - with a bullpen featuring four or more relievers who could be closing for lesser teams - may be the ultimate distillation of this trend, but they are far from alone. By all indications, this is setting up to be the first postseason in major league history in which relievers throw more innings than starters.

Last postseason, relievers accounted for 46.5 percent of all total innings thrown, the highest percentage in history. And through the first five days of the 2018 postseason, that percentage is up to 48.2 percent. That accounting includes the Oakland Athletics' decision to "bullpen" the AL wild-card game - with their "opener," journeyman reliever Liam Hendricks, lasting just an inning - and the Milwaukee Brewers' similar choice in Game 1 of the NLDS, with reliever Brian Woodruff starting and throwing three scoreless innings.

"We're trying to get away from what the word 'starter' and 'reliever' means," said Brewers Manager Craig Counsell, whose bullpen is arguably the best and deepest in the NL. " . . . We're going to share the outs a little bit more. But we really are confident, with the days off in the series and the way we're [pitching] coming into the series, that we'll be certainly able to do it."

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It is a long way from 2001, when the Arizona Diamondbacks won a World Series title with three starting pitchers - Miguel Batista, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling - combining to throw 72.3 percent of their staff's total innings across their 17 postseason games. Only once in that trio's 14 combined starts did one of them fail to complete the seventh inning, and Schilling and Johnson threw five complete games between them.

It was somewhere in the middle part of this decade that playoff baseball went from one dominated by starting pitchers to one dominated by bullpens. In 2012, when the San Francisco Giants swept the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, seven of the eight starting pitchers pitched at least into the sixth inning (the one exception, oddly enough, being Tigers ace Justin Verlander) and five of the eight pitched into the seventh.

Then came the bullpen-focused Kansas City Royals teams of 2014-15, which made successive World Series appearances, winning it all in the latter, with staffs built around lockdown relief pitchers. By 2016, when the World Series pitted the Chicago Cubs against the Cleveland Indians - two teams driven by analytics-minded front offices - none of the 14 starting pitchers in the seven-game series secured an out after the sixth inning.

"It's a different ballgame now," Rockies Manager Bud Black said. "The specialization has taken over, and the bullpen usage is way different . . .. Bullpen success [is imperative] in the playoffs. That's just the way it is. It's going to hinge on that, I believe, in every series that's played."

Baseball as a whole is moving toward a more bullpen-focused game, with relievers accounting for a record 40.1 percent of total innings thrown during this regular season. But the trend accelerates in the postseason, when the extra days off and the higher stakes lead to more aggressive usage patterns.

Rather than game-plan from the first inning on, hoping to coax as many innings as possible from their starter and piece together the remaining outs from the bullpen, it is more common now for playoff teams to game plan from the ninth inning forward, penciling in the number of outs they can count on from their closer and top setup men, then calculating the rest in reverse.

The Astros essentially did that throughout their run to the 2017 World Series title, and added an extra dose of creativity - made necessary by the sudden struggles of closer Ken Giles. They used Lance McCullers Jr. and Charlie Morton - both of them starting pitchers - to close out each of their clinching victories in the American League Championship Series and World Series with multi-inning stints.

"What I've learned in my short time managing is, I think going in with any preconceived philosophy is flat wrong," Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said before this year's ALDS. "What I've learned is, I have to read the game, read the situation, read the pitchers - who's available, what matchups we have coming forward, how am I going to get the 27 outs necessary to help us win."

The Astros are blessed with twin aces in Verlander and Gerrit Cole, who combined to throw 12 1/3 innings in the team's wins over Cleveland in Games 1 and 2 of their Division Series. "I love starters," Hinch said. "Why? Because I've got good ones. [But] it becomes a bullpen day very quickly if you fall behind or the starter is not at his best."

The Astros (Roberto Osuna and Ryan Pressly), Indians (Brad Hand and Adam Cimber) and Yankees (Zach Britton) all added premium bullpen pieces in trades this summer when all three teams were virtually assured of playoff spots. The moves, in other words, were made with October in mind.

The fourth AL team still standing is notably absent from that list. Even in 2018, there are still teams built on starting pitching that defy the trend toward bullpen supremacy. The Red Sox, who led the majors with 108 wins this season, top that list. They are counting on front-line starters Chris Sale, David Price and Rick Porcello to carry them deep into games and provide cover for a bullpen that is arguably the weakest of any AL contender.

"We work differently than other teams," Manager Alex Cora said. "We relied on our starters throughout the season. They carried us . . . I don't think it's going to change [in October]. I do believe we're going to rely on them."

But in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Yankees, the Red Sox bullpen already showed signs of faltering, with three relievers stumbling in relief of Sale, forcing Cora to call on Porcello, his scheduled Game 3 starter, to stanch the bleeding in the eighth inning. And in Game 2, after Price faltered early, Cora had to deploy his bullpen for 7 1/3 innings in a losing cause.

The Yankees, meantime, have assembled what is, by sheer numbers, the deepest and most potent bullpen in history, one that amassed 9.7 wins above replacement this season, as calculated by FanGraphs - the highest figure since the website began tracking it. Their relievers specialize in strikeouts, combining to whiff 11.4 batters per nine innings, another record - which essentially means their entire bullpen has the swing-and-miss capability of peak-era Nolan Ryan.

That depth even affects how its starting pitchers throw, with the Yankees' starters at times pitching more like relievers, further blurring the lines between the two groups.

In the wild card win over Oakland, for example, right-hander Luis Severino - who went 19-8 with a 3.39 ERA this season - treated his start like a glorified relief appearance. Rather than pacing himself and saving some bullets for late in the game, Severino, per the Yankees' game plan, came out firing 99-mph fastballs in the first inning. He only recorded 12 outs, but that was all the Yankees really expected, and they used four of their top relievers - Dellin Betances, David Robertson, Britton and Aroldis Chapman, all of them former all-stars - to close out a 7-2 win.

"With our bullpen, and what we have at our disposal, we'll be very aggressive in making moves," Boone said. " . . . I think bullpens, across the board, have become more dynamic."

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That is certainly the case in October. It may not be the game you remember from your youth, or even from five years ago, but it is the way the game is played today. Don’t expect it to change any time soon.

Dave Sheinin has been a Washington Post sports writer since 1999. Before working at The Post, he covered golf, Florida Gators football and Major League Baseball for the Miami Herald.

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