CLEVELAND -- From the lower bowl to the outfield seats, his name echoed across Progressive Field in the fourth inning on Saturday night.
“Jo-sé, Jo-sé, Jo-sé, Jo-sé!”
Moments after a packed house at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario serenaded him, Guardians superstar José Ramírez responded by delivering a swing that the Cleveland faithful will remember for a long time.
Ramírez belted a two-run homer off White Sox right-hander Sean Burke in the fourth inning of Saturday's win-or-go-home Game 5 of the American League Division Series. The blast, which went a Statcast-projected 348 feet, carried just beyond the right-field wall.
To the home crowd, it may as well have been 20 rows deep. Ramírez’s big swing left Progressive Field shaking as it gave the Guardians a 2-0 lead.
Ramírez’s blast was the sixth by a Cleveland hitter in a winner-take-all game, joining Jim Thome (two) and Travis Fryman (one) in Game 5 of the 1999 ALDS, Rajai Davis in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series and Lane Thomas in Game 5 of the 2024 ALDS. He’s also the first Cleveland player to homer in consecutive postseason games since Francisco Lindor in 2018 (ALDS Games 2 and 3), and the first Cleveland player to homer in two straight postseason games when facing elimination in both.
Ramírez’s blast came on a 78 mph curveball from Burke that was 0.74 feet above the ground. That’s the lowest pitch he’s homered on in his career, including the postseason, and the lowest pitch anyone has hit for a homer in the postseason in MLB under pitch tracking (since 2008).
Ramírez has come alive this series after an uncharacteristic regular season impacted by a left hamate surgery. He went 2-for-4 in Game 3 and played a leading role in the Guardians’ 9-3 win, and followed suit with a 2-for-5 showing in Game 4 in which he belted a two-run homer and had three RBIs.
The 34-year-old has left his mark as the Guardians push for a berth in the ALCS.