Down 2-0 in the series, the Cleveland Guardians refused to read the script. On Thursday night in Chicago, they erupted for nine runs – including a six-run sixth inning – to beat the White Sox 9-5 and force a winner-take-all ALDS Game 5. The series that looked finished on Tuesday is now the best show in baseball.
Let’s rewind, because this one deserves the full treatment. The White Sox won the first two games in Cleveland and came home needing just one win. The Guardians answered by winning Game 3 9-3 in Chicago. Then, in Game 4, they did it again – louder.
How Game 4 unfolded
Chicago struck first, scratching two runs across in the third off Guardians starter Parker Messick, who walked four in the first three innings and forced manager Stephen Vogt to tear up his pitching plan before the game had settled. The White Sox added two more in the fifth to take a 4-3 lead, and the sellout crowd at Rate Field could smell the series-clincher.
Then came the fifth. Patrick Bailey – who didn’t even start the game – stepped in as a pinch-hitter for Austin Hedges and tagged Erick Fedde for a 376-foot solo homer, measured at 110 mph off the bat: the hardest-hit ball of Bailey’s career. It snuck inside the right-field foul pole and put Cleveland on the board. Steven Kwan singled, and up came Jose Ramirez, who launched a two-run shot beyond the right-center bullpen on an 0-1 pitch. Just like that: 4-3, Guardians.
The sixth was the avalanche. Cleveland plated six runs on five hits – Bailey added a go-ahead RBI single in the middle of the rally – and the 9-4 lead held the rest of the way. Chicago’s Miguel Vargas opened the ninth with a homer and the Sox put two more aboard, but closer-by-committee Gavin Williams escaped the jam, and the Guardians celebrated their second straight must-win.
Bailey’s night
Bailey finished 2-for-3 with a homer, two runs, and two RBIs – in a game he didn’t start. There’s something perfect about October heroes arriving off the bench. The pinch-hit homer was the first of the entire series for either team, which tells you how tightly these two teams had been squeezing each other all week.
Ramirez did what stars are supposed to do: season on the line, ball over the fence. And the Guardians’ pitching staff, pieced together across eight arms after Messick’s early exit, bent all night and broke exactly zero times when it counted.
What Game 5 means
Saturday night, 8 p.m. ET, Progressive Field, Cleveland. Winner-take-all, on TBS. Since MLB introduced the best-of-five division series in 1995, only seven teams have completed the comeback after falling behind 2-0. The Guardians are one win from becoming the eighth.
The winner gets the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Championship Series. Tampa Bay swept the Yankees 3-0 and is sitting at home rested – which is either an advantage or a recipe for rust. On the National League side, the Brewers finished off the Padres 3-1 and will meet the Dodgers in an NLCS rematch. October is wide open, and this is exactly the chaos the postseason exists for.
The pitching chess match
One subplot worth watching: Vogt burned through eight pitchers in Game 4, and the Game 5 starter plans got scrambled when Messick struggled early. Williams, thought to be in line to start Saturday, was used to close Game 4. The bullpen management and pinch-hit timing between Vogt and White Sox manager Will Venable on Saturday night will be as good as anything on television this weekend.
The Cleveland angle
Spare a thought for Progressive Field on Saturday night, because there’s no better building in baseball when it’s loud. The Guardians haven’t hosted a Game 5 with stakes like these in years, and a crowd that watched its team dig out of a 2-0 hole will show up ready to shake the place. Comeback completed or series lost, Saturday night in Cleveland is the game everyone will be talking about on Sunday.
First pitch: Saturday, 8 p.m. ET. Clear your evening. This is why October baseball exists.
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