Cleveland Guardians
Tampa Bay Rays; Cleveland Guardians settled No
Kalshi
Polymarket
New York YankeesSettled No
Boston Red SoxSettled No
Seattle MarinersSettled No
Baltimore OriolesSettled No
Chicago White SoxSettled No
Texas RangersSettled No
Houston AstrosSettled No
Kansas City RoyalsSettled No
AthleticsSettled No
Toronto Blue JaysSettled No
Minnesota TwinsSettled No
Los Angeles AngelsSettled No
Detroit TigersSettled NoThe Rays Beat the Guardians in Six, and the Pennant Went the Way the 13-Win Gap Said
The Cleveland Guardians ALCS odds are settled: the Tampa Bay Rays won the 2026 American League Championship Series four games to two, beating the Guardians 7-3 in Game 6 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida on October 19, 2026, according to Major League Baseball's official results. The Guardians were Ohio's only club in the postseason, because the Cincinnati Reds finished fifth in the National League Central at 75-87, so the loss ended the state's baseball season. The Rays, the American League's best regular-season team, then lost the World Series to the Milwaukee Brewers four games to one, a series that ended on October 28.
What the Closing Guardians ALCS Price Says
Read back from the result, what the price says about this series is that the regular season was the better guide. The Rays finished 98-64 with a run differential of plus 86. The Guardians finished 85-77 at plus 11, fourth in the American League by record, and won the Central by a single game over the Chicago White Sox. Thirteen wins and 75 runs separated the two clubs over 162 games, and the series ended the way that gap pointed, even though Cleveland led it twice.
The board is closed on both venues. Kalshi settled its American League champion event at 11:14 p.m. Eastern on October 19, 2026, the night of Game 6, with the Rays' contract paying Yes and Cleveland's paying No, and Polymarket resolved its market the same way early on October 20. As of November 2, 2026, Kalshi and Polymarket both showed the Rays' contract at 100% and the Guardians' at 0, which is the settlement itself rather than a forecast: the question has an answer, and no price on it can move again.
The board carried real money all the way through. As of November 2, 2026 the full American League champion market had traded about 11.6 million contracts on Kalshi and about $4.9M on Polymarket, with about 1.36 million of those contracts and about $916K of that money on the Guardians, enough trading that each swing in Cleveland's price during the series came from a crowded book rather than a thin one.
The Guardians ALCS, Game by Game
Cleveland won the opener on the road. Foster Griffin started Game 1 against Drew Rasmussen at Tropicana Field on October 12, and the Guardians won it 7-3, with Hunter Gaddis getting the win. The Rays answered in Game 2 on October 13, winning 3-1 behind Freddy Peralta to send the series to Ohio level at one game each.
The Guardians won Game 3 at Progressive Field 3-2 on October 15, with Gavin Williams getting the win and Cade Smith the save, and led the series for the second time. The game scheduled for October 16 was postponed by rain, and the Rays won Game 4 7-3 in Cleveland on October 17 to tie it 2-2. Game 5 followed on Sunday, October 18, at Progressive Field, where Rasmussen outpitched Parker Messick and the Rays won 3-1, with Bryan Baker getting the save, to take a 3-2 lead back to Florida.
Game 6 on October 19 belonged to Tampa Bay's pitching. Peralta, who had also won Game 2, got the win, and Shawn Armstrong, who started for Cleveland, took the loss. The Rays scored twice in the second inning and once in the third, the Guardians got one run back in the sixth, and Tampa Bay pulled away with two runs in the seventh and two more in the eighth, with Yandy Díaz and Junior Caminero each hitting a home run. Cleveland scored twice in the eighth, and the Rays closed out the 7-3 win and the pennant in the ninth.
How the Guardians Reached the ALCS
The Guardians arrived by the more dramatic path. With a bye through the Wild Card Series, they met the White Sox, who had swept the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, in the Division Series. Cleveland lost the first two games at Progressive Field, 3-0 on October 3 and 4-3 on October 5, and went to Chicago one loss from elimination.
