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CLEVELAND — When Chicago White Sox rookie right fielder Braden Montgomery stepped to the plate in the top of the sixth inning of ALDS Game 2 on Monday, the odds were stacked against him. In postseason baseball, managers meticulously seek matchups, craft lineups, and exploit platoon advantages, and both Stephen Vogt and Will Venable had spent the inning maneuvering for an edge.
Cleveland right-hander Gavin Williams, who had struck out 11 batters over five innings, returned for the sixth with a 2-1 lead. With lefty reliever Erik Sabrowski warming up and dangerous left-handed slugger Munetaka Murakami on deck, Williams' final assignment was to retire Chicago's top right-handed bat, Miguel Vargas. Instead, Vargas singled, ending Williams' outing and putting a runner on base.
Sabrowski entered and quieted Chicago's biggest threat by inducing a groundout from Murakami that moved Vargas to second. Venable countered by sending up veteran right-handed hitters Randal Grichuk and Tommy Pham. Grichuk walked, a wild pitch advanced both runners into scoring position, and Pham flew out, bringing Montgomery to the plate.
At first glance, Montgomery's switch-hitting ability seemed advantageous, giving Chicago a third straight right-handed batter against Sabrowski with two runners in scoring position. But history suggested otherwise. Montgomery's production from the right side has trailed his left-handed swing since his amateur days, and in the majors this season, he hit just .129/.204/.226 over 103 right-handed plate appearances. His .430 OPS ranked last among 169 right-handed batters with at least 100 plate appearances against left-handed pitching.
Moreover, right-handed bats struggled against Sabrowski to an extreme degree. Only three left-handers (Josh Hader, Jacob Latz, and Blake Snell) held righties to a lower OPS than Sabrowski's .510 in the regular season. On paper, the matchup heavily favored the pitcher. But this was October baseball, not a simulation.
"Be ready to compete," Montgomery said of his approach. "That's the goal at the end of the day because numbers are what they are. It's the past, and so you use those experiences to sculpt what you believe to be the best way forward."
Montgomery jumped on a first-pitch fastball, sending it off his bat at 101.4 mph into right field just inside the foul line. Vargas and Grichuk scored easily, and Montgomery cruised into second base.
"To see the ball get down and to know you've got two ducks on the pond — it's exhilarating," Montgomery said. "I was just running with the wind. It was special to touch the bag and look back into the dugout to see my guys."
With one swing, Montgomery defied the statistical odds and flipped the script of ALDS Game 2, propelling Chicago to a 4-3 win. The math suggested the inning should have ended; the scoreboard showed 3-2 White Sox.
This was not Montgomery's first major moment. Four months earlier, he became the fifth player in MLB history to hit a walk-off home run in his major-league debut. That highlight gave way to a rocky rookie season in which he posted a .651 OPS the rest of the way. Those struggles, and his role in Chicago's transformation from a deep rebuild to an October force, set the stage for Monday's heroics.
"The first game up, I was welcomed in and enjoyed every moment of it," Montgomery said of his debut. "But I feel like it's impossible to feel like you're a part of the team at that point because I'm coming up two months into the season, I've been playing my own games six days a week. I don't know what's been going on in the clubhouse or how they've been doing. So that felt more personal, that night. Tonight tops it tenfold. To have those emotions going into it, to have been down the road with this team and be in these games and to be playing the most important baseball of the year. It's a feeling like no other. You want to replicate that feeling every night."
That feeling — turning a deficit into a lead — was new for Montgomery and his teammates this postseason. The White Sox never trailed during their two-game sweep of Houston in the wild-card series, and in ALDS Game 1, five pitchers combined for a 3-0 shutout of Cleveland. So when the Guardians took a 2-0 lead in the first inning of Game 2 on a bases-loaded throwing error, it marked the first time Chicago had played from behind since the third inning of Game 162.
Undaunted, the White Sox methodically climbed back. They struck out frequently against Williams but worked deep counts to raise his pitch total. They scored in the fourth on an RBI single by Murakami. Meanwhile, Cleveland's bats remained silent against Chicago's bullpen. Bulk pitcher Sean Burke breezed through five no-hit innings after entering in the third.
That lack of offense set the stage for Chicago's sixth-inning rally, and Chase Meidroth followed Montgomery's double with an RBI single of his own, scoring what proved to be a crucial insurance run.
Only once did a Cleveland batter produce a batted ball of real consequence. After Burke allowed his first hit with two outs in the eighth, Venable called on Grant Taylor — two days after a four-inning save in Game 1 — to face Jo Adell. Cleveland's DH, who was 0-for-6 with six strikeouts in the series, crushed a first-pitch fastball off the top of the left-field wall for an RBI triple that cut the deficit to one run. At a projected 413 feet, it was the farthest batted ball at Progressive Field this season that did not leave the park.
"Stay in the ballpark, please," Taylor recalled thinking when Adell connected. "Thankfully, it stayed in — got a pretty tall wall over there."
Taylor's ninth inning was uneventful. He needed just five pitches to retire the side in order, a fittingly flat finish to another uninspiring effort by Cleveland's offense — or, from another perspective, a stress-free finale to another superb performance by Chicago's pitching staff, with Taylor again at the center.
A week ago, the White Sox were not guaranteed to host a home postseason game after squandering a chance at the AL Central title and a first-round bye. But after four straight road victories to open their improbable postseason run, Chicago returns to Rate Field needing just one win to reach its first ALCS since the 2005 World Series season.
"I'm so excited," Montgomery said. "I can't place any expectations on it. I just know it's going to be special. I mean, seeing all the Sox fans here postgame and seeing the excitement they've had. I can only imagine how the South Side is going to pop out in a couple of days. I can't wait to see it and be part of it."
Originally reported by yahoo.