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The Tampa Bay Rays enter Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the Cleveland Guardians one win away from capturing their third AL pennant.

After the teams split the first two games of the best-of-seven series in Tampa Bay, the Rays won two of three in Cleveland. A third consecutive victory would send the Rays to the World Series, where they would face the National League champion Milwaukee Brewers. The Guardians, however, are looking to stave off elimination and force a winner-take-all Game 7 on Tuesday.

Rays at Guardians (5:08 PM PST)

Looking to clinch the pennant in front of their home fans, Rays right-hander Freddy Peralta will make his third appearance and second start of the ALCS.

Peralta is the latest pitcher to benefit from Tampa Bay’s well-regarded coaching staff. The team’s signature trade deadline acquisition was named the American League Pitcher of the Month for September after allowing three runs in 34 innings over his final six regular-season starts.

The right-hander’s late-season success has carried over into the playoffs. Peralta earned the win in Game 2 of the series after allowing four hits over six scoreless innings. Three days later, he came out of the bullpen in Game 4 and recorded two key outs, stranding an inherited runner. Will Peralta post another quality start, or will the Guardians’ offense wake up with their season on the line?

Here’s Tampa’s starting nine for this one:

Tonight’s Rays lineup as they look to make the World Series. pic.twitter.com/SOImM6hxPs

— Jake (@TBRaysCentral) October 19, 2026

Meanwhile, Guardians right-hander Gavin Williams will not start on short rest. Cleveland will instead deploy a bullpen game, saving Williams for a potential Game 7.

Right-hander Shawn Armstrong will serve as the opener for the second time in three games. After Armstrong exits, Cleveland’s manager Stephen Vogt will likely rely on favorable matchups throughout the game, turning to his bullpen early and often to record the 27 outs needed to keep the Guardians’ season alive.

And Cleveland’s starting lineup for this anticipated contest:

All on the table.#GuardsBall | #StandGuardpic.twitter.com/l5CdO7Ez2R

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) October 19, 2026

Will the World Series matchup be settled today, or will the Brewers have to wait until Tuesday to learn their opponent? Who do you think will win?

The Atlanta Braves season may be over, but there is still a lot of baseball yet to be played. The Cleveland Guardians are on the brink of elimination in their hope of winning their first World Series since 1948 and they will be facing the Tampa Bay Rays in search of their first ever World Series win.

Regardless of who moves on, we will see at the very minimum a World Series winner that has not won in seventy-eight years since the Brewers also have never won a World Series and have not appeared in one since they were in the American League back in 1982. Is it a bad time to be a salary cap fan? That can be debated in the comments.

For the game this evening, the Rays will be bringing the resurgent Freddie Peralta who sports a 0.79 ERA in the postseason thus far in 11.1 innings with three appearances to include two starts. Shawn Armstrong appears to be set to be an opener for the Guardians. He has already made six appearances this postseason and has a sterling 0.00 ERA and 0.26 WHIP.

Follow along in the comments. First pitch is at 7:00 EDT.

It’s official: the Yankees’ skipper will be sticking around for the 2027 season.

YES Network’s Jack Curry, with credit to Bergen Record writer Pete Caldera, reported Monday that Aaron Boone will return for his 10th season as manager in the final year of his two-year, $10.5 million extension signed in 2025.

Plenty of mixed opinions are already swirling in reaction to this decision, but it doesn’t come as a surprising one. Many have given their praise to Boone, including former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, for bringing the Yankees to clinch their 61st postseason berth and navigating an injury-ridden roster. During his career as manager, Boone has led the Yankees to the playoffs in eight of his nine previous seasons, albeit with just one American League pennant and a World Series appearance to show for it. They’ve fallen to the division rival Blue Jays and Rays in the ALDS during the past two seasons.

The Yankees’ executives were clearly satisfied enough with Boone’s decision-making this season and chose to have him at the helm next year in hopes of bringing another championship to New York. However, with considerable levels of uncertainty at several positions this offseason, there is much to consider about how Boone will construct a winning roster. Will the Yankees give him enough ammunition to clinch a postseason spot and make it through the ALDS?

More to come…

A cat may have nine lives, but Aaron Boone has 10. 

