Cleveland overwhelmed Rays slugger with high fastballs in ALCS

Junior Caminero's signature postseason moment arrived late Monday night via a parabolic two-run home run that ricocheted off the left-field foul pole and incited delirium at Tropicana Field, springboarding the Rays into the World Series. 

For Caminero, it was better late than never. The 23-year-old slugged 42 home runs in the regular season -- more than all but three players in baseball -- but had gone 36 plate appearances without a long ball this postseason before his seventh-inning blast in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series.

“We were all waiting for it,” Rays closer Bryan Baker said after the game. 

October sure has a way of magnifying small sample sizes. Four days after an uncharacteristic four-strikeout game, Caminero seems to be heating up just in time for a Fall Classic showdown with the 103-win Brewers. The Rays will need their superstar to be at his best. 

Caminero's up-and-down postseason has been fascinating. It's also one of the most important storylines of the World Series. Let's dive in.

Caminero went 3-for-10 with a pair of strikeouts in the AL Division Series against the Yankees. Then, in the first five games of the ALCS against the Guardians, he went 4-for-20 with 11 strikeouts. Caminero had never struck out more than eight times in a five-game span in his MLB career.

The Guardians had a clear attack plan against the Rays: Fastballs, fastballs and more fastballs. Cleveland’s pitching staff threw four-seam fastballs 37.8% of the time in the ALCS, including 30.4% of the time to Caminero.

This approach had a lot to do with the Guardians’ strengths. Only the Dodgers and the Pirates threw a higher percentage of four-seamers in the regular season. It also had a whole lot to do with the Rays, whose hitters posted the lowest expected wOBA against four-seam fastballs of any team in 2026. 

Yes, he does, and that’s where things start to get interesting. Caminero handles four-seam fastballs far better than his teammates, and better than most any hitter in baseball. 

Caminero ranked in the top 10 in slugging percentage (.641) and expected slugging percentage (.652) against four-seamers this season, among hitters to have at least 100 plate appearances end in fastballs. That was his highest SLG against any individual pitch type.

Part of Caminero’s excellence originates in his flat swing, which is tailor-made to hammer high fastballs -- the sort of heat that tends to give hitters trouble. The combination of elite bat speed and a flat, level swing help Caminero stay on plane with high heaters. Caminero hit .368 and slugged .882 against elevated fastballs, which we’ll define as four-seamers in the middle of the strike zone or higher. Only the Yankees’ Ben Rice did more damage on these pitches. 

The Guardians challenged Caminero with high fastballs -- really, really high fastballs.

Fifty-three hitters have seen at least 25 four-seam fastballs in these playoffs, and only three are seeing higher four-seamers than Caminero. They are higher than in any month of his career (min. 25 four-seamers seen), after the average pitch height of the four-seamers that he saw in September was the lowest of any month in his career.

In the regular season, teams paid the price for throwing elevated fastballs to Caminero, whose swing path and bat speed make him uniquely qualified to handle high heat.

The Guardians stormed into the ALCS with a clear and obvious game plan of attacking Caminero with high heat. Caminero’s swing decisions through the first few games of the series allowed them to lean heavily on that approach.

Over the course of the six-game series, Caminero saw 26 four-seamers out of the strike zone. He swung at 13 of them. That’s the highest chase rate (50%) against four-seam fastballs in a single month of his MLB career. And the average pitch height of those 13 four-seamers that he chased out of the zone was 3.70 feet above the ground, which is to say extremely high. 

Chasing a pitch isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Caminero, for one, swung at pitches outside of the strike zone 30.5% of the time in the regular season, which ranked in the 44th percentile of MLB. But he was particularly good at making contact outside of the zone, whether to extend at-bats through foul balls or even do damage. His 17 extra-base hits off pitches outside the strike zone were tied with the Padres’ Jackson Merrill for the most in the Majors.

In 2026, Caminero had a 37.5% chase miss rate -- or, the percentage of pitches outside the zone on which he swung and missed. That ranked 85th of 135 qualified hitters. His swing-and-miss rate on pitches outside the strike zone has jumped to 53.5% this postseason, including seven whiffs on his 13 chases against four-seamers.

