Guardians go with youth in bullpen for ALDS

CLEVELAND -- The Guardians’ American League Division roster is set and Cleveland is sticking with its rookie hurlers in the bullpen.

The Guardians didn’t have any surprises when it came to their position players, but the team left three pitchers off the playoff roster who finished the regular season with the big league squad: Ben Lively, Pedro Avila and Nick Sandlin.

“Yesterday was a really hard day,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said prior to Game 1. “Specifically with Ben, Pedro and Nick, guys who have helped us get to this point all year long and now you don’t get to be active in the first round. It’s terrible. It’s not fun at all.

“Understanding and liking it are two different things.”

With the series only being five games, the Guardians shouldn’t need more than three starters. Those are expected to be Tanner Bibee, Matthew Boyd and Alex Cobb. And if Gavin Williams and Joey Cantillo are moving to the bullpen, Cleveland didn’t need another long reliever in the mix. That’s why Lively, a starter, and Avila, who filled the long-reliever role for the Guardians all season long, didn’t fit into this picture.

“Pedro took the ball every day,” Vogt said. “It didn’t matter if he was tired, hurting -- and this game can be very ugly sometimes. What Pedro’s meant to us all year and Nick and Ben, to leave them off was a really hard decision.”

Sandlin is a little bit of a different story from the other two. At the start of the year, Vogt referred to him as his pacifier because he was the best option at any point in the game to escape a jam. Over the last few months, he’s been more inconsistent, leading the Guardians to trust two rookies who didn’t debut until September: Erik Sabrowski and Andrew Walters.

“Those two guys have been great since they’ve come up,” Vogt said. “The stuff plays. We’ve seen it versus right, versus left, big moments, middle of an inning. We kind of put both of them through the wringer the last month to see. We had to learn as much as we could about them in two, three weeks. They both answered the call.”

There are 12 men in the bullpen, trying to continue the legacy this group built throughout the regular season as the best relief corps in the Majors. And with off-days between Games 1, 2 and 3, expect Cleveland to go to the ‘pen early and often.

“The strength of our team has been our pitching and specifically the bullpen,” Vogt said. “It’s tough, but at the end of the day, we got to try to make the best decisions to win a five-game series and that’s what we did.”

Here’s the Guardians full ALDS roster:

Starters: Tanner Bibee, Matthew Boyd, Alex Cobb

Relievers: Emmanuel Clase, Hunter Gaddis, Cade Smith, Tim Herrin, Eli Morgan, Andrew Walters, Erik Sabrowski, Gavin Williams, Joey Cantillo

Catchers: Bo Naylor, Austin Hedges

Infielders: Josh Naylor, Andrés Giménez, Brayan Rocchio, José Ramírez, Daniel Schneemann, David Fry, Kyle Manzardo, Tyler Freeman

Outfielders: Steven Kwan, Lane Thomas, Jhonkensy Noel, Will Brennan