Guardians 2-0 White Sox: the shin-high homer and 21 strikeouts that finished a historic comeback
Jose Ramirez golfed the lowest pitch ever hit for a postseason homer and Cleveland's arms struck out a record 21 as the Guardians erased an 0-2 ALDS deficit to reach the ALCS.
Elimination games are supposed to be tense. This one was closer to suffocating — for one side. The Cleveland Guardians beat the Chicago White Sox 2-0 in Game 5 of the AL Division Series at Progressive Field on Saturday night, striking out 21 batters — the most ever in a nine-inning postseason game — and completing a comeback from two games down in a best-of-five series that only ten teams had managed before them, per the Boston Globe.
The comeback nobody saw coming
Rewind a week and this series belonged to Chicago. The White Sox — who had pushed Cleveland to the final days of the regular season, finishing 84-78, one game behind the Guardians' 85-77 in the AL Central — took both games to open the series and needed one win in three tries to advance. They never got it. Cleveland took Games 3 and 4 in Chicago by scores of 9-3 and 9-5, then returned home and simply stopped the White Sox from functioning as an offense. Cleveland became just the 11th team out of 96 to win a best-of-five after falling behind 0-2, per the Globe.
Gavin Williams's night
The Game 5 story starts with the starter. Gavin Williams struck out 12, tying the Guardians' postseason single-game record, generated 22 swings and misses, and did not allow a hit until Kyle Teel's two-out single to right in the sixth inning. Across three appearances in the series he struck out 24 — tied for the second-most in any best-of-five postseason series — and he carved out a stranger piece of history too: per the Globe, he became just the third pitcher ever to record the final out of one postseason game and then start the next, with his team facing elimination in both.
Opposite him, Sean Burke gave the White Sox nearly everything they could have asked for. The game turned on one pitch.
A homer from the shins
With Steven Kwan aboard after a leadoff single in the fourth, José Ramírez reached down for a Burke knuckle-curve and somehow lifted it over the wall near the right-field line for a two-run homer — the only scoring of the night. The pitch was 0.74 feet above the ground, the lowest pitch hit for a postseason home run since Statcast tracking began in 2008, and the lowest Ramírez has ever homered on in his 14-year career, per the Globe. It was his sixth career postseason home run, and it will be replayed for as long as this franchise plays October baseball: a franchise icon golfing a ball off his shin-tops with a season on the line.
A bullpen without a seam
Cleveland's October formula has been the same for years — run prevention, bullpen depth, one swing — and Game 5 was its purest expression. When a walk loaded the bases behind Williams, Erik Sabrowski entered and struck out Munetaka Murakami on a foul tip to kill the threat. Hunter Gaddis recorded four outs behind him, and Cade Smith closed with a five-out save — his first — striking out the side in the ninth and getting Tristan Peters on a fastball for the final out.
The ledger for Chicago's offense was brutal: three hits, only nine balls in play, and 75 strikeouts across the five-game series. Murakami and Andrew Benintendi each struck out four times in Game 5 alone. "We just didn't have what it would have took," manager Will Venable said afterwards, per the Globe.
Still, the White Sox season deserves its footnote in a different ink: they were the first team in major league history to reach the postseason immediately after three consecutive 100-loss seasons, and they pushed a division champion to a fifth game. The rebuild is no longer theoretical.
What's next: a Rays problem
Cleveland now opens the ALCS at Tampa Bay on Monday, chasing its first World Series appearance since 2016 — and, further back, a first championship since 1948, the longest active drought in the majors. The matchup is uncomfortable on paper: the Rays, the AL East champions at 98-64, went 5-1 against Cleveland this season, including a three-game sweep in Tampa in July, per the Globe. This will be the third postseason meeting between the clubs, after Tampa Bay's wild-card win in 2013 and Cleveland's wild-card sweep in 2022.
The Guardians just proved their formula can erase an 0-2 hole against a team that knew them intimately. The question the ALCS will answer is whether the same formula — elite pitching, timely contact, and not much margin — holds up against a 98-win opponent that has already beaten them five times this year.