Despite another early playoff exit, and the noise surrounding Boone’s job perhaps reaching an all-time high, the Yankees are bringing their manager back for a 10th season next year, a source confirmed to The Post on Monday. 

If and when baseball is played in 2027, with a lockout looming, it will be the final guaranteed year on Boone’s contract. As if there were not enough already, there will be even more pressure on the 53-year-old baseball lifer to finally get the Yankees over the hump in October, a feat that remained insurmountable this year when they were swept in the ALDS by the AL East champion Rays. 

Boone has achieved plenty of regular-season success during his tenure (a 790-565 record and three division titles), but he has been unable to parlay that success into a championship, coming closest in 2024 with a trip to the World Series in which the Yankees fell flat against the Dodgers. 

Questions remain about whether Boone can be the manager that gets the Yankees back to the Canyon of Heroes, and what will be different in Year 10 — the same number of years that Joe Girardi got before him (with Joe Torre staying for 12 years before that). 

There were some in the organization who thought this past regular season was Boone’s finest as a manager, given that the Yankees were missing three-time MVP Aaron Judge for over half the season, in addition to sizable injury absences for Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger, Max Fried, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón and Trent Grisham. 

General manager Brian Cashman, who before Game 3 of the ALDS called Boone “a really good manager,” has an expiring contract but is expected to remain in his post and partner with Boone again in trying to bring home the organization’s 28th World Series championship. They are expected to speak to reporters later this week for the first time since their playoff run ended to chants of “Fire Boone” after Game 3 of the ALDS. 

The Record (Hackensack, N.J.) first reported the news of Boone’s return. 

Boone’s biggest supporters over his tenure have included Hal Steinbrenner, Cashman and, in the clubhouse, Aaron Judge. But on multiple occasions over the past two seasons, the captain notably voiced his frustration with Boone’s comments about his comeback from injuries, which put his manager in the crosshairs and raised questions about them not being on the same page. 

“He puts us in the right position to go out there and succeed, especially a season like this where I’m banged up missing 100 games,” Judge said the night the Yankees were eliminated. “… For him to manage it the way he did and put us in the best position to get into the postseason and get an opportunity to win a World Series, he’s definitely had our back and is the guy.” 

Throughout his tenure, Boone has been known for standing behind his players, sometimes to a fault, as it can sometimes come across to fans as a lack of accountability when they make mistakes. 

“He might take the blame for the way we perform, but at the end of the day, it comes down to us,” Cam Schlittler said after the ALDS. “The expectation needs to be a little bit better.” 

There were also some more practical reasons for the Yankees to stick with Boone, with a lockout looming Dec. 1, when baseball’s current collective bargaining agreement expires. If the Yankees had decided to find a new manager, they might not have been able to finalize one until November, at which point that manager might have had just a few weeks to start getting to know his new players before having to cut off contact starting Dec. 1 until what may be an expedited spring training. 

It remains to be seen whether Boone will be making any changes to his staff. Two of his coaches — pitching coach Matt Blake and director of catching Tanner Swanson — have expiring contracts but are highly regarded and widely expected to return barring promotions.

More than a quarter of the way through this 21st century, there's a decent argument to be had over which Major League Baseball team is the Franchise of the Century.

Looking for pure championship tonnage? The Boston Red Sox, with four World Series titles, are still the answer.

A 14-year postseason streak that includes three World Series triumphs? It'd be hard to argue with the Los Angeles Dodgers, though we'd be remiss to not mention their archrival San Franciso Giants, who also reeled off three titles, in six years.

Yet which champions of the 21st century were best-constructed, top to bottom? Dominant both in the regular season and October? USA TODAY Sports examines and ranks the 26 titlists since 2000:

26. 2006 St. Louis Cardinals

We’re not here to take the shine off anyone’s diamonds, but this group is an easy choice for No. 25. At 83 wins, they tote the lowest win total of this group.  Their postseason run was turbocharged by manager Tony La Russa’s derring-do on the last day of the season, when he held out Chris Carpenter hoping his team would either win or back in with a Houston loss. They did both – and Carpenter plowed through the playoffs. The World Series was rainy and grim and error-prone. Best forgotten, unless you wash down your toasted ravioli with a swig of Schlafly.

