The White Sox will have to settle for a strange kind of distinction this October: they’re the only club that can point to a true upset in the postseason bracket.
By seed line, their win over No. 3 Houston as the No. 6 seed in the American League was the lone result that broke from the script.
Everything else followed the favorites. The White Sox got their moment first, but the rest of the field mostly held serve from there.
That made the Rays’ march through the Guardians feel even more inevitable. Tampa Bay spent most of the season looking like the best team in the American League, and even though Cleveland grabbed a 1-0 and then a 2-1 lead in the series, the Rays never really stopped looking like the deeper, more dangerous offense. They matched the Guardians in run prevention and were in a different class when it came to scoring.
Game 6 turned on the edge the Rays have all season: the bats were ready when Cleveland’s bullpen started to show wear.
Cade Smith came in for the seventh and immediately ran into trouble, making his ninth appearance in Cleveland’s 11 postseason games. He walked Liam Hicks and then watched Junior Caminero launch a two-run homer on a splitter that hung just enough to get punished, even if it was theoretically a little off the plate inside. That blast pushed Tampa Bay ahead 5-1.
The Guardians then let Ian Seymour put the game back within reach with a walk and a hit-by-pitch while the bases were loaded in the top of the eighth, but Hunter Gaddis followed the same rough path. He walked Taylor Walls and then gave up a home run to Yandy Díaz. At that point, the game was done.
It was fair to wonder whether Stephen Vogt had squeezed too much out of his top relievers over the previous 10 games, especially after leaning on Smith and Gaddis in high-leverage spots during Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS just to get through leads that had already widened. Maybe there was a cost. Or maybe Caminero and Díaz simply did what great hitters do against quality arms.
There was also a sharp sequence in the eighth with Brayan Rocchio at the plate, the bases loaded, and two outs in a 5-3 game after Seymour’s collapse. Kevin Kelly entered, and it was hard to imagine him challenging Rocchio with a fastball. The matchup played out the way it looked like it would: Kelly, who threw his changeup 35 percent of the time to lefties in the regular season, went 3-for-3 against Rocchio.
Rocchio’s postseason line told the story too. He finished 5-for-35 without an extra-base hit, with nine strikeouts and three walks.
One of the more notable stories inside Tampa Bay’s run has been Cam Booser, who effectively went from the White Sox to the Rays without Chicago getting anything back. The White Sox had acquired him from the Red Sox for 18-year-old DSL pitching prospect Yhoiker Fajardo in December 2024, hoping his age-33 season would still leave them with plenty of control if his rookie showing in Boston held up.
Instead, Booser bottomed out. He posted a 5.52 ERA in 39 games, with his walk and home run rates spiking and a shoulder strain interrupting the season. The pitcher who opened the year in the highest-leverage role was released by the end of it.
Tampa Bay grabbed him on a minor league deal in January, then added him to the 40-man roster in late March before sending him to Triple-A Durham to start the year. After two months there, he finally got his chance in early June, and from there he became one of the best left-handed relievers in baseball.
His regular-season numbers show the turnaround clearly:
2025 G 39 IP 31 HR/FB 16.7 BB% 13.3 K 24.5 ERA 5.52 FIP 6.26
2026 G 42 IP 41 HR/FB 9.6 BB% 3.9 K 29.6 ERA 1.98 FIP 2.93
That form has carried straight into October. Booser retired all five batters he faced in Game 6 and has now thrown 4 ⅔ scoreless innings in the postseason, allowing just a single and a walk while stranding all four runners he inherited.
The Rays’ version of Booser looks different, too. His arm slot is lower, and the cutter has come back into focus after he leaned more on a sweeper with the White Sox.
Statcast tagged the sweeper as his best pitch in Chicago, so the White Sox weren’t wrong to explore it. But the fit in Tampa Bay has been better, and the results have followed.
The broadcast kept showing Tyler Glasnow and Randy Arozarena around Tropicana Field, and the sight landed in a weird place - less like a reunion, more like a homecoming from players who now belong elsewhere. Glasnow’s Dodgers were already out a couple days earlier, and both he and Arozarena were major pieces of the last Rays club to win the AL pennant.
It made for a strange thought experiment: if the White Sox were in this spot, and Carlos Rodón, Garrett Crochet, Luis Robert Jr. and Gavin Sheets were in the stands, would that feel flattering or just odd?
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What makes him especially interesting is how much of his future still has to be sorted out. He has the ingredients to become more than just a promising contact bat, but his path forward will depend on where he lands defensively and how his offensive game develops once pro pitching starts testing him on a nightly basis. For a rebuilding club, that kind of uncertainty is part of the attraction, even if the payoff is still a ways off. [Read more 🡒]