White Sox move step closer to being Guardians ALDS opponent with dominant Wild Card showing against Astros 

While the Cleveland Guardians won’t start their postseason journey until Saturday afternoon, this week’s Wild Card Series still has some big ramifications across Northeast Ohio. 

We got our first look at how big those ramifications are on Tuesday night when the White Sox defeated the Astros 6-3 in the first game of the Wild Card Series between the two teams. The winner travels to Cleveland on Saturday to take on the Guardians in the ALDS. 

The White Sox may need to win one more game to officially punch their ticket to Cleveland, they took a huge step to extending their season with a big road win over Chicago punctuated by some pitching madness to go along with some timely early-game hitting. 

The White Sox picked up the win in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series against the White Sox

The White Sox wasted no time getting ahead of Houston with an early season scoring barrage that was highlighted by a 432-foot homer to dead center field by Colson Montogmery. 

That helped keep them in the game thanks to Houston chipping away at that lead late in the game on a Nelson Velázquez home run combined with a run-scoring error from Miguel Vargas that was set up by Jose Altuve hustling down the line. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Astros stuck around considering they still have players like Altuve and Yordan Alvarez in their core while most of the White Sox players are playing in the postseason for the first time in their career. 

Perhaps the thing that should excite Guardians fans the most is that neither team looked dominant. The Astros started the game with an opener in AJ Blubaugh, but he didn’t get out of the first inning, while the White Sox had to use most of their high-leverage arms ahead of another game tomorrow. 

The Astros are going to have a clear edge in that matchup thanks to ace Hunter Brown being on the mound, while the White Sox are going to turn to Sean Burke (it remains to be seen if it’s going to come behind an opener or not). 

Meanwhile, the Guardians are going to have a straightforward pitching plan that’s going to be led by Gavin Williams and Parker Messick starting Games 1 and 2 in some order. 

The Guardians saw a ton of the White Sox across the 2026 season, but the Astros boast the scariest player in the series in Alvarez. 

But even if the White Sox made the first statement, neither team is a world-beater, and the Guardians should be favored against either team.

The best thing for Cleveland would be for this series to go three games, and it’ll fall on Brown and Astros to have that happen tomorrow. 

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