Baseball can be so frustrating. The life of a fan is excruciating at times.
Cleveland fans might have it worse than anyone else. They’ve gone the longest of any fanbase without a World Series win. It’s been 76 years since Cleveland won it all back in 1948.
There were only sixteen teams then, eight in each league. Milwaukee, San Diego, and Seattle have never won, but they’ve also been around fewer than the 76 years since Cleveland last won.
If that’s not enough of a gut punch, the Guardians went into this postseason with the best relief pitcher in baseball who had one of the best regular seasons of any relief pitcher ever.
Emmanuel Clase, who Cleveland got from the Rangers in that ill-fated Corey Kluber trade, appeard in 74 games this year, pitching 74.1 innings. His ERA was 0.61. Yes, that number started with a zero. He led baseball with 47 saves. And had an almost unheard of 0.659 WHIP. Clase’s ERA+ was 674. That means, he was almost seven times better than the average relief pitcher.
To put that into perspective, the Rangers Kirby Yates had a phenomenal season. In 61 innings, he had a 1.17 ERA, with 85 strikeouts, and a 0.827 WHIP. In most seasons, those numbers would be far and away the best in baseball.
Yate’s ERA+ this year was 340. Or, about half as good as Emmanual Clase.
Cleveland, and its fans, came into the postseason knowing they had, by far, the best closer in the playoffs. Just get them to the ninth and they had the game won.
In three games against the Yankees, Clase’s ERA was 9.00. He had a blown save in Game 3 when he gave up back-to-back home runs to turn a 3-2 Cleveland lead into a 4-3 Yankees lead. He was the losing pitcher in Game 4 when he gave up two runs in the ninth in an 8-6 loss. He pitched a scoreless inning in last night’s 5-2 ten-inning loss to New York which knocked Cleveland out of the playoffs and sent the Yankees to the World Series.
So, Cleveland fans will have to wait yet another year, their seventy-seventh, to break the drought. And lick the wounds of a lights out closer who suddenly became very hittable.
Baseball is frustrating. Baseball is painful.
TODAY’S GAME:
7:08, New York 2 @ Los Angeles 3, FS1