A Walk in the Park: Braden Montgomery's First-Pitch Double Lifts White Sox Past Guardians 4-3 for a 2-0 ALDS Lead
By Jess Henderson ·
The White Sox came into Monday's Game 2 at Progressive Field having played 27 postseason innings without trailing. That lasted until the bottom of the first, when Cleveland scored twice on a ball Nathaniel Lowe chopped back to the mound. Chicago then spent five innings striking out against Gavin Williams, and needed one inning against the Guardians' bullpen to undo all of it. The White Sox won 4-3 and lead the American League Division Series 2-0, with the next two games in Chicago.
Will Venable went with another opener. "We're going to start with Anthony Kay up front here and we'll figure it out as we go," he said Sunday, per the Sun-Times' James Fegan. Kay faced three batters. Steven Kwan grounded a single into right, José Ramírez walked on six pitches, and Chase DeLauter grounded out to second on the seventh pitch of his at-bat, moving both runners up. Sean Newcomb came in, threw Jo Adell two balls, and Venable chose the intentional walk to load the bases. Lowe chopped Newcomb's first pitch, a 96 mph sinker, right back to him. The throw skipped in the dirt past Munetaka Murakami at first, and Kwan and Ramírez scored. Newcomb then struck out Angel Martínez on three fastballs and got Travis Bazzana looking at a full-count sinker. Cleveland had two runs on one hit, and Chicago's bullpen game was already on its second pitcher.
Venable has said more than once that he doesn't understand how anyone hits Williams, per the Sun-Times, and Williams spent the next five innings making his case. He struck out the side in the second and again in the fifth, finished with 11 strikeouts, and got 22 swinging strikes on 98 pitches. His fastball touched 101.2 mph. The 11 strikeouts tied Bartolo Colón for the second most by a Cleveland pitcher in a postseason game, one behind Charles Nagy's 12 in Game 4 of the 1996 ALDS, according to the Akron Beacon Journal's Nate Ulrich.
Chicago scored once while he was still in the game. In the fourth, Kyle Teel fought off a sweeper for a leadoff single, Miguel Vargas walked, and Murakami ripped a full-count 99.5 mph fastball through the right side to score Teel. Williams answered by striking out Andrew Benintendi on three pitches, getting Tristan Peters to fly out and striking out Braden Montgomery.
What the White Sox did manage was to make him throw. Vargas reached base all three times he faced Williams. The third time, leading off the sixth, he got ahead 3-0, took a strike, fouled off two pitches and lined a 98.8 mph sinker into left. That was pitch No. 98, and Stephen Vogt went to left-hander Erik Sabrowski.
The inning that followed was mostly made of small things. Murakami grounded Sabrowski's first pitch to second, and Vargas moved up. Randal Grichuk, pinch-hitting for Benintendi, walked on four sliders, the last two in the dirt. A wild pitch during Tommy Pham's pinch-hit at-bat put runners on second and third, and Pham flew out to shallow left on a 3-1 pitch. Then Montgomery, who had struck out against Williams in the second and the fourth, swung at Sabrowski's first pitch, a 94 mph fastball, and lined it at 101.4 mph down the right-field line. Grichuk and Vargas scored, and the White Sox led 3-2 on the rookie's first postseason RBIs. Vogt brought in Hunter Gaddis, and Chase Meidroth looped a 1-1 fastball into short right to score Montgomery from second. That was Meidroth's fifth RBI of the postseason. Gaddis, Shawn Armstrong and Cade Smith retired the last 10 White Sox hitters, which turned out to be one inning too late.
The pitcher who held the lead was Sean Burke, who came in with one out in the third after DeLauter singled off Newcomb. Before the game, Burke described Chicago's approach as "really just like a team effort from the pitching side," per the Associated Press. His share of the effort was 16 outs. He struck out Adell on a slider and Lowe on a 94 mph fastball to end the third, walked Bazzana in the fourth, then retired 13 Guardians in a row. He did not allow a hit until DeLauter's two-out single in the eighth. Burke faced 18 batters, the Cleveland order exactly twice through, and used all five of his pitches on 83 throws: 32 four-seamers, 18 knuckle curves, 14 cutters, 10 sliders and nine sinkers. In his Wild Card start in Houston he gave up three solo home runs in four innings. Against Cleveland this season he went 2-0 with a 1.04 ERA in 17 1/3 innings, MLB.com noted before the game. Monday looked a lot more like that.
DeLauter's single brought in Grant Taylor, who had thrown four innings and 42 pitches on Saturday. Adell hit Taylor's first pitch, a 97.7 mph fastball, 413 feet at 108.2 mph. It hit high off the 19-foot wall in left-center for a triple, per MLB.com, and DeLauter scored from first to make it 4-3. The box score lists the wind at 13 mph, blowing in from center. Lowe flew out to left on the next pitch.
Taylor needed five more pitches in the ninth. Martínez grounded out to first and Bazzana flew out to center. Patrick Bailey drove a curveball 387 feet at 103.5 mph, and Brenton Doyle, who had come in as a defensive replacement in center in the sixth, made a leaping catch at the wall to end it, per the Sun-Times. Taylor got four outs on seven pitches, and all seven were strikes.
I like outfield defense more than home-run distance graphics. I understand why the graphics exist, and Adell's 413 feet will get one. The catch is the part I would put on a loop.
Cleveland has scored three runs in 18 innings in this series and went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position on Monday. Ramírez is 0-for-6 with three strikeouts and two walks in the two games. Both of Monday's first-inning runs scored on a throwing error.
Up Next
Tuesday is an off day. Game 3 is Wednesday at 3 p.m. Central at Rate Field, and Game 4, if needed, is Thursday at 4 p.m. Central there. A Game 5 would be Saturday at 4 p.m. Central back in Cleveland. MLB had not listed starters for Game 3 as of Monday night.
The White Sox are 4-0 this postseason and one win from their first ALCS since 2005. Teams that won the first two games on the road in a 2-2-1 Division Series have gone on to win it 17 of 19 times, according to MLB.com.