A Walk in the Park: Jo Adell's Bases-Clearing Triple Sends Guardians Past White Sox 9-3 to Force ALDS Game 4
By Jess Henderson ·
The White Sox went into Wednesday's Game 3 at Rate Field one win from their first home series clinch since 1906, according to MLB.com, and 40,590 people came to see it. Cleveland, down 2-0 in the American League Division Series, used seven pitchers to strike out 19 White Sox, got two-out triples from Jo Adell and José Ramírez, and won 9-3. The 19 strikeouts were the most by a team in a nine-inning postseason game, MLB.com's Sarah Langs noted, and Foster Griffin had seven of them in relief. Chicago still leads 2-1, and the teams will play Game 4 on Thursday.
Stephen Vogt started Daniel Espino as an opener and would not say beforehand who would follow him. "We don't know what we're going to do after Daniel," Vogt said Tuesday, per MLB.com. "We'll have to let the game play out." Espino's first five pitches, all to Sam Antonacci, were fastballs between 99.9 and 100.9 mph, and four of them were balls. Miguel Vargas singled, Munetaka Murakami struck out on three fastballs, and Kyle Teel lined a 2-1 slider into right for an RBI double. Espino struck out Chase Meidroth and left after 20 pitches with runners on second and third.
The answer to Vogt's question was Foster Griffin, the left-hander Cleveland acquired from Washington in August. Tristan Peters won an ABS challenge on what had been called strike three, then took a 2-2 sweeper for strike three anyway to end the first. Griffin struck out both Montgomerys in the second, hit Antonacci to start the third and then struck out Vargas, Murakami and Teel in order. The White Sox got their run off him in the fourth on back-to-back doubles: Meidroth's grounder deflected off Ramírez into left, and Peters lined the ninth pitch of his at-bat into center. Griffin's seven strikeouts in 2 2/3 innings were a Cleveland postseason record for a reliever, according to the Sun-Times.
By then Cleveland had the lead. Sean Newcomb pitched two scoreless innings for Chicago, with help from Vargas, who caught Nathaniel Lowe's 104.6 mph liner in the second and doubled Adell off first. Bryan Hudson walked Travis Bazzana to start the third. Brayan Rocchio singled with one out, and Steven Kwan lined a single to left that scored Bazzana to tie it. Will Venable went to left-hander Hagen Smith, who had started Game 1, and Smith walked Ramírez on five pitches to load the bases. Chase DeLauter grounded into a force at home. Adell fell behind 1-2, then sliced a four-seamer down the first-base line and into the right-field corner, and all three runners scored. MLB.com noted it was the fourth game-tying or go-ahead triple in Cleveland postseason history, after two by Omar Vizquel and one by Vic Wertz. It was also Adell's second triple of the series, after the one off the 19-foot wall at Progressive Field in Game 2.
Ramírez had gone 0-for-6 in the first two games, and MLB.com reported that the Guardians don't expect him to be fully healthy until 2027 after the left hamate surgery he had in June. In the fifth, against rookie Noah Schultz, he hit a 106.5 mph double down the third-base line with one out and stole third. With the infield drawn in, DeLauter hit a 105.9 mph grounder to Meidroth at second, and Ramírez was halfway home by the time Meidroth was ready to throw, per MLB.com. He beat Teel's tag with a headfirst slide, the AP wrote, and Cleveland led 5-2. Asked about his approach coming into the game, Ramírez said, "Put pressure, get on base. Gotta put pressure on the other team with my speed and make something happen," per MLB.com's Tim Stebbins.
Chicago kept getting runners on and could not get them home, going 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position. In the fifth, with runners on second and third and one out, Teel lined Joey Cantillo's first pitch at 97.9 mph straight to Bazzana, who doubled Vargas off second. In the sixth, Cantillo walked Braden Montgomery with two outs, and Hunter Gaddis came in and gave up a single to Randal Grichuk, then hit Colson Montgomery and Antonacci with consecutive sliders. The second one forced in a run, which MLB.com said was the first run-scoring hit-by-pitch in White Sox postseason history. Vargas came back from 0-2 to a full count and lined a fastball toward the hole between third and short, and Ramírez went to his left, knocked it down and threw to first in time, per the Sun-Times, to keep it 5-3.
Ramírez came up again in the eighth against David Sandlin with two on and two outs, and he blooped an 0-2 curveball just past a diving Grichuk in left for a two-run triple. He finished 2-for-4 with a double, a triple, a walk, two runs, two RBIs and a stolen base. The Guardians had never hit two triples in a postseason game before, and they were the first team to do it since the Dodgers in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, according to the AP. Cleveland added two more in the ninth off Davis Martin, on Angel Genao's RBI double and Rocchio's RBI single.
Venable also used seven pitchers. Schultz, in his postseason debut, allowed one run in three innings and got six groundouts, including Rocchio's double-play ball in the fourth, and fellow rookie Tyler Davis pitched a scoreless seventh in his playoff debut, per MLB.com.
After Gaddis, Cleveland's bullpen retired the last nine White Sox in order, eight of them on strikeouts. Tim Herrin struck out the side in the seventh, and Cade Smith struck out five of the six hitters he faced in the eighth and ninth. I like watching catchers, because most of their work rewards paying attention, and Patrick Bailey did his best work at the very end. With two outs to go, he challenged a 1-2 sweeper to Antonacci that had been called a ball, and it was overturned to strike three. He did the same with an 0-1 sweeper to Vargas, and Smith finished the game with a 99.2 mph fastball that Vargas took for strike three. Bailey won three of his four challenges on Wednesday, and all three turned balls into strikes.
Cleveland scored nine runs on 11 hits after managing three runs and seven hits in the first two games combined, according to the AP. Murakami, who homered in Game 1, went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, and seven White Sox hitters struck out at least twice.
Up Next
Game 4 is Thursday at 4 p.m. Central at Rate Field. Parker Messick, who allowed two runs in 4 1/3 innings in Game 1, starts for Cleveland, according to the AP, and the White Sox had not announced a starter. If Cleveland wins again, Game 5 would be Saturday at 4 p.m. Central at Progressive Field.
In best-of-five series before this year, teams that lost the first two games and then won Game 3 went on to force a Game 5 in 18 of 39 instances and won the series 10 times, according to MLB.com.