With Closer Emmanuel Clase In The Playoffs, Terry Francona Manages By The Book Of Jonathan Papelbon

Sometimes, a manager or a player drops a little nugget in a postseason press conference that is much more telling than it initially sounds.

“We don’t script it out — it’s kind of a popular saying,” Guardians manager Terry Francona said late Friday afternoon, when Cleveland rode an unprecedented usage of closer Emmanuel Clase in completing a 4-2, 10-inning win over the Yankees that evened their AL Division Series at one game apiece.

It’s also a way of saying that most teams do script it out these days — and that the Guardians are an anomaly in modern Major League Baseball, run by a front office that actually entrusts its manager to handle the task of managing the game for nine innings (and possibly beyond). That’s why Francona — his standing as a rock-solid future Hall of Famer secure — continues to manage despite his acknowledgments that the job has become more difficult for him following a series of health issues.

But while the Guardians’ front office doesn’t script out the game for Francona, the skipper certainly has a dog-eared book on which he replies for a playoff game such as Friday’s — and almost as importantly, all those leading up to it.

The usage of Clase Friday — when the closer threw the final 2 1/3 innings — was reminiscent of Francona’s deployment of Jonathan Papelbon in 2007, when Francona managed the Red Sox to their second championship in four years.

“Oh boy I can barely remember last week,” the ever-deadpan Francona said upon being asked about the Papelbon comparisons.

Clase and Papelbon are not the same — on Tuesday, Francona lauded Clase’s cool demeanor, which, uhh, is not something that’ll ever be said about Papelbon — and these Guardians, champions of the lone division to send just one team to the playoffs, don’t have the expectations of those Red Sox, who entered the 2007 playoffs with 96 wins, tied for the most in the majors.

But any chance the Guardians have of mounting a deep playoff run involves relying heavily on Clase following a regular season in which Francona carefully managed his usage.

Clase didn’t throw more than one inning in any of his 77 outings this season, when he led the majors with 42 saves, the fifth-highest single-season total in Cleveland history. The only other pitcher to record at least 10 saves while never recording more than three outs in any appearance was Josh Hader, who racked up 36 saves for the Brewers and Padres.

Clase entered the playoffs having recorded four or more outs in an appearance just nine times in 169 regular season games — most recently when he recorded a four-out save against the Red Sox on Sept. 5, 2021. He threw as many as two innings just three times, most recently in a loss against the Astros on July 4, 2021.

Fifteen years ago, when Papelbon had 37 saves — at the time the fifth-highest single-season total in Red Sox history — he was utilized for more than three outs just four times in 59 regular season games and recorded three saves of at least four outs, tied for 11th-most in the majors.

But Papelbon threw more than an inning in all but one of his seven postseason appearances. He went 1-0 with four saves and didn’t allow a run in the playoffs while limiting opposing batters to a .135 average.

History has begun to repeat itself for Clase, who earned a four-out save in the opener of the Guardians’ wild card series against the Rays on Oct. 7. On Friday, he entered in relief of James Karinchak with the bases loaded, two outs and the score tied in the eighth inning. Clase, throwing 100 mph cutters and 93 mph sliders, got Kyle Higashioka to line out to third before working around a two-out single by Anthony Rizzo in the ninth.

Afterward, Francona said he would have gone to another pitcher if the game remained tied in the 10th. But the Guardians scored twice in the top half and Clase — throwing “merely” 98 mph cutters and 91 mph sliders — walked Josh Donaldson with one out before whiffing Oswaldo Cabrera and getting Isiah Kiner-Falafa to ground out.

“Incredible — I’m assuming that’s the longest he’s gone,” Guardians starter Shane Bieber said. “A win and a save.”

(Bieber again marveled at Clase earning a win and a save later in his postgame scrum, for the record, Clase was “only” credited with the win)

“Maybe he was a little fatigued there in the 10th, but a fatigued Clase is still overpowering,” Bieber said. “Nobody else we want to close our games, that’s for sure.”

And at this time of year, there’s no better book for Francona to go by than the one he relied upon a decade-and-a-half ago.

“If he’s not in a dangerous area, if he still looks effective, we are able to send him back out,” Francona said of Clase, who ended up throwing 33 pitches — just four more than Karinchak threw in getting his two outs. “If we had not scored, we weren’t going to send him back. But when we scored, that’s why we sent him.

“Try to make the best decisions you can.”