LAKELAND, Fla. >> Intellectually, Jason Foley understood the strategy behind the decision. It made baseball sense. And with manager AJ Hinch orchestrating bullpen moves like a virtuoso all season, turning pitching chaos into a calculated weapon, one would’ve been hard-pressed to second-guess.

So, yes, Foley understood why Hinch essentially dry-docked him for all five game of the ALDS against Cleveland.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“I wasn’t thrilled about it,” Foley said on Sunday. “I guess I understand that it probably wasn’t the best matchup for me. He’d used me in a different role all year against that team. And obviously, we’ve got guys like Tyler Holton, Will Vest and Sean Guenther who can attack lefties better than I can.”

With his hard sinker and slider, the right-handed-throwing Foley is a menace to right-handed hitters. The sinker, though, is much less effective against lefties and it’s been a three-year process for Foley to find a consistent antidote for lefties.

And, Cleveland, with left-handed-hitting Jose Ramirez, Josh Naylor and Steven Kwan at the core of its lineup, has been a problem for him. In 17 career games against the Guardians, Foley has yielded seven runs (six earned) and 14 hits in 17 innings.

Ramirez is 3-for-11 with a triple, homer and five RBI. Naylor last year was 2-for-4 with two doubles and Kwan 2-for-8 with a triple.

Thus, Hinch deployed other bullpen options in the postseason.

“AJ was doing what he thought was best for this team, and I can respect that,” Foley said. “But I certainly thought I deserved to pitch in some capacity. I didn’t expect to pitch the most important situations, maybe. But I don’t think I should have been sat down for those games.”

Hinch appreciates Foley’s competitiveness. He wouldn’t expect anything different. Nor would he have done anything different in the series.

“The last series with Cleveland is not an indictment of (Foley’s) ability,” Hinch said. “It’s actually more positive about how well Holton, Guenther, Beau Brieske and Vest were pitching. But I think it did give him a ton of motivation to be able to be used in any inning against any hitter and have somewhere to go in and around the strike zone to get his outs.”

The rub, here, is that Foley made incredible strides against left-handed hitters last season. He added a four-seam fastball at the top of the zone and played his slider off that and it was a game-changer.

“I lessened my sinker usage against lefties from about 60% (actually, 58.5) to 38%,” Foley said. “That was a big thing.”

The results: In 2023, lefties slashed .299/.349/.495 with an .844 OPS. Last season, Foley knocked the numbers down significantly in all categories — .188/.300/.341 with a .641 OPS.

Lefties still crushed his sinker (.321, .536 slug) but were 1-for-25 with seven strikeouts and a 31.5% whiff rate against the slider and 2-for-19 with 10 strikeouts and a 40.5% whiff rate against the four-seamer.

“Listen, there are bad matchups for everybody,” Hinch said. “Nobody is immune to being a tough matchup against some guys. Obviously, him finding a way to consistently get the other side (left) of the plate out is important. Some of that will be his pitch mix. He’s worked pretty hard on that upper-rail four-seam fastball and his flirtation with different secondary pitches.”

The next phase of his arsenal against lefties is the changeup. That’s been long under construction. The average velocity on the pitch last season was 92 mph, just 5 mph under his sinker and four-seam. Lefties were 4-for-13 against it with no strikeouts and a low (20%) whiff rate.

“I’m going into this spring and just keep attacking lefties,” Foley said. “I felt like I improved against them a bunch last year. In 2023, I could understand the decision (to sit him). Lefties hit me extremely well. But last year, the OPS was in 600s. That’s pretty good.

“I’m just going to come in here and keep showing them.”

Foley is 29 now and has come too far and endured too much in this game to carry grudges or walk around with a chip on his shoulder. Undrafted out of Division II Sacred Heart University, signed by the Tigers in 2016, Tommy John surgery in 2018, missed 2020 because of the pandemic — being shelved for the most important series of his life hurt, but it’s not the worst thing he’s had to deal with.

“I love Jason Foley; I love his story,” Hinch said. “He’s had to work really hard to get here and it’s not been easy for him. We laugh about the first time I met him. It was my first spring training here (2021) and he was in the hot-and-ready (alt site) camp and not as an official member of camp, and he’s quickly become someone I trust.

“He pounds the strike zone and that’s always easy for a manager to like. But the personality behind the scenes and how he’s grown at this level, we have a lot invested together.”