ALCS Game 4: Guardians Open With Shawn Armstrong, Rays Turn to Nick Martinez as Rain Threatens in Cleveland

CLEVELAND

Game 4 of the American League Championship Series comes with a tarp watch, a bullpen game, and a storyline that took fifteen years to come back around. The Cleveland Guardians will open Friday night's game at Progressive Field with reliever Shawn Armstrong, the Associated Press reported, while the Tampa Bay Rays hand the ball to starter Nick Martinez. Cleveland leads the best-of-seven series 2-1, first pitch was pushed back to 8 p.m. ET, and rain over Cleveland is the third opponent both teams have been scouting all day.

Both clubs held their pitching plans until Friday because of the weather, according to the AP account carried by NBC Sports. Rain was expected in Cleveland, with a possible window between 8 and 11 p.m. ET to get the game in — a window the new start time aims squarely at. The later start itself is a knock-on effect of Thursday night: once Milwaukee swept Los Angeles in the National League Championship Series, this game became the only show in town and slid to 8 p.m. ET on TBS, truTV and HBO Max.

Why Cleveland is opening with Armstrong

A bullpen game in Game 4 of a league championship series sounds like a white flag until you look at whose bullpen it is and how this series has gone. Armstrong will be making his fifth appearance of this postseason, and the AP's numbers are almost rude: one hit allowed in 5 1/3 innings, with five strikeouts — one report credited him with 5 1/3 scoreless innings in the role. He is not a ceremonial opener. He is, at the moment, one of the most effective pitchers in the series, and Cleveland's plan is to let its relief depth be the strategy rather than the emergency.

Behind him, per Rotoworld's rundown carried by NBC, Tanner Bibee and Joey Cantillo are available to provide length — the two arms who can turn an opener's first trip through the order into a managed middle of the game. And if Game 3 is the template, the end is already written: Daniel Espino, Erik Sabrowski, Hunter Gaddis and closer Cade Smith handled the late innings Thursday and allowed a single baserunner between them. Cleveland's entire October identity is layered pitching, and Game 4 leans all the way into it. Read how Thursday set this up in our Game 3 recap of the Guardians' 3-2 win.

The Armstrong full circle

The personal arc here is the kind October manufactures. Armstrong was drafted by Cleveland in the 18th round in 2011 and debuted for the club in 2015. He was traded to Seattle in 2017 and passed through four other organizations — including, pointedly, Tampa Bay — before returning to Cleveland this season. In late July, a calf strain left him believing his season was over; he made it back in the final week of the regular season instead. On Friday night, per the AP, the pitcher Cleveland drafted fifteen years ago opens a game that can put Cleveland one win from the World Series, against one of the organizations that employed him in between. Before Game 3, Armstrong told reporters that being back where he was drafted, in this situation, was hard to put into words. Friday night will give him about an inning or two to say it with pitches instead.

Martinez and the Rays' problem

Tampa Bay's answer is the more conventional one: a real starter. Nick Martinez gets the ball for a Rays team that cannot afford to treat Game 4 as a coin flip. Lose, and the top seed trails 3-1 and needs three straight wins to survive. Win, and the series is 2-2 with the math suddenly friendly again. Martinez's job is less about matching Cleveland zero for zero than about length — the Rays watched Cleveland's bullpen swallow Game 3's final innings, and the one way to blunt that weapon is to keep the Guardians from deploying it from a position of comfort. A long Martinez start also protects Tampa Bay's own relievers ahead of Game 5 on Saturday.

What Game 3 taught us

Thursday's 3-2 Cleveland win, recapped in our Game 3 coverage, turned on one swing: after Patrick Bailey led off the fifth with a single, Petey Halpin hit the go-ahead two-run homer. Gavin Williams gave Cleveland five innings of two-run ball — two hits, one walk, nine strikeouts — and the bullpen did the rest, permitting one baserunner the rest of the way. That is the puzzle Tampa Bay has to solve Friday: the Guardians do not need their opener to be an ace. They need six good outs and a lead, or even a tie, to hand to the deepest part of their roster.

The rain, and the schedule ahead

The weather is not a footnote. An ALCS game has not been postponed since 2019, when the Yankees hosted the Astros, per the AP — and a postponement here would compress an already tight calendar. Game 5 is set for Saturday, October 17 in Cleveland, with Games 6 and 7, if needed, on October 19 and 20 in St. Petersburg. A Friday washout would shove pitching plans for both clubs into a blender: Tampa Bay's rotation order, Cleveland's carefully rationed bullpen, everybody's travel. The 8-to-11 p.m. ET window is the hope, and the 8 p.m. start is the bet. If the rain holds off, Friday night gives us the series' hinge game: Cleveland's bullpen-by-design against a Tampa Bay starter trying to keep the favorites' season from narrowing to a single weekend. Follow it on the Previously sports desk.