The Cleveland Guardians are headed to the 2025 MLB Playoffs!

As improbably as it may have seemed just three weeks ago, the Cleveland Guardians are headed back to the postseason, clinching a spot in the 2025 MLB Playoffs with their 3-2 victory over the Texas Rangers on Saturday night.

Cleveland came into the night with a simple task: win and you’re in. It may not have been pretty, but that’s exactly what they did as the Rangers intentionally walked Gabriel Arias to load the bases and then hit CJ Kayfus with a pitch to force home the winning run.

On July 6, after the Guardians lost their 10th straight game, FanGraphs gave the Guardians a 21% chance of reaching the postseason. On August 25, after Cleveland had won just one of their last ten games, those odds were just three percent. By September 4th, they had a 0.1% chance to win the AL Central.

If they win the season finale on Sunday afternoon, they will be division champs and will host the best-of-3 AL Wild Card round beginning Tuesday at Progressive Field.

That’s why you play all 162 games, because you never know what’s going to happen over the marathon of the season.

Now, after so much adversity, the Guardians have punched their ticket to the playoffs and will be competing for a World Series this October.

This marks their 18th trip to the postseason since 1920 and their 15th trip since 1995. But perhaps more impressively, the Guardians have just become only the fourth team in Major League history to make the playoffs after losing at least 10 consecutive games. Only the 2017 Dodgers, 1982 Braves and 1951 New York Giants had previously done so.

The Guardians certainly didn’t make it easy on themselves, which has been a recurring theme the entire season.

The Rangers opened the scoring in the first inning with an RBI double by Josh Jung, making it a 1-0 ball game before the Guardians even picked up the bats. 

However, Cleveland struck back quickly.

Jonathan Rodriguez, shockingly, was in the starting lineup on Saturday night, hitting cleanup. Yes, the Rangers had a left-hander starting on the mound, but Rodriguez hadn’t taken a big-league at-bat since July 29.

All of this made his 2-run, go-ahead home run in the first inning that much more surprising. He even followed that blast up with another base hit.

These were Cleveland’s only runs of the game until the ninth inning when Kayfus brought in the winning run with his hit by pitch.

The Guardians' pitching was largely fantastic on Saturday evening, a theme that has persisted throughout September. 

Joey Cantillo took the ball to start the game and threw 5.2 innings, allowing just two earned runs on three hits. The left-hander also struck out eight batters and issued no walks. 

Then, the relief trio of Hunter Gaddis, Erik Sabrowski, and Cade Smith combined to cover the rest of the game, allowing only three base runners on the hits the rest of the game.

The thing is, the Guardians had opportunities to scratch even more runs across the board.

Gabriel Arias led off the frame with a hustle triple, leaving him at third base with no outs. However, the Guardians couldn’t get the run across. Jhonkensy Noel, Brayan Rocchio, and Austin Hedges each struck out, stranding the lead-off man at third. 

Thankfully, that didn’t come back to bite the team after all nine innings had been played.