{"id":188568,"date":"2025-09-28T23:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T23:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/188568\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T23:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T23:15:07","slug":"guardians-9-8-rangers-sep-28-2025-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/188568\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians 9-8 Rangers (Sep 28, 2025) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND — \u2014 Brayan Rocchio<\/a> hit a three-run homer in the 10th inning and the Cleveland Guardians<\/a> rallied for a 9-8 victory over the Texas Rangers<\/a> on Sunday, putting an exclamation point on their improbable AL Central title.<\/p>\n

When the Detroit Tigers<\/a> lost 4-3 at Boston earlier in the day, the Guardians completed the largest comeback to win a division or league championship in major league history.<\/p>\n

Texas took an 8-5 lead on pinch-hitter Rowdy Tellez<\/a>‘s three-run homer off Zak Kent<\/a> (1-0) in the top of the 10th.<\/p>\n

But with George Valera<\/a> as the automatic runner on second base, Bo Naylor<\/a> hit an RBI double to bring Cleveland within two. Petey Halpin<\/a> drew a walk before Rocchio drove a 1-2 fastball from Jose Corniell<\/a> (0-1) off the right-field foul pole to give the Guardians their ninth walk-off win this season.<\/p>\n

The Guardians (88-74) trailed 5-4 in the middle of the eighth when they found out they were division champs after Detroit\u2019s Parker Meadows<\/a> flied out to Boston left fielder Jarren Duran<\/a>. If the two teams had ended up tied, Cleveland still would have won the division based on the head-to-head tiebreaker after taking the season series.<\/p>\n

Rocchio tied it at 5 when his sacrifice fly drove in Naylor in the eighth.<\/p>\n

The Guardians will host the Tigers in Game 1 of their best-of-three Wild Card Series on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Cleveland was 40-48 and 15 1\/2 games behind Detroit on July 6 before beginning the long climb back.<\/p>\n

The 1914 Boston Braves were 15 games back in the National League on July 4 and rallied to win by 10 1\/2 games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Since baseball went to division play in 1969, the biggest deficit overcome had been 14 games by the 1978 New York Yankees<\/a> to win the AL East.<\/p>\n

It is Cleveland’s 13th AL Central title, but the first time it has gone back-to-back since winning three straight from 2016-18.<\/p>\n

Key moment <\/p>\n

The Guardians trailed 5-3 going into the seventh before Jhonkensy Noel<\/a> homered off Hoby Milner<\/a> to bring them within a run.<\/p>\n

Key stat <\/p>\n

With the game going to extra innings, the Rangers and Guardians were the final game of the regular season to be completed.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND — \u2014 Brayan Rocchio hit a three-run homer in the 10th inning and the Cleveland Guardians rallied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-188568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}