The Guardians refused to go home. Facing elimination in Chicago on Thursday night, Cleveland 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 on Saturday night in Cleveland. The series that looked finished on Tuesday is now the best show in baseball.
The quick rewind: Chicago took the first two games in Cleveland and came home needing one win. Down 2-0 in the best-of-five, the Guardians answered by winning Game 3 9-3 in Chicago. Game 4 was even louder.
The night’s turning points
Chicago struck first, plating two runs in the third off Guardians starter Parker Messick, who walked four over the first three innings and had manager Stephen Vogt reaching into the bullpen by the third. The White Sox added two more in the fifth to lead 4-3, and the sellout crowd at Rate Field could smell the clincher.
Then the fifth inning flipped. Patrick Bailey – who did not even start the game – pinch-hit 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. Steven Kwan singled. Then Jose Ramirez 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 scored six runs on five hits, with Bailey adding a go-ahead RBI single in the middle of the rally, and the 9-4 lead held. Chicago’s Miguel Vargas opened the ninth with a homer and the Sox put two more aboard, but Gavin Williams – pressed into closing duty – escaped the jam.
The unlikely hero
Bailey finished 2-for-3 with a homer, two runs, and two RBIs. In a game he did not start. There is something perfect about October heroes arriving off the bench: the pinch-hit homer was the first of the entire series for either team. Ramirez did what stars are supposed to do with the season on the line. And the Guardians’ staff, patched together across eight arms after Messick’s early exit, bent all night without breaking when it mattered.
Saturday night, everything on the line
Game 5 is Saturday at 8 p.m. ET at Progressive Field, on TBS. Since MLB introduced the best-of-five division series in 1995, only seven teams have come back from a 2-0 deficit. Cleveland can become the eighth. The winner gets the Tampa Bay Rays – who swept the Yankees 3-0 and are resting at home – in the American League Championship Series. In the National League, the Brewers finished off the Padres 3-1 and will meet the Dodgers in an NLCS rematch. October is wide open. This is exactly the chaos we signed up for.
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