White Sox 1, Cleveland 0: Cruising Along to the End

Shane Bieber was back for his first start since June 13, and weren’t we lucky to be the ones to face him. He had a no-hitter going through two, and was out by the start of the fourth. Including tonight’s start, Bieber is tapped for two starts before the end of the season and both will have pitch limits. Because you care.

The first hit of the night came in the third from Owen Miller, who hit a double to right. (There was a play in the first that was originally scored as a hit but was later changed to an error on Yoán Moncada.) But with that double, Dylan Cease’s no-hitter was over. He bounced back from the hit, going on to strikeout Roberto Pérez, Oscar Mercado, and Bradley Zimmer rather quickly.

Bieber threw 34 pitches, was perfect through his start, and hit a max velocity of 92.5 mph. All-in-all not a terrible night for him, and was as good of a start as Cleveland could expect out of someone who hadn’t played in three months. He was then replaced by Trevor Stephan. José Abreu broke up Cleveland’s perfect game by hitting a single to right, but was stranded there after Eloy Jiménez flied out to left.

The White Sox took the lead at the top of the fifth when Luis Robert turned a hanging slider into a solo home run to center. It had an exit velocity of 105.5 mph despite it barely looking like Robert swung his bat, because he’s freakishly strong.

In the bottom of the sixth, we saw Cease take a liner to his pitching arm. It appeared to hit a little above the elbow and he came out of the game for precautionary reasons. Ryan Burr came in for relief and was able to hold Cleveland to no runs, in part thanks to a very strange choice to attempt to score by Zimmer.

Good news came in the bottom of the seventh regarding Cease:

Nothing broken, just a bruise. Very lucky, because we’re going to need him in the playoffs, as Dallas Keuchel has been a lot of doody as of late.

Craig Kimbrel and Liam Hendriks closed things out for the White Sox.

Since it’s the end of the season (soon) and today’s game was pretty quick and slow, here’s some PG things on Twitter I enjoyed while making my way through the game (in no particular order, because I am not that organized):