SI:AM | The Inning That Saved the Guardians’ Season

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Just a quick note that there will not be an SI:AM on Monday because of the holiday. Enjoy the loaded sports weekend!

In today’s SI:AM:
⚾ Do-or-die ALDS game
😮 Cowboys stunned by Bucs
🏈 Best CFB games this week

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It all comes down to Game 5

If the White Sox are going to get another chance to clinch a playoff series at home for the first time in 120 years, they’re going to need to win tomorrow night in Cleveland first.

The Guardians won Game 4 of the ALDS last night to force a decisive Game 5 back home on Saturday. Like Cleveland’s season-saving win the previous night, it wasn’t particularly close.

The Guardians won 9–5, scoring all their runs in the fifth and sixth innings. The White Sox took an early 2–0 lead before Cleveland went ahead 3–2 in the top of the fifth. Chicago took the lead back in the bottom of the inning, but then the Guardians went ahead for good with a monster six-run sixth inning.

Both rallies included major contributions from an unlikely source: catcher Patrick Bailey. He led off the fifth with a homer, then drove in the go-ahead run in the sixth with a single. As Ryan Phillips points out, Bailey is the last guy you’d expect to come up with a clutch hit. The reason he has a big league job is that he’s one of the best defensive catchers in the game. (He led the majors in catcher framing in each of the previous three seasons, according to Statcast.) But he’s a lousy hitter. His career OPS is a mere .622. Only one other hitter (minimum 1,500 plate appearances) has a lower OPS since Bailey entered the league in 2023: Ke’Bryan Hayes.

Bailey wasn’t even in the starting lineup. Austin Hedges, another light-hitting framing wiz, got the start behind the plate. Hedges bats righty, so he got the nod against lefty starter Hagen Smith. Bailey is a switch hitter who hits much better as a lefty against right-handed pitching, so when Hedges’s spot in the lineup came up against a righty reliever, manager Stephen Vogt sent Bailey up to pinch-hit. He proceeded to hit just the fourth postseason pinch-hit homer in franchise history.

Patrick Bailey slugs one out! pic.twitter.com/n2IAq0q36i
— MLB (@MLB) October 9, 2026

But it was the sixth inning when everything truly unraveled for the White Sox. The inning started with Anthony Kay on the mound. He got leadoff hitter Nathaniel Lowe to ground out, but then hit Angel Martínez with a pitch. Martínez then stole second and scored on a double by rookie Travis Bazzana. That was it for Kay. He was replaced by Grant Taylor, who failed to retire any of the six batters he faced. He allowed four singles and two walks as five more runs crossed the plate. Only eight of the 18 pitches he threw were in the strike zone.

Taylor had come up clutch for the White Sox multiple times this postseason, but perhaps his heavy workload has caught up with him. He got the final seven outs in his team’s win over the Astros in the first game of the wild-card series on Sept. 29, throwing 54 pitches to do so. Then, in Game 1 of this series, he threw 42 pitches in a four-inning save. He had a four-out save in Game 2, although he threw just seven pitches. That’s 7 ⅔ innings and 103 pitches in seven days—not outrageous, but certainly a lot for a reliever. Even still, Taylor said he’ll be ready to take the ball tomorrow night in Cleveland if called upon.

“I’m going to be available for anything,” he told reporters. “If they want me to go nine, then go for it. I’m going to do everything in the next couple of days to be ready to go.”

The best of Sports Illustrated

Jalon Daniels scrambles — The Cowboys suffered a frustrating defeat against a previously winless team playing with its backup quarterback. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Matt Verderame: Home Loss to Winless Bucs Dampens Cowboys’ Hopes That This Year Would Be Different
Albert Breer: Patriots Will Celebrate How Their Franchise Became the Gold Standard in 2001
Ryan Phillips: Guardians Stay Alive in Game 4 Behind the Unlikeliest of October Heroes
Gilberto Manzano: 2027 NFL Draft: USC Quarterback Jayden Maiava Reveals the Secret to His Accuracy
Zach Koons: Three Matchups That Will Decide Georgia vs. Alabama, Plus 10 Other Can’t-Miss Games in Week 6
Karl Rasmussen: The 10 Biggest On-Paper Mismatches in MLB Postseason History
Clare Brennan: What Will It Take for Caitlin Clark, Fever to Keep Kelsey Mitchell in Indy?

The top five…

Bucky Irving runs against the Cowboys — Bucky Irving had a career night against the Cowboys. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

… things I saw last night:
5. Some great defense at first base by Munetaka Murakami to turn a 3-6-3 double play.
4. South Alabama running back Keenan Phillips’s fourth touchdown against Arkansas State.
3. UTSA running back A’Marion Peterson’s 53-yard touchdown run out of the wildcat. He had three touchdowns in the game against USF, including the winning score in the final seconds.
2. An outstanding glove save by Maple Leafs goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.
1. Buccaneers running back Bucky Irving’s 72-yard run. That one didn’t reach the end zone, but he had two touchdowns (one rushing, one receiving) in Tampa Bay’s 24–16 win over the Cowboys.

📺 What we’re watching today …

WNBA

Dream at Liberty 7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2
New York will try to avoid a sweep and take the first step toward becoming the first team in league history to come back from a 2–0 deficit in a best-of-five series.

Valkyries at Aces, 9:30 p.m., Peacock
A day after winning her fifth MVP award, A’ja Wilson looks to keep the reigning champion’s hopes alive in this elimination game.

College Football

Florida State at Louisville, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN
No. 20 Iowa at Washington, 9 p.m. ET, Fox
Iowa State vs. No. 8 BYU, 10:15 p.m. ET, ESPN

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