CLEVELAND — Three years after knocking out Tim Anderson, Cleveland Guardians third baseman José Ramírez knocked the Chicago White Sox out of the postseason.

Or did the White Sox knock themselves out?

It was hard to tell after the Guardians beat the Sox 2-0 in Game 5 of the American League Division Series on Saturday at Progressive Field, taking the final three games after putting themselves in an 0-2 hole.

Ramírez’s two-run fourth-inning home run off Sean Burke gave the Guardians the lead, and the Sox were already down for the count. They didn’t notch a hit off starter Gavin Williams until two outs in the sixth, and struck out a major-league record 21 times — including 12 by Williams — in a listless offensive performance that sent them home.

So a storybook Sox season turned into a fractured fairy tale in the end. For 6 1/2 months it was a moon-age dream. And for the last three games it was a Freddy Krueger-like nightmare.

Was the tank just empty?

“Not running out of gas,” left fielder Sam Antonacci said. “Just a little uptick with the chase rate, and they threw some really good arms. But credit to their arms and a lack of awareness of the zone on our end.”

The Guardians had 52 combined strikeouts in the Sox’s three losses — a postseason record 19 in Game 3, 12 in Game 4 and then breaking the Game 3 record on Saturday with 21. Their 75 strikeouts in five games also set an ALDS record.

“They pitched their asses off those last three games,” Antonacci said. “And it felt like we were allergic to that big hit.”

Williams struck out 12 of the 21 hitters he faced, tying a Guardians’ postseason record, and threw 5 2/3 hitless innings until Kyle Teel singled in the sixth. The Sox finished with three hits and wound up batting .211 in the postseason with four home runs, 11 extra-base hits and 96 strikeouts in seven games.

The only real scoring opportunity for the Sox on Saturday came in the sixth after Williams walked Miguel Vargas to load the bases. Left-hander Erik Sabrowski came on to strike out Munetaka Murakami and end the threat. Venable said he did not consider using Randal Grichuk to pinch-hit in that situation. Murakami struck out four times and hit .179 with 16 strikeouts in 27 at-bats in the seven postseason games.

Asked what he needs to do to get to another level, Murakami was honest about his deficiencies.

“My first priority is to prevent injuries, not to get injured again,” he said through his interpreter. “In the offseason I’ll do whatever it takes to put that work in to get stronger and stronger. As for mechanics, I’m still swinging at the high velocity and up pitches, and the breaking balls down. The chase is there. I have to get better in all the mechanics and all the aspects of baseball, and that’s what I want to try to improve in the offseason and come back next year.”

Murakami helped make the Sox believe in themselves, but his second-half and postseason struggles were too glaring to overlook.

What will Sox fans take from 2026?

“I think people will remember the season as a whole,” outfielder Tristan Peters said. “Obviously it’s a bit of a bitter ending, but at the beginning of the year nobody really believed in us, except for us. The fact we got this far surprised a lot of people.”

But the fact the Sox had the Guardians down and couldn’t knock them out was a bitter pill to swallow, and something that will linger with Sox fans.

“No one was thinking, ‘We’re up 2-0, it’s over,'” second baseman Chase Meidroth said. “You know you’re in a fight, and they executed a little better than we did.”

Will the ending change how the season is viewed?

“It’s hard to look at it and really see what we accomplished this year,” Antonacci said. “It will take some time to sit down and look at it. But obviously the goal is the World Series. If anyone says their goal is to make it to the playoffs, it’s a piss-poor goal. You play this game to win, and we didn’t win. I’m happy, though, because not a lot of baseball players can say they played in the postseason, so that’s something to be proud of.

“Obviously it hurts. It’s hard to put into words, but me being a rookie, this will be a hard year to surpass, just vibes and emotions and feelings-wise. The characters that this team had will be like no other. The hard part about this business is that this will be the last time this tight-knit group will be together. I’m already looking forward to next year.”

Reliever Grant Taylor, a postseason savior for all but Game 4, said the lessons he learned were of a personal nature, including how to support his fiancée better and build better relationships in the clubhouse. Taylor, Burke and Meidroth stood out in the postseason as future stars and leaders in the clubhouse.

“It was a good year on the field,” Taylor said. “But it ended a little too soon.”

The offensive meltdown was reminiscent of the 1983 “Winning Ugly” White Sox team that hit .211 with no home runs and 2 RBI in a four-game loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship Series. Stars Carlton Fisk, Harold Baines, Greg Luzinski and Ron Kittle all disappeared at the plate, ending another dream season.

This team wasn’t nearly as talented as the ’83 Sox, and didn’t have as much overall power as that team. But Murakami, Vargas and Colson Montgomery all hit 30-plus home runs in the regular season, then combined for three home runs in the postseason with 33 strikeouts.

It goes without saying that no one expected the Sox to get this far in the first place. They deserve all the praise in the world for doing that. But few expected them to flop so badly after sweeping Houston, winning the first two games in Cleveland and coming home to a frenzied environment at Rate Field. After being lauded by fans and the media for weeks, they now need to accept the criticism that comes with a collapse.

DH Andrew Benintendi said the ending will take some time to process, but the young team should be proud of its accomplishments.

“It was a hell of a year, and we’ve got some experience in here now and it will only benefit us later,” he said.

It’s easy to say this will be the start of better days, but rebuilds aren’t always linear. The ’83 Sox turned into the ’84 Sox, a 74-win team that ceded the city back to the crosstown Cubs. The magic was gone, and by the summer of ’86 they fired manager Tony La Russa in a move Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf spent the next 34 years regretting, leading him to rehire La Russa before the 2021 season.

After one postseason win in ’21, it was all downhill from there.

The 2026 Sox helped erase the stench of the ’22 and ’23 seasons, and the record-setting 121-loss season under Pedro Grifol in ’24. Venable created a culture that changed perceptions on the South Side, and the young nucleus made believers out of skeptics.

With a lockout looming, no one knows what 2027 holds for MLB. It could be a while before we see the Sox on the field again. After all the postgame hugs and handshakes, one thing was obvious.

“We’ve got to be better,” Meidroth said. “It’s flat-out simple. Be better. All you can do in the offseason, clean up some little things for each person and continue to grow as an individual.”

Hopefully they’ll get that chance.

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