Did Tuesday’s loss to the Marlins show the cracks in the Guardians’ bullpen?

On Tuesday night, the Cleveland Guardians got a scoreless inning from their pitcher on the mound in the ninth inning in their game against the Marlins. 

That pitcher? Austin Hedges.

Usually, a scoreless ninth inning is a good sign, as it means either the closer came in and did his job or another reliever held the line. 

Instead, this was a position player on the mound eating an inning in a game that had already been decided. While Hedges’ scoreless ninth inning will mostly be a funny footnote in his career, it was also the only scoreless inning the Guardians got from a "relief" pitcher. 

Although their bullpen has been lights out since Emmanuel Clase got suspended, Tuesday was a stark reminder that everything can blow up at a moment’s notice. 

Did Tuesday’s loss to the Marlins show the cracks in the Guardians’ bullpen?

Prior to Hedges entering the game, Kolby Allard allowed two runs in 1 2/3 innings via a two-run homer from Jakob Marsee. Things just went downhill from there, as the Marlins tagged Matt Festa for five runs in 1 1/3 innings before getting two more runs off new Guardian Carlos Hernández in two innings.

While none of those three are part of Cleveland’s group of high-leverage relievers, they’re all important middle-leverage options who will be asked to hold down the middle innings for the rest of the season. And the Marlins offense made them look like they'd never pitched in the big leagues before.

It’s also the kind of outing that could change the way Cleveland’s bullpen looks. Allard, Hernández and potentially Festa will be down today, meaning Cleveland will likely need to make some kind of move to get a fresh arm in the ‘pen.

All three of those pitchers are out of options, so the Guardians either elect to designate one of them for assignment (like they did with Allard earlier this year due to the same kind of shuffle), or send down a pitcher with options like Tim Herrin. 

All of their high-leverage relievers have options, but there’s no way any of them would get sent down to Triple-A. 

The bullpen was put in this situation thanks to a rough start from Gavin Williams, who took the hill for the first time since he threw 126 pitches in his near no-hitter against the Mets. 

He needed 75 pitches to get through three innings on Wednesday and surrendered four runs on five hits. 

“I threw 126 pitches last outing, so the whole body was a little fatigued,” Williams told reporters after the game, per MLB.com’s Tim Stebbins. “But it's still no excuse. I went out there and pitched today. No matter what, I should have done better than what I did.”

While the Tigers won on Wednesday, all three of the teams they’re chasing in the Wild Card race lost, so they’re still only one game back of a playoff spot. 

But, as Wednesday showed, all the positive momentum from the past month can disappear in a second.