Petey Halpin hit .220 this season. He batted eighth on Thursday. He is the kind of player who usually enters a playoff game in the seventh inning to catch a fly ball and then disappears from the box score.
He just put Cleveland one win from the World Series, and then he threw his bat into the sky.
The swing
Halpin came up in the bottom of the fifth inning of ALCS Game 3 with Patrick Bailey on first after an infield single. On a 2-2 count he got a 95.9 mph sinker from Rays starter Griffin Jax and hit it 105 mph to right field, projected at 385 feet by Statcast.
That was the game. Cleveland won 3-2 and leads the series 2-1.
The 24-year-old outfielder, a third-round pick in 2020 who debuted last September, described the moment as blacking out. His teammates were less restrained. Steven Kwan called the bat flip majestic and said Halpin was the only one with the nerve to attempt one that big. Reliever Daniel Espino rated it a 10 out of 10 while worrying the bat might land on Halpin’s head. Closer Cade Smith allowed that it was maybe a little much.
Gavin Williams is the actual story
Halpin got the highlight. Williams got the win, and he has been the best pitcher in this postseason by a comfortable margin.
He struck out nine over five innings on Thursday and is now 2-0 in October with 33 strikeouts in 16 2/3 postseason innings. Tampa Bay struck out 13 times as a team and managed two runs on three hits, both runs coming on a two-strike triple by Chandler Simpson in the fourth.
Espino relieved Williams in the sixth. Smith got a four-out save, his second of the series. The game took two hours and 28 minutes in front of 30,101 fans at a first pitch that had been moved up five hours to 1 p.m. ET because of rain.
Cleveland is winning with the wrong names
This is what makes the Guardians hard to plan against. They do not have a postseason superstar. They have Halpin and they have Bailey, the two-time Gold Glove catcher they acquired from San Francisco in May for a draft pick and a pitching prospect. Bailey is slugging .609 this postseason with home runs in both the ALDS and the ALCS, and he is the reason Halpin had a runner on base at all.
Meanwhile Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay’s best hitter, struck out against Williams and is still looking for his first postseason home run.
The historical splits favor Cleveland heavily. Teams that win Game 3 of a tied best-of-seven have taken the series 70 percent of the time. Teams that go up 2-1 with Game 3 at home have won 61 percent of the time. The Guardians have won five of their last six games.
Stephen Vogt spent his postgame thanking fans for turning up at one o’clock on a Thursday and joking that the ball barely cleared the wall. He is allowed. His eighth-place hitter just took over the American League playoffs.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.