Montgomery’s Sixth-Inning Double Powers White Sox Past Guardians 4-3 for 2-0 ALDS Lead

CLEVELAND — The Chicago White Sox keep rewriting their own script. Rookie Braden Montgomery lined a go-ahead two-run double down the right-field line in the sixth inning, Chase Meidroth followed with an RBI single, and the White Sox held on for a 4-3 victory over the Cleveland Guardians in Game 2 of the American League Division Series on Monday at Progressive Field, according to Reuters.

The win gave Chicago a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series. The White Sox can advance to their first American League Championship Series since winning the 2005 World Series with a victory on Wednesday at home, per Reuters.

Montgomery’s two-out, opposite-field double off Cleveland reliever Erik Sabrowski (0-1) landed just inside the foul line in right field, driving in Miguel Vargas and Randal Grichuk to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead, according to Reuters. Hunter Gaddis entered and promptly surrendered Meidroth’s opposite-field hit that plated Montgomery to extend the advantage to 4-2.

The 23-year-old former first-round pick managed just one hit in four at-bats on the day, but it came at the perfect moment. “I was just ready for something to attack, and I was ready for his hardest stuff. I gave myself my best chance to succeed,” Montgomery said after the game, according to the Associated Press via theScore. “I can’t even describe how it felt. It’s exhilarating. I was just taking it all in.”

Catcher Kyle Teel said he never doubted the rookie in the clutch spot. “I knew (Montgomery) was going to do something big,” Teel said, per theScore via MLB. “That guy just hits. He’s always coming up big for us. That’s the guy you want in that spot.”

The game was won on the mound as much as at the plate. Sean Burke (1-0) delivered 5 1/3 innings of one-run, one-hit relief for the victory, retiring 13 straight batters from the fourth to the eighth, according to Reuters. Manager Will Venable had opened with left-handers Anthony Kay and Sean Newcomb, whose wild throw on a first-inning chopper by Nathaniel Lowe gifted Cleveland two unearned runs — Steven Kwan and Jose Ramirez came home after reaching against Kay — but Burke slammed the door on everything after that, Reuters reported.

Guardians starter Gavin Williams was brilliant in defeat, striking out a career postseason-high 11 over five-plus innings, according to Reuters. He fell one strikeout short of Charles Nagy’s franchise record set against Baltimore in the 1996 ALDS. Williams departed at 98 pitches after Vargas singled to open the sixth, and Cleveland’s bullpen could not protect him.

Chicago got on the board in the fourth when rookie slugger Munetaka Murakami drilled a sharp single to right to score Teel, per Reuters. Cleveland pulled within one in the eighth when Jo Adell ripped an RBI triple off Grant Taylor that caromed high off the center-field wall — narrowly missing a game-tying home run by roughly 10 feet, according to the Beacon Journal. Taylor stranded Adell at third and retired the side in the ninth for his second save of the series, wrapping up a combined four-hitter.

The White Sox have now won all four of their postseason games — a pair of wild-card wins at Houston followed by two road victories in Cleveland — after claiming the league’s final wild-card berth, according to Reuters.

Why It Matters

This is no longer a feel-good wild-card story. It is a team playing October baseball with the poise of a seasoned contender — just two seasons after losing a major-league-record 121 games in 2024, per USA Today.

The standout theme is manager Will Venable’s bullpen choreography. Opening with Kay and Newcomb was a gamble — it briefly backfired with Newcomb’s first-inning error — but the plan was always to hand the game to Burke, and Burke’s 83-pitch, 5 1/3-inning shutdown was the kind of bulk-relief performance that defines modern playoff baseball. When a manager can treat the first inning as a problem to be managed and still get 17 outs from one arm behind it, the math tilts hard in his favour.

For Cleveland, the concern is structural. The Guardians’ offense struck out repeatedly against Williams’ filthy stuff going to waste at the other end — they mustered only Adell’s eighth-inning triple as genuine hard contact against Chicago’s pen. Heading to Chicago down 2-0, manager Stephen Vogt faces the classic elimination dilemma: reach for his best starters on short rest or trust the opener formula again, with Tanner Bibee or Joey Cantillo the likely options, per the Beacon Journal.

The numbers are brutal for Cleveland: teams taking a 2-0 lead in a best-of-five series have gone on to win 83 of 93 times, and teams winning the first two games on the road in the current format have won 17 of 19, according to the Beacon Journal citing MLB.com. A home series-clinching win on Wednesday would also be the franchise’s first playoff series triumph in Chicago since 1906, per the Daily Caller — a fun historical footnote for a fanbase that has waited through some very dark seasons.

One more thing worth noting: the White Sox have yet to trail beyond the first inning in any of their four playoff games. Championship teams don’t need to be perfect — they just need to be relentlessly difficult to beat. Right now, Chicago is exactly that.

Sources

• Reuters — “Sixth-inning rally gives White Sox 2-0 ALDS lead on Guardians”
• USA Today — “White Sox head home with 2-0 ALDS lead after edging Guardians in Cleveland”
• theScore — “White Sox head to Chicago with 2-0 ALDS lead”