At the start of Game 2 of their ALDS matchup, Chicago White Sox starter-turned-reliever-turned-opener Anthony Kay faced the Cleveland Guardians offense to pose a powerful question: What would be more powerful, a papal blessing, or Guardiansball, an offensive strategy best defined by the example phrase of "Steven Kwan infield single"? Well, immediately after the bottom of the first inning, Guardiansball was winning out.
Kwan himself led off affairs by hitting a ground ball that trickled its way out of the infield for a single. José Ramírez walked. Chase DeLauter moved both runners into scoring position with another ground ball. Kay was pulled for White Sox reliever-stayed-reliever Sean Newcombe, who immediately went down 2-0 in the count to Jo Adell, before intentionally walking him. Nathaniel Lowe came up to bat and then booped a high chop that bounced right to Newcombe. The Guardians then implemented the second core piece of their strategy, "opposing team forgets how to place defense." Newcombe whipped the ball way off mark for a throwing error, allowing two runs to score. He went on to strike out the next two batters. And so, the fourth-worst slugging team in baseball this year ended the first inning with a two-run lead, despite failing to elevate the ball even once.
It was the first time in the White Sox's 2026 playoff run that the team started a game trailing and, permitting me to take even more indulgence in small playoff sample sizes, the first runs scored in by the Guardians in the series. The circumstances were in place for the White Sox's blessed playoff run to stall out, with the Guardians at home, their starter Gavin Williams well-rested and regularly hitting triple digits on the radar gun, and the White Sox's strategy of generously deploying openers looking suspiciously close to a cheap knock-off version of the Dodgers' "Oops, all starting pitchers!" approach to bullpen construction.
In the middle of the third inning, the White Sox handed the ball over to a starter, Sean Burke. Generally speaking, a team does not fare well when it deploys a starting pitcher after 2.1 innings of the game have already passed, and fares even worse when the opposing pitcher is racking up double-digit strikeouts. But also generally speaking, the average team does not have the Pope's blessing. And speaking very specifically, only the Chicago White Sox have a man with nothing else to fight for, and no shyness about declaring it.
Prior to his first postseason outing, Burke notably laid out his personal stakes to the Chicago Sun-Times by saying, "This is my life. I don’t have family, no girl, no kids. This is all I do." In his second postseason outing last night, Burke certainly pitched like a man who did not 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, he just didn't have a family of his own. His declaration of familial ties was interrupted by Kay, who swooped in to grab the mic and shout, "We're celibate for Sean!") While the White Sox offense picked apart the Guardians' bullpen in the sixth inning, the team's own pitching held strong. Burke allowed one hit in 5.1 innings, threw 86 pitches, and after he was done, the Guardians still had to beat Grant Taylor.
The Guardians did not beat Grant Taylor, at least not conclusively. Despite a minor scare in the eighth inning, the White Sox will return home from Cleveland with a 4-3 victory and a 2-0 series lead. It is too easy to ascribe all of the White Sox's successes to divine intervention—a very normal mistake to make in baseball analysis—but it is apter to say that, generally speaking, teams also lack the White Sox's particular brand of youthful, family-less joie de vivre, so different from the intense misery just two years ago that I eventually forsook for, well, the Mariners. Considering the landscape of other teams in the postseasons, and especially the damage a Dodgers victory would inflict upon next year's labor negotiations, the White Sox are charming and easy to root for.
I haven't put in the necessary emotional investment this year to be joyously running victory laps, but I have enough affection to be pleased at having been proven wrong. Thanks to my aforementioned ceded affections, I have also learned a strong lesson in getting too excited too early. But often the best part of sports is forgetting any potential pain and crawling back for more. Why not try to believe, if they've already gotten so far?
