Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 4, Tigers 3

Love the 8-1 romps, but a 4-3 comeback win (look at all that lusty leverage below) is an awful lot of fun.

MAN this bullpen. The starters keep running out of gas, and this group just takes any mess and leaves it pretty spotless. Tonight it was a killer combo of Evan Marshall, Codi Heuer and Alex Colomé who stepped in with two outs in the sixth and ensured the win.

And, oh, Eloy Jiménez moonshotting at a center-cut, chest-high ball had something to do with it, giving the White Sox a 4-3 lead, and what turned out to be the final score, in the sixth.

The Starts

Lucas Giolito and Casey Mize had an excellent, scoreless first five innings. Mize’s, in fact, were hitless.

But Giolito ended up getting one more out in the game, finishing a wild start (four walks) with a 56 game score. That drags him down to 61.6 on the season, still the best on the White Sox but in range of both Dallas Keuchel and Dane Dunning. Giolito needs to find more efficiency and get deeper into starts to be a true ace.

Mize gave up just one hit, a double to Yolmer Sánchez, and finished with a 65 game score, the best since José Berríos nine days ago.

Pressure Play

With one on and none out in the ninth, Colomé induced a fly out from Austin Romine, which had 4.58 LI pressure attached. The out raised the White Sox win expectancy to 82.3%.

Pressure Cooker

Colomé’s save was filled with unbearable pressure, especially when Sánchez’s error put a man on with no outs in the ninth. It all made for 3.56 pLI tonight, by far the most leverage faced by anyone in the game.

Top Play

Of course the top play tonight was Jiménez’s three-run cloud-scraper in the sixth, clocking in at .352 WPA.

Game MVP

Eloy, with the big home run and a single in a 2-for-4 night, ran away with top honors, at .328 WPA. Detroit offensive hero Daz Cameron (.237) and Sox closer Colomé (.169) trailed him.

Magic Number: 25

Cameron had his first career hit tonight, a two-run single off of Giolito in the sixth. Twenty-five years ago, Daz’s dad Mike, then a White Sox rookie, also secured his first safety, on the very same baseball field.

“It’s special, man,” Daz told Detroit’s Zoom crew after the game. “I wasn’t aware at all. For him to have his first hit and me to get my first hit here, it’s kinda surreal, and it’s something I’ll remember forever.”