Guardians’ historic ALDS comeback takes Blue Jays fans back to 2015

The Cleveland Guardians’ improbable trip to the American League Championship Series must have felt strangely familiar for fans of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Cleveland dropped the first two games of its American League Division Series against the Chicago White Sox at home, won twice on the road to stay alive and returned to Progressive Field to finish the comeback in Game 5. It was the same route Toronto took against the Texas Rangers in 2015.

The Guardians sealed the series with a 2-0 win behind their two biggest stars. José Ramírez supplied all the offence with a two-run home run in the fourth inning, while Gavin Williams struck out 12 over 5.1 innings. Cleveland’s staff finished with a record 21 strikeouts, the most ever in a nine-inning regular-season or postseason game.

Guardians retraced Blue Jays' path from 2015

Only 11 teams have erased an 0-2 deficit to win a best-of-five postseason series. Cleveland became just the fourth to do it after losing the opening two games at home. The Blue Jays represented the last American League team to survive that exact scenario, storming back against Texas 11 years earlier in one of the most memorable postseason series in franchise history.

The series began with two agonizingly close losses at home as Texas won 5-3 in Game One and 6-4 in 14 innings in Game Two. Toronto’s comeback began with a 5-1 win in Game Three when Marco Estrada started to turn himself into a Blue Jays postseason legend.

Estrada pitched 6.1 innings of five-hit ball, striking out four and allowing just one run. Troy Tulowitzki hit a three-run home run in the top of the six to put the Blue Jays ahead 5-0.

In Game Four, R.A. Dickey used the knuckleball to fool Rangers hitters for 4.1 innings, allowing the Blue Jays to build a 7-1 lead off the strength of a two-run home run from Josh Donaldson, and solo shots from Chris Colabello and Kevin Pillar. Toronto held on for an 8-4 win to force the decisive Game Five.

The seventh inning of Game 5 remains one of the most remarkable innings in postseason history. That one inning lasted 53 minutes. In the top half, Texas took a 3-2 lead when Russell Martin’s throw back to the mound struck Shin-Soo Choo’s bat, allowing Rougned Odor to score. After an umpire conference and rule check, the run stood and an enraged Rogers Centre crowd revolted as the Blue Jays were suddenly nine outs away from elimination.

But the Blue Jays answered right back. Three consecutive errors by the Rangers opened the door for José Bautista to crush a three-run home run and deliver the bat flip that became the defining image of Toronto’s return to October. By the end of the inning, the Blue Jays had turned a bizarre potential heartbreak into a 6-3 lead and their first ALCS berth since 1993.

Cleveland’s Game 5 lacked anything resembling that chaos. Ramírez’s swing and Williams’ dominance were the nails in the coffin for the White Sox. Yet overcoming the 0-2 deficit to storm back and win it at home has defined their postseason to this point.

For Blue Jays fans watching another club travel that road, it reignites those nostalgic feelings of when the Blue Jays were in the spotlight.

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