The Cleveland Guardians lost the first two games of their American League Division Series at home. Then they went to Chicago and scored nine runs twice.
Wins of 9-3 on Wednesday and 9-5 on Thursday, the second fueled by a six-run sixth inning, evened the series with the Chicago White Sox and set up a winner-take-all Game 5 on Saturday night at Progressive Field. The winner gets the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS.
If Cleveland finishes the job, it joins one of the more notable lists in playoff baseball: teams that dropped the first two games of a Division Series and won the next three.
Since the Division Series became a permanent part of the postseason in 1995, only seven teams have done it. The 1981 Dodgers also rallied from 0-2 against Houston, in a one-time division round created by that year’s strike-split season.
Cleveland knows this story from the wrong side. The franchise blew 2-0 leads to the Boston Red Sox in 1999 and to the New York Yankees in 2017, the most recent team to pull off the comeback. The Athletics is the only other club to have blown a 2-0 lead twice.
History says Saturday is close to a coin flip. Of the 18 teams that fell behind 2-0 in a best-of-five series and won Games 3 and 4, 10 went on to win Game 5, according to MLB.com. Home teams are 19-22 in winner-take-all Division Series games.
2017 ALDS: Yankees Over Cleveland
Cleveland won 102 games and opened the series with a 4-0 shutout and a 13-inning, 9-8 win at Progressive Field. The Yankees answered with 1-0 and 7-3 wins in the Bronx to force Game 5 back in Cleveland.
(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Didi Gregorius took it from there, homering off eventual AL Cy Young winner Corey Kluber in the first and again in the third. Brett Gardner fought through a 12-pitch at-bat for an RBI single in the ninth, and Aroldis Chapman got the final six outs of a 5-2 win.
2015 ALDS: Blue Jays Over Rangers
Texas won both games in Toronto, including a 14-inning Game 2. The Blue Jays won twice in Arlington to bring it home.
Game 5’s seventh inning lasted 53 minutes. Texas went ahead when Russell Martin’s throw back to the mound hit Shin-Soo Choo’s bat and Rougned Odor raced home, a ruling that set off a delay as fans threw debris onto the field.
(Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
Then the Rangers made three straight errors in the bottom half, and Jose Bautista crushed a three-run homer off Sam Dyson, followed by a bat flip that became one of the sport’s defining images. Toronto won, 6-3.
2012 NLDS: Giants Over Reds
The Reds outscored San Francisco 14-2 in the first two games at AT&T Park, and a one-year 2-3 format gave Cincinnati the last three games at home. It didn’t matter.
The Giants took Game 3 in 10 innings when Scott Rolen bobbled a grounder, then won Game 4, 8-3. In Game 5, Buster Posey hit a grand slam off Mat Latos in the fifth for a 6-0 lead.
(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
Cincinnati brought the winning run to the plate in the ninth before Sergio Romo struck out Scott Rolen, the final at-bat of the Hall of Famer’s career. The Giants became the first team to win a best-of-five series by taking three straight on the road, and they went on to win the World Series.
2003 ALDS: Red Sox Over Athletics
The Athletics won Game 1 in 12 innings on Ramon Hernandez’s bases-loaded bunt single, then took Game 2, 5-1. Back at Fenway Park, Trot Nixon’s two-run homer won Game 3 in the 11th, and David Ortiz’s two-run double in the eighth won Game 4.
(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Game 5 went back to Oakland. Jason Varitek tied it with a sixth-inning homer off Barry Zito, and Manny Ramirez followed with a three-run shot for a 4-1 lead behind Pedro Martinez.
The A’s got within 4-3 and loaded the bases on three walks in the ninth, but Derek Lowe struck out Terrence Long looking to end it. The team had now blown a 2-0 series lead twice in three years.
2001 ALDS: Yankees Over Athletics
The three-time defending champions lost the first two games at Yankee Stadium to a 102-win Athletics team. Game 3 in Oakland produced one of the most replayed plays in postseason history, Derek Jeter’s flip to Jorge Posada to cut down Jeremy Giambi at the plate and save a 1-0 win.
(Photo by V.J. Lovero /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
After a 9-2 win in Game 4, the Yankees took Game 5 at home, 5-3, behind a David Justice homer and a Mariano Rivera save. Jeter added one more highlight in the eighth, tumbling into the stands behind third base to catch a foul pop from Terrence Long, the same hitter who made the final out of Boston’s comeback two years later.
The Yankees became the first team to win a Division Series after losing the first two games at home.
1999 ALDS: Red Sox Over Cleveland
Cleveland won Game 1 on a Travis Fryman walk-off single and routed Boston 11-1 in Game 2. Then the Red Sox scored 32 runs in two games at Fenway, including a 23-7 Game 4 that set the record for runs by one team in a postseason game.
(DAVID MAXWELL/AFP via Getty Images)
With Game 5 tied 8-8 in the fourth inning in Cleveland, Boston turned to Pedro Martinez, who had left Game 1 with a back injury. He threw six no-hit innings of relief with eight strikeouts.
Troy O’Leary, who had already hit a grand slam, crushed a three-run homer in the seventh, and Boston won, 12-8. Cleveland fired manager Mike Hargrove after the series.
1995 ALDS: Mariners Over Yankees
In the first Division Series of the wild-card era, the Yankees won twice in the Bronx, the second a 15-inning marathon that ended after 1 a.m. Under that year’s 2-3 format, Seattle had the last three games at the Kingdome.
(Photo by Scott Clarke /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Randy Johnson won Game 3, and Edgar Martinez drove in seven runs in Game 4, including a go-ahead grand slam in the eighth. In Game 5, a Ken Griffey Jr. homer and a bases-loaded walk tied it in the eighth, and Johnson came out of the bullpen for three innings.
New York went ahead 5-4 in the 11th. In the bottom half, Joey Cora bunted for a hit, Griffey singled and Martinez lined a double to left, with Griffey racing home from first for a 6-5 win. The moment is widely credited with keeping baseball in Seattle.
If Cleveland wins Saturday, it joins the 2001 Yankees and 2015 Blue Jays as the only teams to drop the first two games of a Division Series at home and then win Game 5 in their own ballpark. The 2012 Giants also lost the first two at home but closed it out on the road.
Guardians right-hander Gavin Williams struck out 11 in Game 2 of the ALDS and got the final three outs of Thursday’s 9-5 win in Chicago that forced Game 5. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images)
The White Sox would become the eighth team since 1995 to lose a Division Series after winning the first two games. First pitch at Progressive Field is 8 p.m. ET, with the Rays waiting in the ALCS.
