Petey Halpin grew up hearing the old Little League instructions: don’t flip the bat, and sprint out of the box. On Thursday night at Progressive Field, with the Guardians chasing the Rays in the fifth inning of American League Championship Series Game 3, Cleveland’s No. 8 hitter found a reason to forget both lessons.
Halpin drove a two-run homer to right field off Griffin Jax, turning a one-run deficit into a 3-2 Guardians victory and sending Cleveland ahead 2-1 in the best-of-seven series. The swing brought the home crowd to its feet. The bat toss that followed made sure nobody in the building would forget it soon.
“I kind of blacked out,” Halpin said of the celebration. “Being in that situation and having that moment in my career, it just happened.”
The Rays held a 2-1 lead when Patrick Bailey opened the fifth with an infield single. Halpin came up next and worked Jax to a 2-2 count. Jax left a 95.9 mph sinker over the plate, and Halpin did not miss it. He sent the ball out at 105 mph, with a projected distance of 385 feet, clearing the right-field wall by a narrow enough margin to give manager Stephen Vogt a moment of concern.
“I watched the replay and saw how close it was,” Vogt said with a grin. “I’m glad it got over.”
Halpin watched the drive, started toward first and sent his bat spinning high above the dirt. Steven Kwan, standing near Vogt at the dugout steps, bounced onto the field in celebration as the building shook around them.
“That was a good bat flip,” Kwan said. “He might be the only guy with the nerve to send it that far up there. We need that kind of energy.”
There was some irony in the moment. Cleveland left-hander Erik Sabrowski, watching from the bullpen beyond center field, had wondered whether Halpin might try to push a bunt down the left-field line. Rays third baseman Junior Caminero appeared to be thinking along similar lines, playing in on the grass through the first four pitches of the at-bat.
“What an idiot I am,” Sabrowski said, laughing at his own read. “That’s why I’m a pitcher. But it was cool. We were fired up.”
Daniel Espino, warming in the bullpen with the expectation of taking over for starter Gavin Williams in the sixth, offered Halpin’s flourish a perfect score while admitting he briefly worried about the landing spot.
“Ten out of 10,” Espino said. “I thought it might come down and hit him in the head.”
Halpin has seized his October chance
The home run was not Halpin’s first big swing of the season. Kwan recalled Halpin’s three-run blast in a 6-3 win over the White Sox on Sept. 16, a result that gave Cleveland sole possession of first place in the AL Central on the way to the division crown.
Still, Halpin entered October as a player whose regular-season role often involved late-inning defense. He received only two plate appearances over the first four games of the ALDS, both as a reserve. Vogt put him in the lineup for Game 5 against the White Sox, and Halpin answered with two doubles in three at-bats during a 2-0 win. He has now started four straight games and has turned a narrow opportunity into a central October role.
“Petey is ready,” Vogt said. “He wants to play, he wants to contribute, and no moment seems too big for him. He loves the game and wants to help us win.”
Sabrowski called Halpin a big-game player, then widened the thought to the entire Cleveland clubhouse. That is the October truth the Guardians are living now: a postseason run needs more than the players who fill the marquee spots. It needs the reserve outfielder who gets his shot, turns on one sinker and sends both the baseball and his bat toward the night sky.
“Pete’s a big-game player,” Sabrowski said. “We have a lot of them in this room. We’re better because of it.”
The Guardians are two victories from their first World Series appearance since 2016. History offers them a favorable lane: teams winning Game 3 after a 1-1 split have captured 71 of 102 best-of-seven postseason series, while home clubs taking a 2-1 lead in the current 2-3-2 format have won 30 of 49 series.
Game 4 is scheduled for Friday at 6 p.m. ET on TBS, truTV, UniMas and HBO Max. If the Brewers complete a sweep of the Dodgers, the Cleveland-Tampa Bay game would shift to 8 p.m. ET.