25. 2021 Atlanta Braves

It’s fitting that this seven-year run of Atlanta excellence netted a championship, but ironic that perhaps its most diminished team pulled it off. The Braves lost Ronald Acuña Jr. to a midseason knee injury, won just 88 games and then saw Game 1 World Series starter Charlie Morton succumb to a broken leg. They gutted through with a handful of bullpen games, Max Fried’s brilliance and a three-headed, bepearled monster in the outfield to replace Acuña.

24. 2011 St. Louis Cardinals

We mean no disrespect to the Gateway to the West. For real. It’s just that these Cardinals were 10 ½ games out of first on Sept. 5, won 90 games and needed some acts of nature to simply get in the playoffs. What they did have: Albert Pujols and Carpenter, who vanquished Roy Halladay and the Phillies in an epic NLDS Game 5 and made three World Series starts thanks to some timely rainouts.

23. 2000 New York Yankees

The Yankees’ three-peat hardly ended with a whimper. They were just a little tired, perhaps. These Bombers won just 87 games and were forced to an ALDS Game 5 by the low-payroll Oakland Athletics. Yet all the usual suspects turned up when they needed them, buttressed by David Justice, who hit 20 homers after a June trade from Cleveland and three more big ones in the postseason, earning ALCS MVP.

22. 2014 San Francisco Giants

Perhaps no franchise is tougher to slot in this exercise than the three-time champion Giants, whose whole was always grander than the sum of their parts. We’ll call this edition the weakest of their three even-year champions, simply because this was always a pitching-centric operation and Tim Hudson, 39, and Jake Peavy combined for a 9.22 ERA in four World Series starts. But the gallant Madison Bumgarner can cover up a lot of deficiencies, with help from a battle-tested bullpen.

21. 2003 Miami Marlins

Talk about a team that had everything and nothing: The only squad among this bunch that fired its manager (Jeff Torborg) midseason, drew just 1.3 million fans to its cavernous football stadium and had a closer eventually convicted of attempted murder in Venezuela. Yet these 91-win wild cards had an amazingly effective throwback duo of slap-and-run dudes in Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo combine for 7.9 WAR, a ready-made playoff ace in Josh Beckett and a 20-year-old hitting machine named Miguel Cabrera. Yes, this team took out the Aaron-Bleeping-Boone Yankees.

20. 2013 Boston Red Sox

No hate for these 97-game winners that rank the lowest among Boston’s four titlists. And salute to David Ortiz, who had perhaps his most epic postseason (.353, five homers, 1.206 OPS in 16 games), months after his "this is our (bleeping) city" moment in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. Yet these were the Sox of Shane Victorino and Jonny Gomes, John Lackey and Mike Napoli, a salty veteran crew that got it done. Salute to them all, even if they’re less decorated than other squads who earned the right to pilot duck boats on the Charles.

19. 2023 Texas Rangers

Almost the epitome of the potent yet streaky squad that caught fire at the right time, Texas won just 90 games and had to fight through the wild-card series, yet proved there’s such a thing as performers built for the postseason. Namely, ace Nathan Eovaldi, slugging shortstop Corey Seager and manager Bruce Bochy, who added a fourth title to his Hall of Fame resume.

18. 2002 Anaheim Angels

They crafted the modern ideal of a playoff team: Make contact but also slug home runs, get by with nominal starting pitching and turn it over to a dominant bullpen. These wild-card Angels won 99 games, ended the Yankees’ streak of four straight AL pennants and stunned Barry Bonds’ Giants with a stirring Game 6 rally. Lackey, beginning a run of three championships with three franchises, won Game 7.

17. 2012 San Francisco Giants

The year Giants postseason devil magic was truly born. They lost All-Star center fielder Melky Cabrera to a PED suspension, trailed St. Louis 3-1 in the NLCS and trusted their season to shaky veteran Barry Zito in Game 5. But Zito and the Giants roared all the way back, and the lefty beat Justin Verlander in World Series Game 1, when Pablo Sandoval – Pablo Sandoval! – crushed three homers off the future Hall of Famer.

16. 2019 Washington Nationals

Not your average 93-win wild card, not with a pitching staff featuring future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg at the height of health and dominance and Patrick Corbin somehow justifying a $140 million contract with one great season. Oh, and this Juan Soto fellow graced the postseason stage for the first time, helping them overcome a 2-1 NLDS deficit and 3-2 World Series disadvantage to stun the Astros.

