MLB Playoff Roundup: Guardians complete comeback, advance to ALCS against Rays

As someone with very fond memories of the Yankees winning fierce, neck-and-neck Division Series battles with Oakland, Cleveland, and Baltimore over the years, I've always enjoyed a tense Game 5. One team advances to fight for the pennant while the other goes home with those hopes dashed. I don't think many neutral observers would pick either of these teams to upset the Rays after the way they posted the American League's best record in 2026 and then mopped the floor with the Yankees.

But look, all you have to do is get the next round, and you'll never know what happens. Who would've picked the 84-win Diamondbacks to upset the defending NL champion Phillies in 2023? Or going back further to a better memory for the City of Brotherly Love, how about when the 1993 Phillies dispatched a dynastic Braves team that outlasted the Giants to win 104 games? Dare to dream. The Guardians and White Sox both dared to do so; here's how the winner booked a date at Tropicana Field for ALCS Game 1 tomorrow night.

Cleveland Guardians 2, Chicago White Sox 0

Star power often wins in the playoffs, and though Cleveland isn't exactly awash with the stars the way it was in the 1990s when the team made it to multiple Fall Classics, they relied on a couple very good ones to lead the way in the winner-take-all Game 5 against the White Sox.

With a 2-0 victory, the Guardians won their third in a row, completing just the fourth comeback in MLB history for a team in a best-of-five that lost the first two games at home. To make this Yankees-centric and more familiar, this is the kind of the comeback that the 2001 Yanks pulled off against the A's, sparked by the "Flip Play" game. It's since been matched by the 2012 Giants, the 2015 Blue Jays, and now the 2026 Guardians. It's also the first 0-2 comeback of any kind in a DS since the 2017 Yanks did it to Cleveland. (Shout-out Greg Bird, Masahiro Tanaka, and Didi Gregorius.)

The two stars who took center stage for the Guardians were José Ramírez and Gavin Williams. Whenever Ramírez ends his career, he'll go down as one of the greatest players to ever wear a Cleveland uniform. October has sometimes been a struggle for him though, and he's the last remaining player from their team that lost to the Cubs in a Game 7 heartbreaker in the 2016 Fall Classic. He hasn't been back to the Greatest Stage since then, but he helped punch Cleveland's ticket to give them a shot this year by going 5-for-12 across the three ALDS wins with two homers and seven RBI.

One of those dingers came yesterday off an otherwise-solid Sean Burke, and who could blame Burke for giving up a gopher ball on a pitch this low?

Ramírez has a good shot at a plaque in Cooperstown one day and this is one of those "tip your cap" moments. Not many players can physically do that. This has actually been a tougher year for him, as he had a broken bone in his hand that forced him to miss time and ultimately ended up with a sub-100 OPS+ for the first time since 2015. If it ends in Cleveland somehow breaking its championship drought though, the man won't care a lick about his regular season.

Maybe it's overstating a bit to call Williams a star, but the 26-year-old is a dangerous up-and-coming ace for Cleveland, leading the AL with 248 strikeouts despite not making the All-Star team. The Guardians wasted his 11-K start in Game 1, but he came out of the bullpen to help nail down Game 4 when closer Cade Smith wobbled late. Under 48 hours later, Williams started the game he forced and seemed unperturbed by those 18 pitches in relief. He did one better than his playoff opener, fanning a dirty dozen White Sox in 5.2 shutout innings, allowing only a single to Kyle Teel.

Williams' primary drawback is that he doesn't go deep into games, which hurt him in Game 1. Erik Sabrowski let him down then, but he made up for it last night by relieving Williams and fanning Munetaka Murakami with the bases loaded to escape a sixth-inning jam. The 2-0 lead remained intact.

The Pale Hose never came so close to scoring again. Tristan Peters never moved after a one-out single in the seventh, as Hunter Gaddis struck out both Chase Meidroth and Colson Montgomery as the potential tying runs. Sam Antonacci singled off Gaddis with one down in the eighth, so Cleveland skipper Stephen Vogt called on Smith for a five-out save, his third appearance in four days. Despite pitching every game in this series, he was up to the task. He struck out Kyle Teel and got Miguel Vargas to foul out to end the frame, and then struck out the side in the ninth to slam the door on the Sox, who set a postseason record with 21 team strikeouts in a nine-inning game. Woof.

The White Sox deserve a ton of credit for overachieving so much in 2026 after three consecutive 100-loss seasons. No one thought they'd make the playoffs, let alone come a win shy of the ALCS. Few predicted even a .500 finish! It will hurt knowing that they had three games to close out Cleveland and instead squandered the series, but this team honestly looked about as gassed possible. Can the Guardians actually threaten the Rays? I will at least hope they put up a better fight than they did in 2024 against the Yankees.