Shouting At Clouds During Baseball's Post-Season

This post is supposed to be my views on the Steelers after six games, but the "action" from Game 2 of the ALCS on Tuesday night is causing me to take a detour into Old Man Shouting At Clouds territory.

Here is a  segment of the box score from that game between the Yankees and the Guardians:

As you can see, Cleveland used eight - EIGHT! - pitchers in that game, the longest stint of any one pitcher was one and two-thirds of an inning.  This was not a spring training exhibition game, nor was it some throwaway game in the dog days of August between two teams playing out the string.  This was Game Two of a best-of-seven series to decide the winner of the American League pennant.  When Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt came out in the six to seventh inning to make a second mid-inning pitching change, I turned off the TV and went to bed, but hey, at least he didn't use a position player to pitch like Derek Shelton might have.  

The Yankees won that game 6-3.  I am grudgingly willing to accept the fact the day of work horse starting pitchers who will start thirty games a season and complete twenty-five of them now reside in the dustbins of baseball history.  Bob Gibson, Warren Spahn, and Bob Friend aren't walking thorough the clubhouse doors anymore.  We'll never see another Jack Morris-John Smoltz Game Seven match-up ever again.  However, has the role of the starting pitcher in baseball now been so marginalized that we see something like the Guardians gave us on Tuesday become the norm in games of such magnitude?   

The next night in New York, Walker Buehler went four strong, shutout innings for the Dodgers against the Mets. He was mowing them down, but he was pulled after the fourth inning, and LA then used four more pitchers to complete an 8-0 shutout over the Mets.  In commenting on that, my pal Brian O'Neill said at breakfast yesterday, "Well, it worked, didn't it?"  I don't have a comeback for that one, other than the fact that I don't have to like the trend just because it works (sometimes).

In Cleveland's 7-5 win over the Yankees last night, the Guardians once again used eight pitchers, but at least starter Matthew Boyd went five innings (hope that won't put him on the disabled list) and the game did go into extra innings.  The Yanks used seven pitchers.  Only seven. 

At least we can still enjoy majestic home runs like the two that Shohei Ohtani has put out of the yard these last two games.