15. 2005 Chicago White Sox

Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia, Mark Buehrle and Jose Contreras – this version of El Duque had just turned 40 – won’t make anyone’s list of most dominant pitching quartet. But for two weeks in October, they couldn’t be stopped, pitching four consecutive complete games to shock the Angels in the ALCS and then sweeping aside Houston. A nice capstone for franchise stalwart Paul Konerko, who hit five playoff homers and won ALCS MVP honors.

14. 2022 Houston Astros

A true meld of the older-school Astros and the next generation, with Yordan Alvarez capping the run with a mammoth Game 6 World Series home run. Jeremy Peña deftly replaced Carlos Correa, winning ALCS and World Series MVP honors, and the pitching staff’s top-to-bottom dominance was exemplified by Cristian Javier running the opening leg on a four-man World Series no-hitter.

13. 2010 San Francisco Giants

They needed all 162 games to clinch the NL West with 92 wins, but Bochy’s first championship team was about to brew up something special. While their lineup of spare parts inspired the phrase “Torture” to describe Giants baseball, the last great year of Tim Lincecum – he struck out a major league-high 231 – dovetailed with the arrival of Buster Posey and the rise of Madison Bumgarner to inspire an 11-4 run through the playoffs. And no, we did not forget Matt Cain’s 21 ⅓ playoff innings with no earned runs allowed.

12. 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers

That attrition forced them to throw four bullpen games in this postseason run, stare down a 2-1 deficit in the NLDS and get taken to six games by the Mets in the NLCS tempts us to downgrade this group. But also: Shohei Ohtani. The sport’s only 50-50 man slammed three homers and drove in 10 runs through Game 1 of the World Series, before a Game 2 shoulder separation slowed his mojo. No worries: There’s always another Hall of Famer in L.A. to pick up the slack.

11. 2017 Houston Astros

They’d be a couple spots higher if not for The Scandal, which you may have heard about. Regardless, this was a squad, especially once they traded for Justin Verlander in August and saw him post a 1.06 ERA in five starts down the stretch and strike out 38 over 36 postseason innings.

10. 2007 Boston Red Sox

You can make an argument this group was more talented than the history-making 2004 squad. And can we really produce “remember when?” documentaries when nobody’s stopped talking about it? Anyhow, these guys featured plenty of ’04 holdovers yet upgraded with Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia and Mike Lowell on the dirt and Beckett and Jon Lester ensuring Curt Schilling wouldn’t need to pitch until his sock turned red.

9. 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers

Fun fact: Only two teams in the wild-card era have first-half winning percentages higher than these Dodgers’ .717 mark in the COVID-shortened 60-game season: The 1998 Yankees and 2001 Mariners. The former is arguably the greatest team in that era and the latter won 116 games. Point is: These Dodgers would’ve made the playoffs, as they have the past 13 seasons. And these Dodgers had All-Star and Hall of Fame players performing at peak capability – from Mookie Betts to Corey Seager, Clayton Kershaw to Walker Buehler. With the rules the same for everyone, the Dodgers won more postseason games – 13 – than any champion to that point, 11 of them at a neutral site. Recognize.

8. 2015 Kansas City Royals

Shh, don’t tell any salary cap-loving owners that smaller-market teams can hit the gas and win it all. The Royals were one win – or 90 feet plus some extra-inning luck – shy of a championship in 2014, then came back and finished the job a year later. Like the Giants who vanquished them a year earlier, the Royals put the ball in play and played exceptional defense. They also had a taut bullpen and went for the jugular at the trade deadline, adding Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist. Ninety-five wins and an 11-5 postseason run – not bad for a Central Division club.

7. 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks

Game 7 of the ’01 World Series has been referred to as "The Last Night Of The Yankee Dynasty." It’s also a pretty neat coda to an era of, shall we say, anti-aging enhancement. Of the 17 everyday regulars on both teams, 12 were at least 32 years old. That just doesn’t happen anymore! Sure, these Diamondbacks were plenty flawed, but didn’t need too much more than a 1-2 starting pitching punch we won’t see again. Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson combined to win 43 regular season games and all four of Arizona's Series games – named co-MVPs – with Johnson replacing Schilling in relief to win the epic Game 7. No, the manager wasn’t great, the back end of the rotation was shaky and the bullpen was terrible. But sometimes two horses beats a whole stable.

