ST. PETERSBURG -- You can’t let José Ramírez try to beat you. That has been the mantra for opposing pitchers facing the Guardians for years now.
The long-standing game plan has been to be careful with Cleveland’s franchise icon and challenge the hitters around him. Right now, pitchers are challenging rookie Chase DeLauter, and he is making them pay.
Batting once again directly behind J-Ram for Game 1 of the AL Championship Series, DeLauter pounded out three hits, including a solo homer that jump-started Cleveland’s comeback in its 7-3 win over the Rays at Tropicana Field.
The lefty-hitting outfielder, who has a .902 OPS over his past 13 games dating back to the final week of the regular season, racked up seven total bases on the night. Just four days after his 25th birthday, DeLauter became the third-youngest player in Cleveland franchise history with at least seven total bases in a postseason game. He’s behind only a couple of notable 23-year-olds: Manny Ramirez (10 total bases in 1995 ALCS Game 2 versus the Mariners) and Josh Naylor (nine total bases in 2020 AL Wild Card Series Game 1 versus the Yankees).
DeLauter also walked, making him the third-youngest player to reach base at least four times for Cleveland in a postseason game. Ramirez and Naylor did that, too.
“Just to see how calm and cool and collected he is -- he is very mature for such a young player,” said Guardians Game 1 starting pitcher Foster Griffin. “It’s really impressive.”
DeLauter’s most impressive swing of the night was on the first pitch of the sixth inning. He was hunting for something up in the strike zone, likely a fastball, and Rays starter Drew Rasmussen obliged with an elevated four-seamer that he thought he executed well. It was a real strength-versus-strength matchup: DeLauter has a .610 slugging percentage against four-seamers this season, while Rasmussen allows only a .323 slugging percentage on that pitch.
DeLauter’s literal and figurative strength stood out on that pitch as the ball jumped off his bat at 102.3 mph, flew to the opposite field and landed into the left-center-field seats.
“Drew is one of those guys that he just throws the ball wherever he wants,” DeLauter said. “He makes it tough on hitters. My approach was to get something out over the plate early and hit it forward.
“I think if you're really trying to pick out a specific pitch, you’re going to be late at the end of the day. So look for something hard out of the hand. If it looks hard, let it rip and pray to the guys upstairs that it's a good ball.”
After he got the Guardians on the board in the sixth, he set them up to take the lead in the eighth when he followed Ramírez’s leadoff single with a line-drive double into the right-field corner. Both runners would come around to score on Nathaniel Lowe’s go-ahead knock two batters later.
“Chase is such a polished at-bat,” Lowe said. “We joke about it -- you can't teach it the way that he sees the ball because, more times than not, if he takes it, it's not in the box. And guys don't usually have that skill set. They have to learn it. It feels like Chase has that skill set in his first trip around the circuit.”
DeLauter showed some of that plate discipline in the ninth inning, when he walked right before Jo Adell’s two-run double that broke the game open. But DeLauter’s biggest impact of that inning may have come while he was standing in the on-deck circle.
He was watching Ramírez at the plate with a runner on second and two outs in a one-run ballgame. First base was open. In a different time, perhaps Rays reliever Cole Sulser would have thrown something off the plate in hopes that Ramírez would chase and get himself out. A walk wouldn’t have been the worst result there, because the next man up wouldn’t have presented as much of a threat.
But with DeLauter’s hot bat looming, Sulser decided to come after Ramírez, who muscled a cutter in the zone out into left field for an RBI single.
It was perhaps also a sign of respect for a rookie who is looking so dangerous at the plate right now, you can’t let him try to beat you.
“I'll just say this: The future is bright for that kid,” Adell said about DeLauter. “There's no doubt about it. He's going to be special, and he already is.”