Elimination baseball headlines a night that also kicks off NHL opening night and a Thursday Night Football matchup, with NBA preseason filling out the undercard.
Marquee: Guardians at White Sox, ALDS Game 4 (8:00 PM ET, TBS/truTV)
Chicago leads this best-of-five 2-1 and can punch its first ALCS ticket since 2005 tonight at Rate Field. Cleveland forced the series back to Chicago by taking Game 3, but the White Sox counter with rookie lefty Hagen Smith, who has thrown just 0-0 with a sparkling 1.42 ERA this postseason. Guardians starter Parker Messick, an All-Star and likely AL Cy Young finalist during the regular season, has been roughed up a bit in October, sitting 0-1 with a 4.15 ERA. A White Sox win ends it. A Guardians win sends the series back to Cleveland for a winner-take-all Game 5.
Vegas line (ESPN): White Sox -1.5 on the run line (-186), Guardians +1.5 (+153), total runs set at 7.5.
Also tonight
- Buccaneers at Cowboys (8:15 PM ET, Prime Video). Thursday Night Football sends Tampa Bay into Dallas for a prime-time divisional-weight test for both rosters as the season hits its first real stretch of separation.
- Utah Mammoth at Boston Bruins (7:00 PM ET). Opening night for the NHL, and a historic one for Utah: it's the Mammoth's first regular-season game under their new identity, on the road against an Original Six franchise at TD Garden.
- Dallas Stars at Buffalo Sabres (7:00 PM ET). Another opening-night tilt, with a Stars team that's been a perennial Western Conference contender testing a Sabres squad still chasing its first playoff berth in over a decade.
- Celtics at Cavaliers (7:00 PM ET). NBA preseason action out of Rocket Arena as Cleveland, fresh off a strong regular season, gets an early look against Boston ahead of the real games.
- Kings at Lakers (10:30 PM ET, ESPN2). Preseason basketball still draws eyes when the Lakers are involved, and ESPN2 picked this one up as the national late-window option.
Baseball's the real stakes tonight. Everything else on the slate is preamble, tune-up, or season-opener noise, but a Chicago win closes an ALDS the city hasn't seen the other side of since 2005.
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