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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Cleveland -104 over Tampa Bay
Game 4 ALCS

8:00 PM EST. Game 4 finally goes tonight, 24 hours late, after Friday's rainout at Progressive Field — and the rain did more than move a start time. It wiped out the travel day, which means if this series goes the distance these two clubs will play four games in four days to decide who faces Milwaukee in the World Series. That squeeze will bite hardest on Monday and Tuesday, but it shapes tonight too, because Cleveland was always planning a bullpen game here and now has to run one knowing there is no off-day coming to let those arms recover. Cleveland leads the series 2-1 after Thursday's 3-2 win in a Game 3 that itself had to be moved up to the afternoon to beat the weather.

Tampa Bay's starter is Nick Martínez, and his 3.10 ERA is one of the great magic tricks of the season. The under-the-hood number is a 116 DRA-, he owns the worst strikeout rate of any qualified starter in baseball, he allows more contact than any full-time starter alive, and he does it throwing 92 in a league that lives at 96. What he actually does is live on the edges — the highest rate of pitches in the shadow zone around the plate of any starter — and induce a special kind of harmless contact: of the 226 fly balls he allowed this year, two-thirds were high, lazy flies in the launch-angle range that almost never leaves the yard, and only four starters in baseball gave up a lower wOBA on fly-ball contact. Add the best outfield defense in the game behind him and the act has worked all summer. It worked less well the last time October saw it, when the Yankees got two runs off him in 3? innings in the ALDS, and playoff lineups are where 92-and-nibbling goes to die.

Cleveland, meanwhile, is out of starters and completely unbothered by it. Right-hander Shawn Armstrong opens, a deliberate choice to make Tampa Bay set the weak side of its platoons, and after him Stephen Vogt will run out one fresh arm after another, with nobody in a Cleveland uniform facing a Rays hitter twice. This bullpen is the best weapon left in the series: on Thursday both pens threw four scoreless, one-hit innings, but Cleveland's high-end arms did it on almost no pitches — Cade Smith needed just 18 — and Smith (36.3% strikeouts, 71 DRA-), Erik Sabrowski (37.4%) and Daniel Espino (38.5%) miss bats at rates Tampa Bay's bullpen simply cannot match. The rainout even handed Vogt a bulk option in Foster Griffin, who gave Cleveland four solid two-run innings in Game 1. Tampa Bay needed length from Martínez tonight more than ever, because what comes next for them is Parker Messick and Gavin Williams lined up in Games 5 and 6 — which is why this is close to a must-win for the Rays, and why it matters that their bats have gone silent at exactly the wrong time: a team total WPA of -0.55 for the series, with Chandler Simpson (.857 OPS) the only regular producing, Jonathan Aranda at .091, Junior Caminero at .523 and Yandy Díaz at .615.

The standard worry about a bullpen game — that the workload has to catch up eventually — is a Monday problem, not a Saturday one, and on Thursday Cleveland's best relievers barely broke a sweat. A contact pitcher who survives on fly balls, a cold lineup, and the deepest stable of power arms in the league on the other side. That is the bet.

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