Winner Take All: White Sox and Guardians Meet in ALDS Game 5
It all comes down to one game.
The Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Guardians meet in a winner-take-all Game 5 Saturday night in Cleveland (8 p.m. ET, TBS), with a trip to the ALCS against the Tampa Bay Rays on the line.
Cleveland forced the decider with back-to-back elimination-game wins in Chicago — a 9-3 rout in Game 3 followed by Thursday's wild 9-5 comeback in Game 4. Down 2-0 in the fifth, the Guardians erupted for nine runs across the fifth and sixth innings, with José Ramírez's go-ahead homer off Jordan Hicks the signature blow on a night the two teams combined to use 15 pitchers.
The pitching setup for Saturday favours Cleveland on paper. Gavin Williams (14-8, an AL-best 248 strikeouts) lines up for the Guardians, though his 18-pitch relief appearance Thursday leaves the door open for Tanner Bibee. The White Sox, meanwhile, will almost certainly run another bullpen game — they've used an opener in every game this series and no starter has gone past the fourth inning, burning 14 arms over the last 18 innings.
The White Sox are trying to finish one of the unlikeliest runs in recent October memory. After three straight 100-loss seasons, Chicago swept Houston in the wild-card round — its first playoff series win since 2005 — and took the first two games of this series in Cleveland. Now they're one win from the franchise's first ALCS trip since winning the World Series in 2005.
The winner gets the well-rested Rays, who swept the Yankees 3-0 behind Drew Rasmussen's eight-inning shutout in Game 1. Rasmussen lines up on full rest for ALCS Game 1 on Monday.
Over in the National League, the bracket is set: the Milwaukee Brewers host the Los Angeles Dodgers in an NLCS rematch starting Sunday in Wisconsin. Game 1 is the marquee pitching matchup of the entire postseason — Milwaukee's Jacob Misiorowski, the NL Cy Young frontrunner, against two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. The Dodgers took the season's measure of intrigue further with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow lined up behind him; Milwaukee counters with Logan Henderson, Dustin May and Robert Gasser.
The Brewers earned their spot with a 3-1 series win over San Diego, powered by Jackson Chourio's franchise-record five postseason homers and 17 RBIs. The Dodgers handled Atlanta 3-1 to get there.