Great fastballs can miss above the bat and cause the hitter to swing under the ball. They are firm and carry through the zone, giving the illusion of “rise.”

In the regular season, Caminero swung under 50% of the four-seamers that he got off a swing against. In the postseason, he has swung at 24 four-seamers and been under 17 of them, or a 71% rate. In other words, he is no longer on plane with the high heater. 

“My whole approach with the swing is, I just want to stay as level as possible,” Caminero said in May. “Because if I feel like I’m getting under the baseball, I’m just gonna miss it.”

A lot of this has to do with the Guardians’ personnel, as we noted earlier. Five of Caminero’s nine “biggest” misses -- so, when his barrel was most under the pitch -- came against Daniel Espino’s fastball. Only the Dodgers’ Tanner Scott has caused more bats to swing under his fastball this postseason more than Espino, who did so at a 74% rate. The top fastballs in baseball get misses under the ball more than 60% of the time, and that’s what Gavin Williams did during the regular season. He leaned heavily on his four-seamer in October and caused Caminero fits, too. 

The Guardians’ attack plan was at its best in Game 3 of the ALCS. Caminero struck out four times, including three K’s against elevated fastballs that he chased out of the zone. 

In Games 4-6 of the ALCS, Caminero chased a total of five heaters out of the zone. He made contact all five times, including twice with two strikes. All three balls that he hit in play in these scenarios had an exit velocity of at least 106 mph (a hard-hit ball has an EV of 95 mph). One was the type of batted ball that is almost exclusively a home run. The other was an RBI double to give the Rays a pivotal lead in Game 4.

Caminero’s solution seemed to be to jump out way in front of these pitches. His go-ahead double in Game 4 off Espino featured a 19-degree swing path -- extremely flat -- and an extremely fast 81.8 mph bat speed. He also caught the ball 16 inches in front of home plate, helping him yank it down the left-field line. 

In case you had any doubt, Caminero reminded everyone that he can still mash elite pitching with the best of them on Monday night. His momentous home run came off a first-pitch splitter from Guardians closer Cade Smith, who had thrown 880 splitters in his career without allowing a homer before Caminero took the 881st deep.

Needless to say, the Brewers will be careful. They have had plenty of time to devise a game plan, and it likely won’t look exactly the same as Cleveland’s. 

Although the Brewers leaned on old-fashioned heat in the regular season, no team has thrown fewer four-seamers this postseason. Milwaukee is using four-seamers 24.1% of the time and has recorded just 10 strikeouts on four-seam fastballs -- this after setting a record for most four-seam fastball K’s by a starting rotation in the pitch-tracking era. 

The obvious guy who fits the bill of Cleveland’s power pitchers with electric fastballs is, of course, Jacob Misiorowski. But The Miz’s fastball has been more vulnerable in the playoffs, generating a pedestrian 16.1% whiff rate on his four-seamer. As MLB.com’s David Adler explored, right-handed hitters aren’t swinging under his heater as often in the postseason.

Still, for a pitcher who throws more four-seamers than any starting pitcher, expect Misiorowski to attack Caminero with high heat. 

The blueprint for the rest of Milwaukee’s most important arms isn’t as clear. Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby throw two-seam fastballs. Trevor Megill has an elite rising four-seamer, but he tends to just throw it down the middle, challenging hitters to catch up to it. 

Logan Henderson, the Brewers’ presumptive Game 2 starter, has a strong fastball but an even better changeup. That could be another way in, especially because Henderson isn’t afraid to use the pitch to same-sided hitters. Caminero did not post a negative run value against any pitch type in the regular season, but he did not accumulate any run value off changeups. Caminero’s .328 slugging percentage against changeups was his lowest off any individual pitch type. 

We know that Caminero is an elite hitter, and he’s also shown that he can make adjustments mid-series – an important test to pass in his first extended stretch of playoff baseball. Caminero’s at-bats could dictate the series, and that makes this cat-and-mouse game fascinating.