White Sox Take AL Wild Card Game 1 From Astros 6-3 in Houston

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Originally posted on On Tap Sports Net | By Tony Marchese | Last updated Sep 30, 2026 11:13 AM ET

In some late-September baseball in Houston, the Chicago White Sox looked like they belonged from the first inning.

Chicago jumped Houston opener AJ Blubaugh early, rode a Hagen Smith opener into a bullpen relay, and closed out a 6-3 win over the Houston Astros in AL Wild Card Series Game 1 at Daikin Park. Colson Montgomery went deep, Sam Antonacci drove in a pair, and Munetaka Murakami scored twice in front of a non-sellout 34,011 under a closed roof.

The Sox scratched first when Murakami’s sacrifice fly scored Antonacci in the opening frame for a 1-0 lead. They kept coming in the second. Braden Montgomery and Chase Meidroth reached, and Antonacci lined a two-run single to left that made it 3-0 before Houston had settled in. Blubaugh never recovered, walking three in two-thirds of an inning without allowing a hit and taking the loss.

Smith set the tone with three scoreless frames, two hits, no walks, and a strikeout. Jordan Hicks followed with 1.1 clean innings and picked up the win as Chicago’s offense kept sparingly stacking runs on the board.

Colson Montgomery added the loudest swing of the afternoon in the fourth, a solo homer to center that pushed the Sox to 4-0.

Meidroth singled home Murakami in the fifth to make it a 5-0 Chicago lead.

Houston finally answered in the bottom half of the fifth. Nelson Velázquez took Sean Newcomb deep for a two-run shot that scored Lucas Spence and cut the lead to 5-2. That was as close as the Astros got for a while. Chicago’s extra run in the seventh came the messy way: Murakami scored on a Bennett Sousa wild pitch, but the Sox failed to add any more in the frame.

Grant Taylor, who was arguably the story of the night, worked 2.1 innings with five strikeouts and one unearned run after David Sandlin bridged the bullpen day gap with 1.1 innings of scoreless baseball.

Houston scratched one more across in the eighth when Jeremy Peña scored on Miguel Vargas’s “throwing error” on a grounder by Jose Altuve. The White Sox challenged the play at first; the call somehow stood, and the Astros trailed 6-3.

Thankfully, that was the final.

Sam Antonacci finished with the two-RBI single, a run, and a walk in his playoff debut. Meidroth and Braden Montgomery each had two hits. Randal Grichuk added a pair of knocks off the bench. Murakami reached twice, drove in one on the sac fly, and scored twice. Not a bad day at the office by any means for a solid group of White Sox hitters.

The opener plan that handed Smith the Game 1 ball paid off for Will Venable, and Chicago takes a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three after clinching October with that 9-1 rout in Kansas City.

Game 2 is still ahead at Daikin Park, with Sean Burke set to take the mound for the Sox.

This article first appeared on On Tap Sports Net and was syndicated with permission.