Unlikely hero Braden Montgomery comes through for White Sox as they rally to take 2-0 ALDS lead vs. Guardians

CLEVELAND — When White Sox rookie right fielder Braden Montgomery strolled to the plate in the top of the sixth inning of ALDS Game 2 on Monday in Cleveland, the math was not on his side.

In the postseason, managers hunt matchups relentlessly. Lineup construction is delicate. Platoon advantages are pivotal. Deploying pinch-hitters and relievers at optimal junctures is paramount to success. 

Skippers Stephen Vogt and Will Venable had spent the sixth inning seeking such edges. Cleveland right-handed starter Gavin Williams, having struck out 11 through five frames, returned to the mound with a 2-1 lead in the sixth. With lefty reliever Erik Sabrowski warming in the bullpen and dangerous left-handed slugger Munetaka Murakami looming on deck, Williams’ final task was to retire Chicago’s top righty bat, Miguel Vargas. 

Instead Vargas singled, giving Chicago a leadoff baserunner and ending Williams’ outing on an ominous note.

Sabrowski entered and kept Chicago’s biggest bat quiet as planned, coaxing a groundout from Murakami that advanced Vargas to second. Then it was Venable’s turn to counter by pinch-hitting his two veteran righty bats, Randal Grichuk and Tommy Pham. Grichuk walked. A wild pitch from Sabrowski advanced the runners to second and third. Pham flew out.

Then it was Montgomery’s turn. On first glance, the 23-year-old’s switch-hitting capability seemed like a boon in this situation, giving Chicago a third consecutive right-handed at-bat against Sabrowski, now with two runners in scoring position. But history indicated otherwise. 

Montgomery’s production from the right side has lagged behind his left-handed cut since his days as a celebrated amateur prospect. And once he arrived in the majors this season, that weakness was exposed to the extreme: Montgomery hit .129/.204/.226 across 103 right-handed plate appearances. His .430 OPS ranked 169th among 169 righty batters to record at least 100 plate appearances against left-handed pitching. 

Making matters worse: Righty bats also struggled against the southpaw Sabrowski to an outlier degree. Only three left-handers (Josh Hader, Jacob Latz, Blake Snell) held right-handed bats to a lower OPS than Sabrowski (.510) in the regular season.

On paper, it would’ve been tough to draw up an at-bat that tilted more in the pitcher’s favor. But this was not a computer simulation based on probabilities. This was October baseball in real life. 

"Be ready to compete," Montgomery said afterward of his mindset. "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."

BRADEN MONTGOMERY FOR THE LEAD! pic.twitter.com/YeBoujhaiH

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) October 5, 2026

Montgomery pounced on a first-pitch fastball. The ball jumped off his bat at 101.4 mph and sizzled into right field, landing just inside the foul line, allowing Vargas and Grichuk to score easily and Montgomery to coast 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 flushed his statistical priors and flipped the script of ALDS Game 2 en route to a 4-3 Chicago victory. The math said the inning should’ve been over. The scoreboard said 3-2 White Sox.

absolutely love to see it pic.twitter.com/fiXFgnOLft

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) October 6, 2026

To be fair, this was not Montgomery’s first big moment of the year. Four months ago, he became the fifth player in MLB history to hit a walk-off home run in his major-league debut. That was an instant highlight for a rookie campaign that proceeded to be rather rocky; Montgomery posted a .651 OPS the rest of the way. But those struggles — and his becoming a passenger on Chicago’s roller-coaster ride from deep rebuild to dominating in October — set the stage for a new kind of feeling on Monday.

"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," he continued, still beaming hours later. "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 Chicago deficit into a lead — was also something new for Montgomery and his teammates this postseason. The White Sox did not trail at any point during their two-game sweep of Houston in the wild-card series. In ALDS Game 1, five White Sox pitchers shut out the Guardians 3-0. So when Cleveland jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first inning of Game 2 — on a bases-loaded throwing error, no less — it was the first time Chicago had been playing from behind since the third inning of Game 162.

But these White Sox, undaunted, methodically climbed back into the ballgame. They swung-and-missed a ton against Williams but also pushed his pitch count up early. They got on the board in the fourth inning via an RBI single from Murakami. In the home halves, Cleveland’s bats remained quiet against Chicago’s latest remix of relievers. Bulk pitcher Sean Burke breezed through five no-hit (!) innings after entering in the third. That complete lack of offensive momentum for the Guardians made way for Chicago’s sixth-inning rally, and Chase Meidroth followed Montgomery’s double with an RBI knock of his own, scoring what proved to be a vital insurance run.

Just once in Game 2 did a Cleveland batter produce a batted ball of real substance. After Burke allowed his first hit of the game with two outs in the eighth inning, Venable call

Source: sports.yahoo.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.