They did not lose again in that series. The Guardians won Game 3 at Rate Field 9-3 on October 7 and Game 4 there 9-5 on October 8, scoring 18 runs in two road games after scoring three in the two at home. Game 5 came back to Cleveland on October 10, and the Guardians won it 2-0, a shutout that ended the series 3-2.
The Rays took the shorter road. They swept the New York Yankees, 1-0 and 5-2 at Tropicana Field and 4-3 at Yankee Stadium on October 7, which gave Tampa Bay four full days off before the opener of the pennant series. Cleveland had one.
The Guardians ALCS Schedule as It Was Played
The series was a best of seven, and Major League Baseball's official results list it this way:
• Games 1 and 2, October 12 and 13: at Tropicana Field; the Guardians won Game 1 7-3 and the Rays won Game 2 3-1.
• Games 3 and 4, October 15 and 17: at Progressive Field; the Guardians won Game 3 3-2 and the Rays won Game 4 7-3, after a rain postponement on October 16.
• Game 5, October 18: at Progressive Field; the Rays won 3-1 behind Rasmussen to lead the series 3-2.
• Game 6, October 19: at Tropicana Field; the Rays won 7-3 to take the series 4-2, so no Game 7 was needed.
The pennant did not carry the Rays to the title. The Brewers, who swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series and finished it 6-4 at Dodger Stadium on October 15, won the first two games of the World Series at American Family Field in Milwaukee, 3-2 on October 23 and 5-4 on October 24, and closed it out with a 4-1 win in Game 5 at Tropicana Field on October 28, 2026.
The Case Against the Guardians ALCS Read
The strongest case against reading the result as the regular season simply winning is that the series was closer than four games to two sounds. Cleveland led it after Game 1 and again after Game 3, and two of Tampa Bay's four wins came by two runs. A reader who holds this view points out that the Guardians had already won in St. Petersburg in this series and had survived two elimination games on the road in Chicago, and that Game 6 was a two-run game through six innings.
There is also a case on the calendar. The rain postponement put Games 4 and 5 on consecutive days in Cleveland, and Game 6 followed the next night in Florida, so Cleveland's bullpen pitched three games in three days to finish the series, with eight Guardians pitchers used in Game 6 alone. A schedule like that measures pitching depth more than a season record does, and the weather, not either club, set that calendar.
The counterpoint is that the read never said the Guardians could not win; it said the better club was more likely to, and it was. The World Series then ran the same test with the Rays as the club with the lesser record: the 103-win Brewers beat the 98-win Rays in five games, which is the regular season pointing the same way twice in nine days.
What Changes the Guardians ALCS Read
This market cannot move again, because both venues have settled it. What changes the read underneath it, that the club with the clearly better regular season usually wins a seven-game series, is the next season that puts the same logic in front of Cleveland, and Major League Baseball has already set its calendar.
• Spring training, February 19, 2027: the first date Major League Baseball lists for the 2027 season, when the Guardians' roster for the next pennant question starts to take shape.
• Opening Day, March 25, 2027: the regular season begins, and with it the won-lost marks that the 2027 pennant price will lean on.
• Postseason, September 27 to October 31, 2027: the window in which the next American League pennant is decided, after a regular season scheduled to end on September 26, 2027.
When the Guardians ALCS Market Resolved
The market resolved when the Rays won their fourth game of the series, Game 6 at Tropicana Field on October 19, 2026. Kalshi's contract on Cleveland paid Yes only if Cleveland won the 2026 American League championship, and Kalshi finalized the event at 11:14 p.m. Eastern that night, ahead of the November 1, 2026 expected expiration it had listed. Polymarket resolved to the team that won the series, settled Cleveland's contract No early on October 20, and named Major League Baseball's official information as its primary source.
Related Ohio Markets Beyond the Guardians ALCS
The pennant was the first half of Cleveland's question; the second was the Ohio World Series market, which settled on the Brewers' five-game win over the Rays with no Ohio club in it. The club's own page is the Guardians team page, and our story on the Guardians' exit follows where Ohio's attention went next. Ohio's football and basketball seasons, where the state's open questions now sit, are gathered on the sports hub, and every contract this site follows is listed on the markets page.
