Six Pack of Stats: Rays 5, White Sox 2

The White Sox hoped that they could stage a rally after falling into an early 3-0 deficit. While the offense woke up in the bottom of the third, that was the only time the White Sox put runs on the board tonight. Lance Lynn had another quality start, but the South Side bats got quiet against the Rays bullpen.

---

The Starters

Lance Lynn entered tonight’s game with a 1.23 ERA, which led the majors by a wide margin. Despite missing a couple of starts in April due to an injury, Lynn is a strong contender in the AL Cy Young race. However, the Rays decided that enough was enough, and they got to Lynn early on in this game. In the first, Austin Meadows launched a two-run homer, and Brandon Lowe added a solo home run in the third.

Lynn managed to recover and did just enough to earn another quality start (six innings, three earned runs). However, the White Sox could not overcome the early home runs by Meadows and Lowe. Here is a closer look at Lynn’s 103-pitch performance:

Baseball Savant

Tyler Glasnow, who is also among the top pitchers in the league, started for the Rays. While Glasnow got off to a strong start, his performance did not end on a high note.

Glasnow shut the White Sox down rather easily in the first two innings. So, when the Rays spotted him a 3-0 lead, the game appeared to be in Tampa Bay’s control. However, the White Sox rallied in the third, as Leury García doubled and came around to score on a wild pitch. Later in the inning, Brian Goodwin drove in Tim Anderson with a single.

Glasnow stayed in for the fourth and pitched another scoreless inning, but unfortunately, he had to be removed from the game due to right elbow inflammation.

Here is how Glasnow’s 53-pitch performance shaped up:

Baseball Savant

---

Pressure Play

When the White Sox had a 4-2 deficit in the bottom of the eighth, Tim Anderson led off with an infield single. If the White Sox were going to start a late rally, that was an excellent way to do it. Sadly, Anderson got picked off of first base by Diego Castillo, and that play had an LI of 3.05, the highest of the game. The White Sox failed to put up a serious threat to the Rays from that point onward.

---

Pressure Cooker

On average, Rays reliever Ryan Thompson faced the most high-pressure situations out of any player in this game, with a pLI of 1.71. Thompson was put in the game to protect a 3-2 lead, and pitched a scoreless fifth inning.

The White Sox’s biggest pressure cooker was Tim Anderson (1.60 pLI). Anderson went 2-for-4 with a double, and he scored one of Chicago’s only two runs. However, his baserunning mistake that resulted in a pickoff is is hard to look past.

---

Top Play

The go-ahead, two-run homer by Meadows takes the cake, as it increased Tampa’s odds of winning the game by 17.7% (.177 WPA). Randy Arozarena’s eighth inning home run that gave Tampa Bay an insurance run came in second place (.118 WPA).

---

Top Performer

Rays reliever J.P. Feyereisen wins the award for most valuable player in terms of WPA. Feyereisen protected a 3-2 lead by pitching two scoreless innings, in the sixth and seventh. That resulted in a high WPA of .195.

---

Smackdown

Hardest hit: In the sixth inning, Yasmani Grandal led off with a line out that was quite well-hit (111.5 mph exit velocity). Unfortunately, the BABIP luck was not on his side.

Weakest contact: Brian Goodwin’s RBI single in the third was the softest contact of the game (59.0 mph exit velocity). Luckily, this time, BABIP luck was on the White Sox’s side, as this single trimmed the deficit to one.

Luckiest hit: Joey Wendle’s third-inning single was beaten into the ground (76.9 mph exit velocity, negative eight-degree launch angle), but it got through for a hit despite having an xBA of only .100.

Toughest out: The line out by Arozarena in the fifth was hit very sharply (100.9 mph exit velocity, 14-degree launch angle). Balls with that combination fall in for a hit 73% of the time, but this was not one of those times.

Longest hit: We have a tie for this award, as the early home runs by Meadows and Lowe both traveled 402 feet.

---

Magic Number: 2.75

The White Sox struck out 11 times and only put four hard-hit balls in play. A ratio of 2.75 (11/4) strikeouts to hard-hit balls will very seldom result in a good offensive performance, and tonight was no exception.

---

Glossary

Hard-hit is any ball off the bat at 95 mph or more
LI measures pressure per play
pLI measures total pressure faced in game
Whiff a swing-and-miss
WPA win probability added measures contributions to the win
xBA expected batting average

---

Polls

---

South Side Sox Roll Call

It was a 200-comment gamethread, and AnoHito ran away with it.

Just one dose of green tonight, but it was a doozy from Pointerbabe: