ALDS Game 2 Monday: Judge-less Yankees fight for their season, White Sox chase a 2-0 stranglehold in Cleveland

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2026 — Monday belongs to the American League, and to two very different kinds of pressure. In Cleveland, the White Sox can take a genuine stranglehold on the most improbable October of this generation. In Tampa, the Yankees are playing to keep their season from sliding into real danger — and they’re doing it without the most dangerous hitter on the planet. Two Game 2s, four hours apart. Both could bend a series before the week even gets going.

Here is the state of play across all four Division Series — starting with the two that take the field today.

AL Division Series · Game 2 · 8 p.m. ET, TBSYankees at Rays — the no-Judge problem

Saturday night in Tampa was the quietest kind of baseball: a 1-0 Rays win, Jonathan Aranda’s solo homer the only run of the game, and Drew Rasmussen taking a no-hitter into the eighth before Austin Wells broke it up with a two-out double. The Yankees went 0-for-everything that mattered. Now they’re a loss away from an 0-2 hole, and they’re facing it without Aaron Judge, who was left off the ALDS roster with a strained right calf.

The pitching matchup is the heavyweight part of the evening. Cam Schlittler gets the ball for New York — the presumptive AL Cy Young winner, who threw 6⅓ scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts against Boston in the wild-card series, his second straight October dominating the Red Sox. Opposite him is Freddy Peralta, and the Rays’ deadline steal has been one of the best stories of the second half: a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts with the Mets, then 5-2 with a 3.25 ERA in 10 starts after the trade. He’s 5-0 with a 0.79 ERA over his last six regular-season starts. He did face the Yankees once this year — May 17, with the Mets — and it was his rockiest outing of the year: five innings, three runs, a season-high six walks, no-decision. “They’ve done a good job evolving his (pitch) mix,” Aaron Boone said, pointing to the changeup that now complements Peralta’s fastball.

The Yankees spent Sunday’s off day across the bay at their spring-training home, George M. Steinbrenner Field, instead of working out at the Trop. Judge was part of the group — running again, getting live at-bats in, “trying to stack another good day,” in Boone’s words, with the hope of making the ALCS roster if the Yankees get there. “You’ve got a full facility, our training stuff, modalities, things like that, plenty of fields to get whatever space you need,” Boone said of the choice. “We’ve got Trajekt for guys who want to get on that,” Boone said.

The Trajekt pitching machine — which simulates big-league pitchers’ exact pitches — isn’t available to visiting teams in stadiums, and the Yankees hoped the extra reps would pay off after Rasmussen carved them up in Game 1.

One more card in Boone’s hand: Carlos Rodón, who could be the Yankees’ secret weapon the rest of the way — available in relief behind Schlittler, or held for a Game 4 start on regular rest. If the Yankees fall to 0-2, the math gets brutal: three straight wins needed, with Games 3 and 4 at Yankee Stadium and Game 5 back in Tampa. Monday night is as close to a must-win as a Game 2 can be. Our full Game 2 preview has more on both ALDS matchups, plus the Yankees and Rays team pages.

AL Division Series · Game 2 · 5 p.m. ET, TBS/truTVWhite Sox at Guardians — the opener gambit

The afternoon game is the stranger one, and the more fun. The White Sox took Game 1 in Cleveland 3-0 on Saturday — Munetaka Murakami’s homer and a 4⅓-inning save from Grant Taylor — and now they can do something nobody drew up: take a 2-0 lead back to Chicago. Our Game 1 story has the full breakdown of Saturday’s shutout.

Chicago is expected to open Game 2 with left-hander Anthony Kay, who was 10-9 with a 4.44 ERA across 31 starts in the regular season and threw 1⅓ scoreless innings in relief in Game 1. The plan, per multiple reports: Kay as the opener, likely followed by right-hander Sean Burke. Across the diamond, the Guardians counter with the best strikeout arm in the league — Gavin Williams, 14-8 with a 3.76 ERA, who led the American League with 248 strikeouts and posted a 1.11 WHIP with 12.1 strikeouts per nine across 184⅓ innings.

One matchup to circle: Miguel Vargas against Williams. Vargas just finished his first career 30-homer season, and he owned Cleveland in the regular season — a .424 on-base percentage with six extra-base hits and 10 RBI. In 14 career at-bats against Williams, he’s slashing .429/.471/.643 with a home run. First pitch is 5 p.m. ET on TBS and truTV. The Guardians are slight home favorites, but the White Sox keep playing like a team with nothing to lose — because, in October’s terms, they don’t have anything. A win puts Cleveland in the same 0-2 hole the Yankees are trying to avoid. White Sox and Guardians team pages.

Around the National LeagueOne swing and a bullpen game

The National League got Sunday to itself, and it delivered two classics. In Milwaukee, Jackson Chourio’s two-out, bases-loaded single off Mason Miller in the ninth turned a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 walk-off win over San Diego. Miller had retired the side in the eighth, then issued the first postseason walks of his career — to Christian Yelich, Sal Frelick and pinch-hitter Gary Sánchez — to load the bases, and Chourio turned a 101.3-mph fastball into center field for the third postseason walk-off in franchise history. Consider what Miller did before that inning: 12 strikeouts among his first 15 batters faced this postseason, an MLB record. The Brewers lead 2-0, and Game 3 goes Tuesday at Petco Park — Dustin May against Nick Pivetta, 9:30 p.m. ET. Our full Game 2 story has more on the ninth-inning magic.

In Los Angeles, the Braves played October’s other game: a grinding, bullpen-by-committee 3-2 win that evened the NLDS. Michael Harris II went 3-for-5 — a homer shy of the cycle — and the go-ahead run scored on Kris Bubic’s wild pitch in the fifth. Blake Snell never found it for the Dodgers: 3⅔ innings, five walks. Game 3 Tuesday at Truist Park is the marquee pitching matchup of the round: Chris Sale against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 6 p.m. ET. The Braves held Sale back — he’d closed out the wild-card series two days after starting Game 1 — and manager Walt Weiss said he has no regrets: “We needed to win that series, and that was our best chance to do it.” Our Game 2 story breaks down the bullpen battle, and our Game 3 preview sets up Sale-Yamamoto.

What’s nextThe week ahead

Monday’s ALDS doubleheader opens the week — White Sox at Guardians at 5 p.m. ET, Yankees at Rays at 8 p.m. ET, both on TBS. Tuesday belongs to the NL: Braves-Dodgers at 6 p.m. ET, then Brewers-Padres at 9:30 p.m. ET on FS1. The ALDS shifts cities Wednesday — Rays at Yankees, Guardians at White Sox — with Game 4s Thursday if necessary, NLDS Game 4s Friday if necessary, and winner-take-all Game 5s looming Saturday.

Sunday proved the obvious thing about October: no lead is safe, no closer invincible, no lineup quiet. Monday’s doubleheader decides how tight these two AL series are when they hit the road. Keep it locked on our MLB hub and the Previously Newsroom as every series unfolds.