Early in Game 2 of their ALDS matchup on Monday, Chicago White Sox starter-turned-reliever-turned-opener Anthony Kay faced the Cleveland Guardians offense and asked a powerful question. Which would be more powerful: a papal blessing or Guardiansball, an offensive strategy best defined by the example phrase “Steven Kwan infield single”? Well, immediately after the first round ended, Guardiansball was winning.
Kwan himself led the way by hitting a ground ball that found its way out of the infield for a single. José Ramírez walked. Chase DeLauter put both runners in scoring position with another ground ball. Kay was removed for White Sox reliever Sean Newcomb, who immediately went down 2-0 in the count to Jo Adell, before intentionally walking him. Nathaniel Lowe came to bat, then booed a high shot that bounced right to Newcomb. The Guardians then implemented the second central element of their strategy: “the opposing team forgets how to place its defense”. Newcomb whipped the ball away from the target for a throwing error, allowing two runs to score. He then struck out the next two batters. So the fourth-worst team in baseball this year finished the first inning with a two-run lead, even though they failed to pick up the ball even once.
This was the first time in the White Sox’s 2026 postseason that the team started a game down and, allowing me to take even more indulgence in the small postseason samples, was the first runs scored by the Guardians in the series. The circumstances were ripe for the White Sox’ blessed postseason run to end, with the Guardians at home, their starter Gavin Williams well-rested and routinely hitting triple digits on the radar gun, and the White Sox strategy of liberally rolling out early games looking suspiciously like a cheap version of “Oops, all starting pitchers!” approach to building an enclosure.
Midway through the third inning, the White Sox handed the ball to starter Sean Burke. Generally speaking, a team doesn’t fare well when it deploys a starting pitcher after 2.1 innings of play, and fares even worse when the opposing pitcher racks up double-digit strikeouts. But also generally speaking, the average team does not have the Pope’s blessing. And to put it very precisely, only the Chicago White Sox have a man who has nothing else to fight for, and who is not shy about declaring it.
Before his first outing in the playoffs, Burke notably exposed his personal issues to the Chicago Sun-Times saying: “This is my life. I have no family, no daughter, no children. That’s all I do. In his second postseason outing last night, Burke certainly pitched like a man who didn’t have a family. (After the White Sox beat the Houston Astros in the Wild Card Series, Burke clarified that he did, in fact, have a family, but just didn’t have a family of his own. His declaration of family ties was interrupted by Kay, who rushed to grab the microphone and shout, “We’re single for Sean!”) As the White Sox offense destroyed the Guardians’ bullpen in the sixth inning, the team’s pitching remained strong. Burke allowed one hit in 5.1 innings, threw 86 pitches, and after he finished, the Guardians still had to beat Grant Taylor.
The Guardians didn’t beat Grant Taylor, at least not conclusively. Despite a small scare in the eighth inning, the White Sox will return from Cleveland with a 4-3 victory and a 2-0 lead in the series. It’s too easy to attribute all of the White Sox’s success to divine intervention — a completely normal mistake in baseball analysis — but it’s more appropriate to say that, generally speaking, the teams also lack the youthful, family-free joie de vivre of the White Sox, so different from the intense misery of just two years ago that I finally gave up for, well, the Mariners. Given the landscape of other teams in the postseason, and especially the damage a Dodgers victory would inflict on next year’s collective bargaining negotiations, the White Sox are charming and easy to root for.
I haven’t made the emotional investment necessary this year to happily run victory laps, but I have enough affection to be happy that I was wrong. Thanks to my surrendered affections above, I also learned a strong lesson in getting excited too soon. But often the best part of the sport is forgetting about any potential pain and stepping back for more. Why not try to believe, if they have already come this far?
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