The Cleveland Guardians defeated the Chicago White Sox Thursday night to tie their Division Series at 2-2 and force a Game 5 in Cleveland on Saturday. They did it thanks to two former Giants who had a big impact on the results: Patrick “Patty Barrels” Bailey, who went 2-for-3, scored two runs, and delivered a pinch-hit homer for the Guardians’ first run, and Jordan Hicks of the Sox, who gave up a two-run shot to Jose Ramirez.
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The Giants traded two-time Gold Glover Bailey to the Guardians in May for left-hander Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson, a man destined to sell a lot of nautical merchandise for the Giants, and perhaps fill a useful bullpen role. They also received the No. 29 pick in the draft, which they used to select 19-year-old lefty Carson Bolemon. Bailey has remained an excellent defensive catcher, but his struggles at the plate and the siren song of the Susac family made him expendable to team president Buster Posey.
Hicks was part of the Rafael Devers trade in 2025, just one season after the Giants signed the 27-year-old reliever to a four-year, $44M contract with plans to turn him into a starter. They got 29 starts and 158.2 innings out of Hicks, who was pretty solid in 2024 and pretty bad in 2025. The Giants covered $5.23M of his salary after the trade and the Boston Red Sox are subsidizing $4M of his salary this year and next after dumping him on the other Sox.
He’s been pretty solid all season and in the post-season before Thursday’s hiccup, still walking a lot of hitters but making up for it by striking out 12 batters per 9 innings. Hicks still throws extremely hard, which is why Ramirez’s blast went so far after he caught up to the near-100 MPH heat.
There’s not a lot of rooting interest left for Giants fans besides slowly dying inside as a 21-year-old Atlanta Braves relievers walked the bases loaded to ruin Tyler Mahle’s strong Game 4 start and send the Los Angeles Dodgers to yet another NLCS. That also meant saying goodbye to old friends Mike Yastrzemski and Mauricio Dubon of the Braves. Kyle Harrison is on the Milwaukee Brewers roster, though he didn’t pitch in their series against Robbie Ray and the San Diego Padres.
The list of former Giants is down to Blake Snell, Harrison, Bailey and Hicks, though you could conceivably count White Sox reserve outfielder Tristan Peters, who spent time with the Richmond Flying Squirrels in 2022 before getting flipped for Brett Wisely.
Game 5 is Saturday. Dodgers-Brewers starts Sunday. Please get lots of rest, Christian Yelich!