CLEVELAND -- Guardians players, coaches, staff and front-office members gathered in the middle of the red-tinted home clubhouse at Progressive Field on Saturday night, forming a circle around manager Stephen Vogt. Before the party started, the skipper had the floor.
The tenor of the room stood in stark contrast to six days prior, when the Guardians fell into a 2-0 hole in the American League Division Series that put their season on the brink. This time, it would not be quiet for very long.
“Backs against the wall!” Vogt yelled. “Three straight elimination games! You boys showed up. You showed out. You posted all year. No one counts us in. We’ve got eight more wins to go!”
Whether or not there was more to Vogt’s speech, the champagne shower that overtook the clubhouse made the call for him.
Cleveland was staring down the end of its 2026 campaign on Monday. Now, it’s four wins away from reaching the World Series. The Guardians beat the White Sox, 2-0, on Saturday to win the ALDS and secure a matchup against the Rays in the AL Championship Series that opens Monday night at Tropicana Field.
The Guardians did so with a comeback for the ages. They are the 11th team to lose the first two games of a best-of-five postseason series and then come back to win. They’re the first to do so since the 2017 Yankees, who pulled off the feat in Cleveland.
The Guards are the ninth to pull off the feat in the Division Series; two teams did it in the League Championship Series back when that had a best-of-five format.
“It's about resilience,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said. “This group has demonstrated that time and time again throughout the course of the season.
“With their backs against the wall, they never had any doubt and found a way to make it happen.”
Cleveland seems to play its best ball when adversity is at its highest. The Guardians pulled off a historic comeback en route to the AL Central title in 2025. These Guardians erased a 5 1/2-game deficit over the final six weeks of the regular season to track down the White Sox and win the division again.
In this ALDS, the Guardians found a way to chase them down one more time.
“We had a clear mindset, and we knew we could come back,” third baseman José Ramírez said through team interpreter Agustin Rivero. “We lost the first two games, but we knew we could come back in those three games. We knew we could come back and play our game, and we just had to understand that.”
The contributions of No. 11 were vital. Without him, the Guards may have already gone home for the winter.
Ramírez had a forgettable regular season marred by the left hamate surgery he underwent in June. He still is dealing with the impacts of that procedure, and it was fair to wonder what he would provide the Guardians once the calendar flipped to October.
Ramírez went 0-for-6 in Games 1 and 2, both of which Cleveland lost. He went 5-for-12 with a double, two homers and seven RBIs in the Guardians’ wins in Games 3-5. His two-run home run got Cleveland off and running on Saturday.
“If there's one person on the planet I would not doubt, it's José Ramírez,” Antonetti said. “He willed his way to finding a way to help us win these games.”
“It's a big time player,” Vogt said. “That's what guys going to Cooperstown do. They step up when they need to.”
“Build the [bleeping] statue,” reliever Erik Sabrowski said.
Saturday, of course, was a team-wide effort. Gavin Williams delivered a performance that will go down in franchise lore, racking up 12 strikeouts over 5 2/3 scoreless innings two days after he closed out Game 4 with an emergency relief appearance. Closer Cade Smith (who threw 50 pitches across Games 3 and 4) tossed 1 2/3 scoreless innings Saturday to earn the save.
Williams, Sabrowski, Hunter Gaddis and Smith struck out a combined 21 batters, the most in a nine-inning postseason or regular-season game in MLB history.
This franchise has been on the wrong side of this equation nearly a dozen times. Cleveland entered Saturday 2-9 in win-or-go-home games.
But the Guardians gave their fanbase a memory they won’t soon forget, and they aren’t done. A battle with Tampa Bay, which finished the regular season with the best record in the AL, awaits.
With four more wins, the Guards will be World Series bound.
“These guys are so resilient,” Vogt said. “They believe they're going to win every night. Anything can happen in the ALCS. I'm really proud of them.”