Two years ago, the Chicago White Sox lost 121 games. Last year they lost 102. On Saturday afternoon at Progressive Field, they walked into the house of the team that edged them out of the division title and threw a combined three-hit shutout at them in front of a stunned home crowd. The final: White Sox 3, Guardians 0. Game 1 of the American League Division Series belongs to Chicago.

If you are looking for the moment that turned a season into a story, it came in the top of the fourth inning. Miguel Vargas had just lined a single to left. Munetaka Murakami, the 26-year-old rookie from Japan, stepped in against Cleveland starter Parker Messick and took the first pitch he saw, an elevated sinker, and sent it 440 feet into the right-field stands at 112.2 miles per hour. Two runs. His first career postseason home run, his 36th of the year. It was the kind of swing that silences 35,000 people.

A 440-foot statement

Murakami and Vargas had gone a combined 1-for-17 with no extra-base hits in the wild-card round, when Chicago swept Houston to win its first postseason series since 2005. So the fourth inning felt overdue. After the homer, Messick never recovered. The Guardians rookie, making his postseason debut, struck out six over 4 1/3 innings but allowed two runs on four hits and 87 pitches before giving way to Daniel Espino.

Chicago added insurance in the seventh. Colson Montgomery, another of the kids powering this run, doubled just inside third base against Erik Sabrowski to bring home Kyle Teel and make it 3-0. That was all the scoring the afternoon needed.

Five arms, zero runs

The shutout was the product of a plan that manager Will Venable has now pulled off twice in three postseason games: a bullpen game, and nobody blinking. Rookie Hagen Smith opened for the second time this week and carved through the first eight Cleveland hitters without allowing a hit, striking out four. The third inning got away from the strike zone, he walked the bases loaded, and Venable made the call that will be replayed on Chicago sports radio all week. Bryan Hudson came in, threw six pitches, got Chase DeLauter to fly out to Randal Grichuk, and walked off with the win. One out. That was all he needed.

From there it was Jordan Hicks and Anthony Kay through the middle innings, and then Grant Taylor doing something remarkable. Taylor, the sometimes-closer who had never pitched more than 2 2/3 innings in a game this season, logged a four-inning save. He struck out six, walked nobody, and allowed two hits. Five White Sox pitchers combined for 12 strikeouts. Cleveland did not get its first hit until Travis Bazzana doubled with two outs in the fourth, and the Guardians left the bases loaded in both the third and fourth. Twice the home crowd stood up. Twice it sat back down.

The bigger picture

Context matters here. The Guardians won their third straight AL Central title by a single game, finishing 85-77 to Chicago’s 84 wins. Almost every prediction picked Cleveland to take the series in four or five. And it is worth remembering what this franchise looked like 24 months ago: a 121-loss season that tied the modern record for futility, followed by 102 more losses last year. The White Sox have now won nine of their last 11 games dating back to the regular season. Their sweep of the Astros in the wild-card round ended a 21-year wait for a postseason series win. This is a team that keeps refusing to read the script.

It has also been quite a weekend for records. Hours before first pitch in Cleveland, SpaceX had set its own fastest launch-to-docking mark. October, it seems, belongs to teams and crews that did the math and trusted it.

Murakami’s season deserves its own paragraph. Twenty-six years old, playing his first full season after arriving from Japan, he hit 36 home runs before October began and never looked like a rookie at the plate. Teammates talk about his preparation the way veterans talk about craftsmen. And then there is the defense behind the pitching: the White Sox made every play they were supposed to make and a couple they were not, which is what shutouts are built from. Pitching plans get the headlines, but gloves win the quiet innings.

What comes next

The series takes Sunday off and resumes Monday afternoon at Progressive Field for Game 2, with Games 3 and 4 shifting to Chicago on Wednesday. A deciding Game 5 would go back to Cleveland. One game does not win a best-of-five, and the Guardians’ rotation is deep enough to respond. But the White Sox have already done the hardest thing in playoff baseball: they took the home-field advantage away in the opener, on the road, with five relievers in a trench coat impersonating a starting pitcher. Whatever happens next, this team has earned the right to be taken seriously. Nobody in Cleveland is laughing now.