Storylines to follow as White Sox, Guards play winner-take-all Game 5

Home field has been the definitional counter-indicator in this American League Divisional Series between the White Sox and Guardians. The White Sox won two in Cleveland, and then the Guardians won two in Chicago.

So who knows what’s going to happen Saturday night’s Game 5 in Cleveland? That’s the fun of it, of course: It’s a winner-take-all Game 5. Anything goes. Your guess is as good as ours.

Here are three key questions as these two division foes get set to battle for a chance to take on the Rays in the AL Championship Series.

Game 5: White Sox at Guardians (tied 2-2)
8 p.m. ET, TBS/HBO Max
SP: Sean Burke (CWS) vs. Gavin Williams (CLE)

How loud will it be for José Ramírez’s first at-bat?

Ramírez is not truly going to be “back” until he has an offseason to truly heal from the surgery he underwent in June to repair a fractured left hamate bone. He’s not 100%, he admits he’s not 100%, everyone knows he’s not 100%. But for the first time, really, in all of 2026, he looks like the superstar the Guardians have been built around for the past decade. His two-run homer off Jordan Hicks -- a 99.9 mph pitch he got around on entirely, a classic Ramírez swing -- continued the rebound he started in Game 3, and now his 0-for-6 start to this series, not to mention his struggles in the regular season, is forgotten.

Ramírez has been the face of this entire franchise for so long now -- he is likely going to have a statue outside Progressive Field someday -- and it felt wrong for him to be having so much trouble in a year when the Guardians were having so much success. It sure does feel right now. Expect the Guardians fans to show him all the love.

Which pitchers, if any, do the White Sox trust now?

Yeah, this is the problem with not worrying about starting pitchers: You don’t have any starting pitchers. This strategy by White Sox manager Will Venable has made a lot of sense. There’s not any real aces on this stuff, so just use a "Johnny Wholestaff" approach to get the outs wherever you can get them. Part of this strategy is just urgent postseason bullpen management; all hands on deck, right? But another part is simple necessity: With no real starting pitching anyway, why not just build the whole plan out of the bullpen?

The two games in Chicago showed why it’s hard to make this work over the long haul. The blowup innings in Game 4, the three-run fifth and especially the six-run sixth, is exactly the nightmare you worry about when you construct a staff this way. All it takes is one pitcher having one very bad day to blow up the whole thing. It’s fair to say that Grant Taylor had himself a very bad day, but of the seven pitchers the White Sox used in Game 4, three others also gave up a run. It wasn’t just about Taylor. Friday’s travel day should help reset Venable’s options a bit, as will having Burke, the closest thing they have to an ace, serve as a traditional starter. But if you begin to see a vein in Venable’s head throb the minute the Guardians get any runners on, it won’t be difficult to understand why.

Despite Guardians manager Stephen Vogt’s decision to use Gavin Williams to close out Game 4, he is starting Game 5.

Which of these evenly matched teams will get the last laugh?

These two teams have to be sick of each other. This will now be the 18th game they’ve played against each other in 2026, and it is downright absurd how close they’ve been. The White Sox lead the season series at this point, 9-8, but the Guardians have outscored them in those 17 games by a total of … five runs. (And it was just one run before the relative blowout in Game 4.)

The White Sox held at least a share of first place for 96 days .. the Guardians for 89 days. The Guardians took over first place from the White Sox in September in a series at Progressive Field and ended up winning the AL Central by … one game. Of these 17 games so far, 13 have been decided by three runs or fewer. Eight games were decided by one run. There have been four walk-offs.

It is only fitting that they have one more game, against each other, to decide who will advance to the ALCS. They’ve been glaring at each other, jockeying for position, from the very beginning of the season. There’s just one more game to decide the whole thing. It probably had to go down this way.