AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: GUARDIANS VS RAYS

October 16, 2026

Stephen Vogt

Progressive Field

Cleveland Guardians

Pregame 4 Press Conference

Q. Any update on the weather?

STEPHEN VOGT: We have another call at 6:00. I'm not sure.

Q. Díaz, Caminero are top of their order, but is there anything else that went to Armstrong being the opener today?

STEPHEN VOGT: Just looking how to navigate the top of the order. And then obviously we've got everybody else available out there in the bullpen. So see where the game goes from there.

Q. Does a pitcher have to have a certain makeup to be an opener?

STEPHEN VOGT: I definitely think you don't just throw anyone into that role. We've seen Daniel do it for us. Shawn did this a ton last year with Texas. So I talked to him yesterday, he was completely comfortable doing it and has experience doing it as well.

Q. You've been asked a lot about the July additions. Just curious if you can go back to those moments. Were you surprised at any one of the pickups there in the end where you like, whoa, we're serious?

STEPHEN VOGT: I think, obviously, Chris, Mike and Matt kept me in the loop. We were talking about what was going on. We had talked about what we feel like we needed. But to get all of it, I think that ended up being a pretty big surprise.

I have no idea what it's like to be a front office person, nor do I ever want to find out. But I have so much respect for how they go about it because they're thinking now long-term, short-term. And they know who they're trading away.

So I think -- but getting all three of those additions as well as Bailey early in the year, and Craig Yoho as well, those five players have made huge impact for us and fit our team perfectly personality-wise, too.

Q. Curious, were you always planning for this particular game to go with the opener format? Or did the forecast and that kind of dictate that this would be the perfect opportunity to do that?

STEPHEN VOGT: No, I think all of it, yes. But when we looked at Game 4, we've had multiple discussions. I mean, we were in the room for 45 minutes yesterday talking with everybody on how we wanted to navigate this game.

And we had identified a possible opener, but we also have some pretty good starters that will be available out of the bullpen, too.

You're just looking at who we're playing, how we're going to navigate this game. We needed to know where we were bullpen-wise, coming out of Game 3. All of those things factored in.

Q. Go back to the additions, with all the homegrown players you have, what's the greatest challenge in acclimating players from the outside during the season to the guys who are used to a certain way?

STEPHEN VOGT: Well, I think a lot of that credit goes to the players. From the second all of those guys walked in -- because anytime you've got three new guys coming in the room, that means three guys are leaving. And that can have a huge impact, and it did.

It took us a few days, weeks, to really come together. But that's the beauty of this player group. They embrace everyone that comes through the doors of that clubhouse because they know they're here for a purpose. They trust the front office. They trust us to make the best decisions.

At the end of the day, players want to win. They want to win, and when you get reinforcements like that, it injects some energy into a group. Like I said, Nathaniel, Jo, Foster, Craig, and Patty, all five of them at their various times, they fit in right away, and that's a credit to our players.

Q. As you get deeper into a series and you're using your relievers multiple times in the same series, how do you look at the familiarity the opposing hitters get at the relievers and how that may factor into your thought process about their usage?

STEPHEN VOGT: It definitely plays. And that's something I've learned, go back to my first experience managing in the postseason. And we didn't really have a choice in '24 with how we were constructed. We just didn't have the starting pitching we have now.

But I keep track whose seen who how many times. Do we have another option to go through this area of the lineup tonight as opposed to yesterday?

So again, sometimes it's unavoidable -- you're going to end up throwing the same guys against the same hitters. Yeah, of course, I'm tracking that. And familiarity is real. And the more pitches that these guys see from our relievers, they're going to become a little bit more familiar with them.

So like I said, sometimes your hands are tied and you just gotta go do what you can to win the game. But we try to navigate that the best we can.

Q. Nick Martinez is not a stranger. I know you've seen him a couple times this year. When he's at his best what does that look like to you?

STEPHEN VOGT: It's three fastballs on the inner part of the plate, a stop-ball change-up down and away, the back door slider he pitches. He gets us in between.

It's hard to pick out which fastball it is. I mean, that's the beauty of guys with three fastballs; it's really hard to hit them. And Nick's done a great job against us, mixing speeds, keeping us off balance and crowding our lefties with the three fastballs.

So hopefully we get some mistakes out over the plate and we're ready to hit them. We've got to do our best to lay off that change-up.

Q. I realize this isn't why you're playing these games in October, but as a byproduct, to see guys like Gavin Williams and Cade Smith start to get some national recognition here and people around the country seeing how good they are, how good a feeling is that to be able to show off your players a little bit?

STEPHEN VOGT: It's really fun for them. These are two of the best pitchers in the game. We've got a number of them. I mean, we feel like all of our pitchers are really good.

But it's really fun to see the national media talking about our players consistently. It's really fun to see that because it doesn't always happen.

So for Cade Smith and Gavin specifically, what they've done for this team -- and Hunter Gaddis, I'd put him in that category too; he's thrown almost every game. And Erik Sabrowski, I mean, I want to name all 13 pitchers right now. I won't.

But these guys are stepping up and doing things for their teammates to help us win games that it's not asked of many people, but they keep themselves prepared and ready to do so. So it's been really fun to see them get this recognition.

Q. You were talking about it yesterday, obviously the weather today. I was just wondering last night and today for you, do you know how many meetings you've been in, how many plans you have? What has it been like?

STEPHEN VOGT: It's busy. There's a lot of important things to talk through. And the way I look at it is ultimately it's my decision. Ultimately, I'm the one that's making the in-game decisions and doing that. But I want to use all the resources around me. I want to make sure that we're not missing anything.

And so we have meetings before the meetings, meetings after the meetings, meetings during the meetings. We're talking ad nauseum right now to make sure that we're not missing anything. And I'm really thankful for all the awesome people I get to work with every day, that I don't feel like I'm doing this by myself.

Q. October bullpen usage is fascinating to me because quite often guys are asked to do things that they typically aren't. It seemed as if you asked guys like Cade going multiple innings during the regular season in preparation for this, did you feel that's something that you tangibly do with October in mind, getting guys ready for any role at any time?

STEPHEN VOGT: I feel like, yes, is the answer to that. I feel like, especially for a lot of our leverage guys, we try not to do it during the regular season. In a perfect world, you'd like not to do it. But trying to get all of our relievers to go three in a row, to try and get all of our relievers to do a one-plus.

We try to do some of that in Spring Training. We try and do some of that, but I do think it's really important, especially for first-time relievers, hey, he had two nights in a row with a low pitch count, should we try and get him into the game tonight so that he gets a third in a row?

We don't necessarily need to force it, but if it comes up, is that something we want to do? So that now when you do get to October and you've got the three games in the middle of the series, they know they can do it.

It's not asking them to do something they've never done, because I think to me that's one of the biggest mistakes we can make is asking somebody to do something they've never done.

And you know we did it with Gavin coming out of the bullpen. We've done it with Tanner coming out of the bullpen. There's going to be inevitables that just happen this time of year because it's all hands on deck to win.