Anthony Kay opened Game 2 for the Chicago White Sox on Monday, and the plan survived just long enough to matter. After the Cleveland Guardians put up two runs in the first inning, the White Sox steadied themselves and still left with a 4-3 win and a 2-0 lead in the series.
That is why Kay’s name is getting so much attention now. In a postseason format built to compress every mistake, an opener is supposed to buy a clean first trip through the order and keep the game from turning early. Kay did not do that. Steven Kwan led off the bottom of the first with a ground-ball single, José Ramírez walked, and Chase DeLauter moved both runners into scoring position with another ground ball before Kay was pulled for Sean Newcomb. The inning kept unraveling when Newcomb intentionally walked Jo Adell after falling behind 2-0, then watched Nathaniel Lowe send a high chop back toward the mound. Newcomb’s throw sailed away, and two runs crossed. Cleveland finished the first with a two-run lead, the exact kind of hole the White Sox were trying to avoid.
The choice to use Kay fits the White Sox’s unconventional pitching approach. He has been used as a starter, a reliever and now an opener, which is the kind of role twist teams turn to when they want to squeeze outs from different arms instead of asking one pitcher to cover a full game. That kind of setup has become more familiar around October, where clubs lean into bullpen games and short bursts rather than rigid rotation plans. It is also why this one matters beyond a single inning. In a best-of-five, a 2-0 lead changes the math in a hurry, and it does so before the series has time to settle.
The surprise is not that the White Sox won after Kay left early. It is that they won after the first inning went wrong so quickly. Sean Burke took over in the middle of the third and gave them exactly the kind of long relief they needed, allowing one hit over 5.1 innings on 86 pitches. Burke has said this is his life, that he has no family, no girlfriend and no kids, and that baseball is all he does. Anthony Kay summed up the vibe another way during the White Sox's Wild Card series against the Houston Astros, joking, “We’re celibate for Sean!” Burke later clarified that he did have a family, just not a family of his own. That mix of intensity and improvisation is carrying the White Sox now, and it has them one win from moving on after the 4-3 victory in Cleveland.
For the White Sox, the unanswered part is not whether the formula can survive one night. It is whether Kay, Burke and the rest of the staff can keep patching together innings if the Guardians force more games into the same kind of pressure.
