Very happy to see the eventual downfall of the Guardians who proved very hateable. They obviously have some very talented baseball ops people and despicable ownership holding them back. We can only hope that ownership continues to refuse investing in payroll or that the talented front office proves not so good on figuring out which veteran players are worth spending money on (which IMO is quite possibly a different skill than the amateur acquisition and development skills they are clearly good at). I don't think there's all that much to learn from comparing stats between the two series, there are so few games involved you can hardly call them hot and cold streaks. DeLauter made some loud outs against the Sox that probably held his numbers down. I certainly felt more afraid of him than most anyone else in their lineup. I found it weird watching Cleveland how they went from a team that had good starting pitching to a team that seemed to believe it only had two starters. Griffin actually did fairly well in the postseason but they used him like a reliever, seemingly because they thought (maybe accurately) that he would get beat up without his matchups being carefully managed. Bibee had been bad down the stretch so that made sense I guess. Cantillo was handled even more carefully than Griffin but he kind of earned it by struggling mightily to throw strikes; of course maybe he's at home thinking his issues were due to his atypical usage. Messick proved beatable when you don't chase his changeup. Williams was a monster but in his last inning of the ALCS he had lost nearly 4mph on his fastball which makes me think he hit a wall with fatigue (or worse, that he got hurt). I wasn't even clear that Cleveland was going to use him in a Game 7. On offense, Cleveland lived by success on slappy balls in play and died by it as well. May they rest in peace! I also want to note that Detroit has some really interesting young players, starting with McGonigle who may be just one of those guys who is among the best players in the game for years. Dingler has been great even if I'm sure their fans are worried about his trajectory at the end of the season. Riley Greene is a good young hitter. Max Clark has big potential. I'm not sure if they will have pitching but that's always harder to project. Same goes for Kansas City. Bobby Witt is Bobby Witt. Carter Jensen seems like a real strong player that maybe flew a tick under the radar. The sky is the limit for Caglianone and he's managed to not be a 35% K rate guy. Not sure what exactly Maikel Garcia will be but the 2025 version was a problem and he's at worst a solid regular on the cheap. Pasquatch is also a rock solid guy IMO. I'm not sure if they have enough reinforcements on the way though. I'm not as enthused about the Twins going forward but they basically sold the whole org for parts in 2025 and still hung around in 2026, so I can't ignore that.