Decision points: The key moments from Friday’s MLB Wild Card games

Because they pit evenly matched teams, playoff games frequently turn on one decision point. Those are moments when a manager, or possibly a player, faces a choice of strategic calls only he can make. Upon that strategic call the contest can turn.

All four of the MLB Wild Card games played Friday contained such a decision point. Sometimes it came early, sometimes late. Sometimes it involved a personnel decision, and sometimes it turned on a player’s performance.

In every case, however, the game outcome either immediately or eventually pivoted based on the aftermath of that decision point.

In postseason ball, that’s not unusual. Sometimes entire postseason fates hang in the balance as the decision point plays out. Since 2018, one in every five postseason games was decided by a single run, and another one in five came down to a two-run difference.

Friday’s play didn’t stray far from that pattern. The Guardians edged Tampa Bay by a single run, and the Cards-Phillies game was a two-run affair into the ninth inning, when St. Louis’ bullpen collapsed.

The noteworthy exception played out at Citi Field, when the visiting San Diego Padres lit up Max Scherzer for seven runs inside of five innings of an eventual 7-1 victory. But even then there was a potentially pivotal decision point in the bottom of the first inning.

It’s enlightening, then, to look at each game’s decision point and see how that point turned the game’s outcome.

Looking at key decision points for each of Friday’s MLB Wild Card games.

Bieber or Clase?

In closely contested playoff games, no managerial decision point is as fraught with uncertainty and peril as the simplest and most common: Whether to pull the pitcher.

Make the wrong decision (and either decision could be the wrong one) and the game could blow up in a manager’s face. If that happens, second guessers are sure to flock to the scene.

On the other hand, the right decision can lock down a victory.

Guardians manager Terry Francona faced such a moment in the eighth inning of Cleveland’s eventual 2-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

It was, perhaps, both the most basic and potentially most controversial of decisions: When do you lift a starter who’s rolling?

The eighth inning began with Guardians ace Shane Bieber in virtually full command. Through seven innings, he had held the Rays to only two hits, one of them a Jose Siri home run.

He got Manuel Margot on a groundout, then fanned Christian Bethancourt on three pitches before pinch hitter Isaac Paredes rolled a ground single into left field.

The next batter was Siri, the same guy who had taken Bieber deep two innings earlier.

This was the  decision point with which Francona was forced to wrestle. On the one hand, Bieber was pitching superbly. He had walked just one, fanned eight, and, aside from the Siri homer, the Rays had not advanced a single runner beyond first base.

On the other hand, on the rare occasions when Francona had let Bieber pitch into the eighth inning, the results had not been good. He had done so six previous times, the toll amounting to a 7.71 ERA and a .300 opponents batting average.

Francona had his ace closer, Emmanuel Clase, warmed and ready in the bullpen. Clase had allowed just 54 baserunners in 72 innings. But Clase wasn’t perfect, either, having twice since September 1 blown save opportunities. Beyond that, Francona had not asked Clase to get more than three outs all season.

In a one-run game, Francona’s decision point was a second-guesser’s dream.

He went with Clase, and it worked. Pinch runner Vidal Brujan stole second base on the first pitch, but then Clase retired Siri on a line drive to third.

In the ninth, Clase sat the Rays down without incident, clinching the victory for Bieber and the Guardians and putting Francona on the right side of the game’s critical decision point.

Oliver Marmol waits too long

In St. Louis a few hours later, Oliver Marmol found himself in an eerily similar situation to the one Francona had maneuvered through. Entering the ninth inning, Marmol’s Cardinals led the visiting Philadelphia Phillies 2-0. Marmol’s pitcher starting the ninth was Ryan Helsley, who had closed out a minor Phillies eighth-inning threat by striking out Brandon Marsh and retiring Kyle Schwarber.

To the extent the Cardinals had a closer in 2022, Gallegos was it. Of the team’s 37 official saves, he had 19. More critically, Helsley had a 100 mph fastball. He used it to compile a 1.25 ERA and nine victories in 10 decisions.

Helsley’s 8.4 percent walk rate, while unremarkable, was at least in line with the MLB average, so there appeared to be no reason to question Marmol’s decision to let Helsley go for the five-out save. That decision point looked better still when Rhys Hoskins fished for a low-outside 3-2 slider for the ninth inning’s first out.

Then things deteriorated. J.T. Realmuto singled, and Bryce Harper walked on a 3-2 curve that (like the first three called balls) was non-competitive.

With the tying runs on base, it became a fair question whether Marmol should stay with Helsley or look to one of his other closers. That was especially so given that Helsley had recently jammed a finger on his throwing hand. Marmol had Giovanny Gallegos, with 14 saves, available in the pen, but instead he chose to warm up starter Jack Flaherty and rookie reliever Andre Pallante.

Helsley complicated his situation by walking Nick Castellanos on five pitches, loading the bases and putting the tying runs in scoring position, No movement from Marmol. Then three pitches into Alec Bohm’s at-bat, Helsley hit him with a 100 mph four-seamer, forcing a run across and moving the go-ahead run into scoring position.

Finally Marmol went to his pen, calling on the rookie Pallante. By now, though, the momentum was undeniable on the side of the Phillies. Jean Segura singled the tying and lead runs home, then pinch runner Edmundo Sosa scored on a fielder’s choice, then Brandon Marsh rolled a grounder past Nolan Arenado and into left field, scoring Segura.

The final toll: six runs, enough to make a ninth-inning Cardinal rally a bridge too far. The Phillies won 6-3.

The fourth pitch

The even matchups that predominate in postseason play usually mean that a pivotal decision point comes in the game’s late innings. But that’s not always the case.

During Friday’s 4-0 Seattle victory over the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, the decision point occurred only four pitches into the game.

The pitch, thrown by Jays’ starter Alex Manoah, set off a chain reaction of events that buried the home team Jays in a 4-0 hole from which they never would recover.

Manoah was the obvious choice of manager John Schneider’s to take the mound for Game 1. He had made 31 starts, compiling a 16-7 record in nearly 200 innings. Manoah had not given up more than two runs in any start since mid-August.

The leadoff matchup of Manoah vs. Seattle rookie sensation Julio Rodriguez was destined to be a trend-setter Manoah’s first pitch was a 100 mph message-sender: a four-seamer near the corner that Rodriguez admired as it sped by.

Rodriguez followed by fouling off two sinkers. That was a major hole for Rodriguez, who batted just .109 this season from an 0-2 count.

Then came the game-turner, another four-seam fastball high and tight that was designed to back Rodriguez off the plate. Instead it hit the batter, rescuing him from the 0-2 hole and putting Manoah in a challenging early position. After a ground ball out, Manoah missed to Eugenio Suarez with a fastball, then grooved another fastball that Suarez sent into the right-center gap for a run-producing double.

With a full count on Cal Raleigh, Manoah delivered a major mistake, a high sinker that Raleigh sent into the right field seats for a 3-0 lead.

Leads of 3-0 are not always definitive in postseason, but this one was. Behind starter Luis Castillo, the Mariners shut out the Jays 4-0.