The White Sox overcame early errors and long odds to defeat the Guardians 4-3, taking a commanding 2-0 lead in the ALDS and heading home for a chance to clinch the series.
The White Sox arrived in Cleveland with a clear directive from manager Will Venable: against an American League Central champion as relentless as the Guardians. mistakes like walks. errors. or stolen bases would result in a swift exit from the postseason. By the first inning on Monday night. the Sox had committed two of those sins with only one out. putting them in an immediate hole.
Less than three hours later, those early lapses felt like a distant memory. When Guardians catcher Patrick Bailey sent a deep drive toward the center-field wall. Brenton Doyle leaped to secure the ball. sealing a 4-3 victory. The win gives Chicago a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series. pushing them one victory away from their first American League Championship Series appearance in 21 years and securing a return to Rate Field for the franchise’s first home playoff game in half a decade.
The turnaround was fueled by players who, by all conventional metrics, should have struggled. Braden Montgomery. a former first-round pick who managed only a .430 OPS against left-handers during the regular season. stepped to the plate in the sixth inning against Guardians lefty Erik Sabrowski. Despite Venable’s pregame admission that Montgomery was a primary candidate to be pinch-hit for in such a matchup. the young slugger lashed a first-pitch fastball down the right-field line. The two-out. two-run double proved to be the decisive blow in a three-run frame that also included a single and run from Miguel Vargas.
“This is the identity of this team,” Vargas said. “We know anybody here can have a huge at-bat and put us in the lead.”
The pitching performance was equally defiant. Sean Burke. who just over a year ago was demoted to Triple-A. took the mound after the rocky first inning and dominated. allowing his first hit only after 5 ⅓ innings of work. He was pulled with two outs in the eighth. “I never thought the opponent would get a hit,” Munetaka Murakami said through an interpreter.
Grant Taylor. who logged four dominant innings in Game 1. defied physical expectations to return for a high-leverage save opportunity in the ninth. He surrendered a booming triple to Jo Adell that cut the lead to one. but managed to escape the frame. proving that postseason baseball rarely cares for style points or preseason projections.
This group. which holds the youngest collection of position players in the American League. has effectively dismantled the narrative that they required a boisterous home crowd to overcome their lackluster 36-45 road record. After securing four consecutive road playoff victories, they head back to Chicago looking to complete an unexpected run.
“I can’t place any expectations on it, I just know it’s going to be special,” Montgomery said of the impending homecoming. “I can only imagine how the South Side is going to pop out in a couple of days. I can’t wait to see it and be a part of it.”
White Sox Guardians ALDS MLB Playoffs Braden Montgomery Will Venable Chicago White Sox Cleveland Guardians