White Sox 5, Twins 1: Jose Quintana decisive in first game

A bullet-point recap, as I listened to most of the game on the road, but might be missing out on some visuals.

*Jose Quintana threw seven innings of one-run ball for his eighth victory of the year, mostly because he set a career high in strikeouts with 13.

*Phil Hughes set a season high with 11 strikeouts, so it wasn't that Quintana was pitching out of his mind. Rather, the late-afternoon start made for a formidable shadow between home plate and the pitching mound, which helped turn very good pitchers into Cy Young candidates.

*That said, the Sox were able to do some damage against Hughes when they made contact. Alexei Ramirez hung a couple of unearned runs on Hughes' line when he lined a first-pitch fastball into the White Sox bullpen for a two-run homer. He also drove in Carlos Sanchez, who had reached on a Joe Mauer error.

*The Twins had their best shot at derailing Quintana in the fifth, as he walked Trevor Plouffe after getting ahead 0-2, then gave up an opposite-field single to Oswaldo Arcia. But Quintana rebounded to strike out the side, which started a stretch of six consecutive strikeouts and eight out of nine.

*His day ended with a walk of Kurt Suzuki to start the eighth, and Zach Putnam allowed the run to score on a Chris Parmalee double. Quintana's final line: 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 13 K

*The Sox were able to distance themselves from the Twins, though. Andy Wilkins collected his first RBI with a seventh-inning single, and the Sox scored two in the eighth on a Marcus Semien pinch-hit double and a Tyler Flowers bases-loaded HBP.

Record: 67-80 | Box score | Play-by-play | Highlights