Chase DeLauter is standing at his locker wearing the goat horns for Game 4 of the ALCS, and I refuse to let him take the fall for a disaster that belongs entirely to Stephen Vogt and a lifeless Cleveland bullpen.
On a 46-degree Saturday night at Progressive Field, the coldest postseason game in Tampa Bay Rays franchise history, the rookie right fielder let a seventh-inning Jonathan Aranda single skip under his glove. Two runs scored, Aranda motored all the way to third, and Chandler Simpson cashed him in with a sacrifice fly a moment later to blow a 2-1 nail-biter open into a 5-1 laugher. The Rays walked out with a 7-3 victory, evening the series at 2-2 and guaranteeing this fight goes back to St. Petersburg.
After the final out, DeLauter stood in front of the microphones and delivered the exact penance baseball traditionalists demand from a kid who made two mistakes in one night. “Put that one on me,” DeLauter told ESPN. “You miss a ground ball and give up two runs — essentially give up three. It’s my fault he’s on third base. It sucks.”
Give the kid credit for having that dawg in him at the podium, because his accountability is elite. His assessment of why the Guardians lost, however, is completely cooked.
Blaming the Glove Hides a Bullpen Blueprint That Melted Down
If you listen to DeLauter’s own postgame confession, or the chorus of fans framing his seventh-inning misplay as the hinge of the ALCS, Cleveland lost because a rookie took his eye off a cold baseball. Even Travis Bazzana felt the need to step in and defend his teammate’s glove to ESPN, saying, “He’s been unreal out there, all year. The numbers would say so, and my eyes would tell us that he’s been really solid out there for us.”
My view of that seventh inning starts way before the ball ever reached the right-field grass. Cleveland came into a rain-delayed Game 4 with a 2-1 series lead and a golden chance to strangle a 98-win Tampa Bay juggernaut, and the Guardians showed up to a gunfight waving a bullpen game. They threw Shawn Armstrong out there as an opener, pieced innings together with Foster Griffin and Daniel Espino, and prayed that a Rays top four that entered Saturday a combined 7-for-41 with three RBIs in the first three games would stay frozen in the Ohio chill.
When you run a parade of relievers at an offense that won 98 regular-season games, you are begging for regression to kick your door in. By the seventh inning, Richie Palacios and Taylor Walls had already singled and executed a double steal to put runners on second and third with one out. When Aranda ripped that single past a diving Bazzana, Palacios and Walls were scoring whether DeLauter fielded it cleanly or not. The error only gifted Tampa Bay the fifth run on Simpson’s sacrifice fly… and then Matt Festa served up a two-run bomb to Yandy Díaz in the ninth to make the final margin four runs anyway.
DeLauter’s glove cost Cleveland one unearned run in a game they lost by four. Treating his miscue like a franchise-altering catastrophe is lazy scapegoating for a pitching staff that surrendered 11 hits.
Kevin Cash Unlocked the Monster Cleveland Thought It Had Caged
The real nightmare for Cleveland is what happened inside the Tampa Bay batter’s box. For three games, Guardians pitchers had nerfed the heart of the Rays’ order, holding Aranda hitless in his first 10 at-bats of the series. On Saturday, Kevin Cash shuffled his deck, slid Simpson into the three-hole, and watched his top four hitters—Díaz, Aranda, Simpson, and Junior Caminero… erupt for six of Tampa Bay’s 11 hits and six RBIs.
“Those were the two runs we needed,” Aranda said after piling up three hits and two RBIs. “In the moment, I see the ball go under the hands of DeLauter, I said, it’s time to run.”
Look at how Cash summarized the night to reporters afterward. “A lot of really good at-bats. A lot of hard hits. But overall, just happy that Junior squared some balls up, Aranda came through in a big way for us and then Yandy there at the end with a two-run, add-on homer.”
That quote should terrify every Guardians fan in Northeast Ohio. While Cleveland was busy burning through relievers and committing two fielding errors—Bazzana booted one at second base before hitting his first postseason homer in the seventh—Rays starter Nick Martinez settled in after DeLauter’s first-inning RBI single and retired 10 straight batters over 5.1 innings of one-run ball. Notice how nobody is screaming about DeLauter getting thrown out stretching that first-inning single into a double, even though running yourself out of a first-inning rally against a settling starter does just as much damage to your win probability as a seventh-inning boot.
DeLauter hit .287 with 16 homers and 67 RBIs in the regular season and carried the offense in Game 1. He is the primary reason an 85-win AL Central winner is even trading punches with a 98-win Goliath. Because Friday’s rainout wiped out the travel off-day, both clubs have to turn right back around at Progressive Field today with zero rest for a taxed Cleveland bullpen and a freshly awakened Tampa Bay lineup waiting to feast before heading home to St. Petersburg.
