CHICAGO -- Foster Griffin has pitched around the world and seen most everything baseball can offer since his first-round MLB Draft selection in 2014.
But Griffin had never pitched in the situation he found himself in on Wednesday.
With Cleveland trailing by a run and facing elimination in Game 3 of the American League Division Series at Rate Field, manager Stephen Vogt turned to the 31-year-old Griffin to help keep the Guardians’ season alive with a pair of runners in scoring position.
And did he ever.
Griffin struck out Tristan Peters to escape the jam and just kept making White Sox batters miss as the Guardians took the lead in the third and never let go in a 9-3 victory to force Game 4 on Thursday. Griffin earned the victory that cut the series deficit to 2-1 in the best-of-five Division Series while striking out seven over 2 2/3 innings -- setting a new single-game record for K’s by a Cleveland reliever in the postseason.
“All I wanted to do in the first was get the boys back to the dugout, limit the damage there,” Griffin said. “Felt pretty good about the matchup, and then from there, keep going until the skipper takes the ball from me.
“[Getting] us back to the dugout kind of shut the moment down from their side for a little bit. Once we got the momentum going on our side, it was tough to stop it.”
Vogt did not need to take the ball from Griffin because after he entered in the first inning with two outs, the veteran lefty silenced a frenzied atmosphere in Chicago. He struck out two in a 1-2-3 second, then fanned three in a row after hitting Sam Antonacci in the back to begin the third after Cleveland took the lead in the top of the frame, halting any form of a rally.
“It was huge. It was kind of like a good jump scare. I didn't know [Griffin] was even in the bullpen,” said Steven Kwan, who hit an RBI single in the third. “When he came out, I got the card and was like, 'Oh, OK. Sweet.’ Thankfully, they know what they're doing out there. He was just going in, out, mixing angles, mixing his timings. It was definitely huge for us. He ate up innings.”
Griffin, who was acquired from Washington at the Trade Deadline after compiling a 3.06 ERA in 22 starts, struggled down the stretch (5.19 ERA in nine starts) with Cleveland. But that one-of-a-kind baseball journey, during which he pitched in Japan from 2023-25, prepared him for his first postseason appearance -- despite pitching for the first time since Sept. 23 in Boston.
“It was great, especially on the road, right?” Griffin said of his playoff debut in his first MLB relief appearance since 2022. “They were all against us, but I just feel like … the ups and downs, everywhere I’ve been in my career, Minor Leagues, Japan, big leagues, I feel like prepared me for that moment to not let the game speed up on me.”
Unfortunately, that’s what happened to Daniel Espino, who started as an opener for Griffin. But Vogt wasted no time in deploying Griffin after the White Sox took an early lead and had the 2026 All-Star Peters waiting at the plate.
“... Turned in [2 2/3] really quality innings that we needed. Again, you can draw up a script all you want,” Vogt said. “You can think how a game’s going to go. But Foster, he got some big outs. [Eight] very big outs for us today. So tip your cap to Foster.”
Griffin had his seven-pitch mix working, but it was his sweeper and fastball that generated five of his seven strikeouts, more than a third of the total that helped Cleveland set a new postseason record (19) for a nine-inning game on Wednesday.
Griffin finally ran into trouble in the fourth when Chase Meidroth and Peters hit back-to-back doubles to cut the Guardians’ lead to 4-2, but Griffin struck out Braden Montgomery to finish his outing at 53 pitches (39 strikes). From there, Shawn Armstrong recorded the final two outs of the frame before Cleveland used four more relievers (Joey Cantillo, Hunter Gaddis, Tim Herrin and Cade Smith) to close out Game 3.
But it was Griffin that flipped the script with 40,590 fans cheering against him to extend the Guardians’ season.
“You only feel the pressure you put on yourself,” Vogt said. “So we had pressure today. It’s win or go home. It’s no different tomorrow: Win or go home. We have an opportunity to win a ball game and get back to Cleveland.”