HOUSTON — In terms of rested and reliable starters, the White Sox and Astros were in a similar place on Tuesday evening.
But the Sox’ Game 1 playoff bullpen game effort was lined up days in advance, and the Astros’ was the leftovers of an all-hands-on-deck effort to clinch a playoff spot on the last day of the season. For most of the Sox’ 6-3 victory, each side looked their respective part.
A less-than-capacity crowd at Daikin Park, trained on high-quality baseball for the last decade, starting letting boos loose early, as the Sox out-hit the Astros 11-6 in a game they kept stopping just shy of breaking open, but never allowed to grow closer than arm’s length.
Grant Taylor freezing Astros catcher Yainer Diaz with a full-count curveball to strand two runners ended Houston’s biggest, latest threat in the eighth. Jeremy Pena and Yordan Alvarez, otherwise held in check, hit back-to-back one-out singles, before Miguel Vargas’ throw on a Jose Altuve grounder dragged Munetaka Murakami off the first-base bag.
While rookie Hagen Smith glided through three scoreless innings to open the game, his counterpart AJ Blubaugh didn’t throw enough strikes to get out of the first. Bryan King relieved him and limited the damage to a Murakami sacrifice fly. But other than being left-handed and healthy, the strengths to King’s 2026 season are less clear, and Sox left-handed bats handled him fine. After King plunked Colson Montgomery to load the bases, Sam Antonacci lined a two-run single to left-center, before Kyle Teel reloaded them with his own knock.
Rookie right-hander Miguel Ullola was the unexpected stabilizing force for the Astros pitching staff, striking out Murakami and Andrew Benintendi to escape a bases loaded jam in the second, en route to three innings of work marred only by a Colson Montgomery solo shot. With the close to 2026 that Montgomery endured, sending an 0-2 pitch 432-feet out to dead center looked like an unburdening.
With another unproven Astros lefty in Josh Hendrickson on in the fifth, Isaac Paredes whiffed on a bases loaded Chase Meidroth bouncer for a run-scoring infield single to put the Sox up 5-0. Still, a Colson Montgomery double play ball ended the frame with no further damage, such that when Nelson Velazquez launched an 0-2 Sean Newcomb fastball over the Crawford Boxes for a pinch-hit two-run shot, the Astros were back in business.
Former White Sox lefty Bennett Sousa yielded another tally in the seventh, when one of several bounced sliders snuck past Diaz to plate Murakami, who had the first of a pair of singles to lead off the inning. Whereas 6-2 isn’t a save situation in the regular season, in a best-of-three elimination environment, it’s close enough that a runner in scoring position against David Sandlin prompted Will Venable to ask Taylor for seven laborious outs to take things home.
One idea behind the aggressive move is that while Taylor is shutting things down, the Sox bats have the chance to lengthen the lead enough to allow a less essential reliever to finish things out. That didn’t happen, but the other idea behind it is when a win is in sight a best-of-three playoff series, there are no half-measures.