Oh, what a relief it is for Maddon, Francona
• This World Series was bound to be fascinating, if only for the history of the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. The backdrop wrote itself: 176 seasons of consecutive combined misery for two franchises in bedrock major league towns.
Yet through five games — with the Indians still leading, three games to two, after the Cubs’ 3-2 victory at Wrigley Field on Sunday — we have seen baseball move forward and backward at the same time. The days of the stubborn ace taking the ball in the World Series and daring the manager to pry it from his hand? Those are gone, at least for this year. The days of a team’s best reliever seizing a game in the middle innings, instead of waiting for the end? Those are back.
No starter in this series has got an out past the sixth inning. Yet the Indians’ relief ace, Andrew Miller, has been summoned in the fifth inning once and the seventh twice. Cody Allen, who usually closes for Cleveland, entered in the seventh on Sunday.
“You’ve been seeing the other side do their thing,” said David Ross, the Cubs’ veteran catcher, who knew what would happen when he and starter Jon Lester left after the top of the sixth on Sunday. “It couldn’t be long before Chappy would be in the game.”
Chappy is Aroldis Chapman, a former New York Yankee like Miller who looms over every game of this series. ( Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, had no idea he was also playing World Series casting director when he traded the two in July.)
Facing el i mination before Game 5, Cubs manager Joe Maddon talked with Chapman so he would be ready to pitch in the seventh inning. After Carl Edwards Jr. pitched to the first two Indians hitters in the top of that inning — Maddon said he liked the matchup with the batter leading off, Mike Napoli — Chapman entered for the first eight-out save of his career.
“I’m always prepared for the ninth inning, that’s my job,” Chapman said afterward through an interpreter. “I understand that, but I always appreciate it if they let me know that I’m going to pitch more than the ninth inning. That’s fine with me.”
It is startling, in a way, that such a strategy seems so radical. Yet for a generation, it was. From 1988 to 1996, Dennis Eckersley made 26 appearances as a post- season closer for Oakland and St. Louis. He never pitched before the eighth inning. From 1997 through 2011, Mariano Rivera made 85 appearances as the Yankees’ post- season closer. He never pitched before the eighth inning, either.
Before Chapman on Sunday, the last true closer to earn a save of more than two innings in a World Series game — excluding a couple of three- inning saves in 1990s blowouts — was Jay Howell of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988.
Lots of other relievers did it before Howell: Todd Worrell, Wil- lie Hernandez, Bruce Sutter, Kent Tekulve. Goose Gossage entered two World Series games in the seventh inning or earlier; Rollie Fingers did it six times.
It made sense then, and it makes sense now, heightening the feeling of anticipation in these games.
“There’s all kinds of drama out there,” Maddon said, after Chapman’s save. “When you have a guy like that that can pitch that many significant outs in the latter part of the game, it’s pretty cool.”
By late October — and certainly by November, when this World Series will be decided — most pitchers are all but spent. Relievers, taking advantage of scheduled off days, are fresher. The Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen fired three innings, almost as an afterthought, on the night the Cubs beat them to clinch the pennant. Chapman’s teammates had no doubt he could hold up on Sunday.
“He’s big and strong,” catcher Willson Contreras said in Spanish. “Do you really think eight outs is a problem for him? No. It seems easy. He executed everything I called.”
Edwards said he was not surprised to see the hard- throwing Chapman replace him after two batters in the seventh.
“Chapman is a horse,” Edwards said. “Good fastball, good curveball, 100- plus. I mean, he’s different. He’s a different person. He’s a different breed. He did an outstanding job today. Coming in the seventh, going the eighth and the ninth? It sums up a lot about his character and the shape he’s in.”
Character can be a tricky word. Chapman began this season by serving a 30- game suspension for a domestic violence incident that occurred one year to the day before Game 5. But he pitched well enough for the Yankees — without further incident off the field — for the Cubs to part with top prospects to acquire him.
“If not now, when?” Theo Epstein, the Cubs’ architect, said at the time. He meant it to explain a bold trade, but the same logic goes for Maddon, Indians’ manager Terry Francona and any other manager who wants to win in the modern post-season.
Go for it, with your best option, when the moment matters most. Championship droughts aside, the changing character of the games — limited work for the starters, more work for the best relievers — is the story of this World Series.