Did the Guardians win last night? Yes. Cleveland beat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 in Game 1 of the ALCS on Monday, turning a quick deficit into another October comeback and opening the series with a road victory.
The result came after Tampa Bay grabbed a 2-0 lead just minutes into the game, but the Guardians answered with 14 hits and two home runs off Rays ace Drew Rasmussen. Chase DeLauter was at the center of it all, going 3-for-4 with a walk and three runs scored, while José Ramírez went 3-for-5 with two runs scored and kept forcing the game to move at Cleveland’s pace.
That kind of output matters because it is not how this club has always won in October. Before Monday, the Guardians were 1-29 all time in road playoff games when trailing by multiple runs from the sixth inning on, a number that made a comeback like this feel almost out of reach. Instead, Cleveland flipped the game with a burst that kept building over the final four innings, when it outscored Tampa Bay 7-1.
Chase DeLauter started the swing with a home run off Rasmussen in the sixth inning, Patrick Bailey tied it with a home run in the seventh, and Nathaniel Lowe delivered the decisive blow with a two-run single in the eighth that drove in DeLauter and Ramírez. Ian Seymour allowed the RBI single, and Jo Adell also had hits and RBIs for Cleveland on a night when the Guardians kept finding ways to extend innings and pressure every mistake.
Manager Stephen Vogt said the team came off an emotional series, had a quick turnaround and still arrived ready to play, adding that he could not be more proud of them. Cleveland has now won four straight playoff games and scored 27 runs over that stretch, a sign that the offense has started to travel with the pitching instead of waiting on it. The Guardians won Game 5 of the ALDS against the Chicago White Sox 48 hours earlier, and now the question is whether they can keep this version of the lineup alive long enough to turn a fast start into a series lead.
