José Ramírez heard Progressive Field calling for him in the fourth inning Saturday night, then gave Cleveland exactly the swing it had been waiting on. His two-run homer supplied all the offense in a 2-0 Game 5 win over the White Sox, sending the Guardians through to the American League Championship Series.
A fourth-inning answer
- With the crowd chanting his name from the lower bowl through the outfield seats, Ramírez came to the plate in a scoreless fourth against Chicago right-hander Sean Burke.
- Burke dropped a 78 mph curveball that crossed only 0.74 feet off the ground. Ramírez went down and got it, lifting the ball over the right-field wall for a two-run shot.
- The drive was projected at 348 feet, barely clearing the fence but landing with the force of a much longer blast as the ballpark erupted and Cleveland took a 2-0 lead.
- The Guardians protected that margin through the final innings, closing out the Division Series and earning a spot in the ALCS.
Game 1 of the ALCS is scheduled for Monday, with coverage on TBS, truTV, UniMas and HBO Max.
A swing with rare company
Ramírez’s homer was the sixth hit by a Cleveland player in a winner-take-all postseason game. The list includes two from Jim Thome and one from Travis Fryman in Game 5 of the 1999 ALDS, Rajai Davis in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, and Lane Thomas in Game 5 of the 2024 ALDS.
It also put Ramírez in a small recent club. He is Cleveland’s first player to homer in back-to-back postseason games since Francisco Lindor did it in Games 2 and 3 of the 2018 ALDS. More specifically, he is the first Guardian to go deep in consecutive playoff games while his club faced elimination in each one.
The pitch itself made the moment even more unusual. It was the lowest offering Ramírez has homered on in his career, regular season or postseason. Under MLB’s pitch-tracking era, which began in 2008, no postseason hitter had previously homered on a pitch thrown lower than that one.
Ramírez finding his October stroke
The 34-year-old entered this run after a regular season that was affected by left hamate surgery. But his bat has steadily warmed as the series moved along.
- In Game 3, Ramírez went 2-for-4 and helped lead Cleveland to a 9-3 victory.
- He followed with a 2-for-5 performance in Game 4, driving a two-run homer and finishing with three RBIs.
- Then came the Game 5 shot, a low-ball answer from the Guardians’ centerpiece on a night when two runs were enough.
For Cleveland, the box score will show a 2-0 clincher. Around the clubhouse, though, the lasting image will be Ramírez digging out Burke’s curveball and watching Progressive Field come alive behind him.