6. 2009 New York Yankees

Ah, remember when a $424.5 million outlay for three players was a “splurge?” So it was for the Yankees when they reeled in CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira after missing the 2008 playoffs. And goodness, it worked: The Yankees won 103 games, went 11-4 in the postseason and tamed a budding Phillies dynasty in the World Series. Just a perfect mix of old and new guard on this team, epitomized by Sabathia, Burnett and Pettitte starting every playoff game, often on three days’ rest. Alex Rodriguez clutched up, months after his exposure as a steroid scoundrel. And while Derek Jeter had long been derided as statuesque at shortstop, he produced a 6.6-WAR season, his best since 1999.

5. 2004 Boston Red Sox

Oh, yeah – these guys. As we mentioned, there might be a better Red Sox team deeper on the list, but it’s tough to match the star power, resiliency and overall thump of this club. Manny Ramirez clubbed 43 homers. Schilling and Pedro Martinez combined for 37 regular season wins. Keith Foulke was dynamite in the eighth and ninth innings. The bit parts – Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn, trade deadline pickup Orlando Cabrera and yes, even Dave Roberts – fit perfectly around this core. And oh, what a history-making core.

4. 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers

Until further notice, The Team That Ruined Baseball. Teams don't earn too much scorn for runaway spending unless they win it all, and these Dodgers doubled down on their '24 championship by adding Blake Snell on a $182 million deal and becoming the first club since 2000 to win consecutive titles. And this club was markedly better than the '24 squad: Shohei Ohtani's elbow and shoulder were full go, Yoshinobu Yamamoto became a playoff legend and Freddie Freeman wasn't playing on one leg. Little wonder they pulled off a miracle in Game 7 at Toronto .

3. 2008 Philadelphia Phillies

Still kind of amazing these Phillies won just one World Series and two pennants. Yet the ’08 squad featured four of their most important pieces firing at peak performance. From Ryan Howard’s majors-leading 48 home runs to Chase Utley’s 9-WAR season and Jimmy Rollins stealing 47 bases -  this was the essence of that run. Cole Hamels won Game 1 of every playoff series while fashioning a 1.64 ERA, with Brad Lidge nearly perfect in nine ninth-inning playoff appearances, racking up seven saves.

2. 2016 Chicago Cubs

Nope, not a sentimental choice here. These Cubs won 103 games and were a stunning blend of brilliant youth and veteran smarts. At 24, Kris Bryant was never better, winning NL MVP, drilling 39 homers with a .939 OPS and leading the league with 7.3 WAR; Anthony Rizzo, 26, produced 5.8 WAR from first base and hit 32 homers. Veterans Lester and Lackey produced one more championship hurrah, while Jake Arrieta was only a little less nasty than his 2015 Cy Young campaign. The late-spring re-signing of Dexter Fowler and deadline add of closer Aroldis Chapman put the team over the top – even if World Series Game 7 brought some frightful moments before Bryant’s iconic, stumbling toss to Rizzo for the final out and their first championship in 108 years.

1. 2018 Boston Red Sox

This championship looked pretty good at the time and has only gotten better with age. Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez finished first and fourth in MVP voting, and the latter’s signing in spring training proved a massive boon thanks to his own production (43 homers, 130 RBI) and lending his hitting expertise to Betts and others. Mookie will be in the Hall of Fame some day and this was his finest hour, leading the majors and setting career highs in WAR (a career-best 10.3), average (.346) and slugging (.640, thanks to 32 homers and 47 doubles). A rotation fronted by three current or future Cy Young winners – Chris Sale, Rick Porcello and David Price – provided the bedrock for a 108-win season, and the trio only grew more lethal in the postseason. That’s when rookie manager Alex Cora deployed them often in relief, papering over a bullpen he trusted only so much. The season ended appropriately, when Sale pitched the ninth inning of a Price start and unleashed a nasty backfoot slider to vanquish Manny Machado and the Dodgers. That capped an 11-3 postseason and 119-win campaign – the team of the century for what’s still the franchise of the century.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ranking MLB World Series winners of the 21st century by greatness