Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 9, Twins 8 (10 innings)

Look at that win probability chart!

What a thrill. Led by MVP candidate Leury García, the White Sox saved their season from what likely would have been irrevocable damage, avoiding a sweep at the hands of the Twins with a furious set of comebacks that concluded with García’s walk-off single in the 10th inning. Eloy Jiménez (three RBIs) returned with a bang, and the Sox swatted three home runs after leaving the yard just four times in their previous 16 (!) trips to the field. Minnesota leaves town with a 5-1 record against the 2022 Sox, while Detroit comes inbound with an inverse 1-5 mark. Hope — it lives!

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The Starters

Lance Lynn battled through five innings today, giving up five runs (all earned) while allowing six hits and striking out just four, his worst all-around performance since the Joe McEwing debacle to kick off the righty’s season. Despite once again sporting reduced velocity, sitting roughly 90-93 mph with his sinker/four-seam combination, Lynn’s stuff was effective, generating 15 swings-and-misses with a smattering of six different pitches (take that, “he only throws fastballs!” announcing crews). Despite that and a glut of soft contact, the long ball was what ultimately did a number on Lance’s final line; He’s typically excellent at limiting home runs, but he gave up two of them today, for just the fifth time in 30 starts as a member of the White Sox

All in all, Lynn threw a light (by his standards) 91 pitches, looking like this:

Baseball Savant

Like his counterpart, Joe Ryan didn’t quite have it all going today, lasting just four innings and failing to fool Sox hitters to the tune of just seven swings-and-misses in 39 tries. Ryan, however, is also in possession of what analyst extraordinaire Eno Sarris has dubbed the “invisiball,” which simply means that he has an unconventional arm angle and release point that hides the ball for an exceptionally long time, making a low-90s fastball play a lot better than its mediocre velocity, spin, and movement would indicate because hitters simply have a lot of difficulty picking it up out of the hand.

The result was a 41% CSW on his four-seamer — largely thanks to called strikes, which may have also been equally a function of a passive approach from the plate discipline-averse Sox offense — that almost singlehandedly saved his outing, given his total inability to effectively locate any of his secondary pitches. On the whole, Ryan was probably lucky to get away with just the two earned runs. Must be nice to play for a manager who knows when to pull the plug before everything falls apart.

In total, Ryan’s 85-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

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Pressure Play

The LI was a sky-high 4.61 for Minnesota’s final plate appearance of the day, one that brought Ryan Jeffers to the plate with runners on first and second and one out. Fortunately, José Ruiz induced a ground out into perhaps the most critical double play of the season.

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Pressure Cooker

Coming onto the mound in the seemingly cursed 10th-inning role for the Sox, Ruiz’s 3.70 pLI was a game-high.

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Top Play

Andrew Vaughn was the king of kings in a day with oodles of ding dongs and high-pressure shifts in momentum: His game-tying homer with two outs in the eighth inning against Griffin Jax was worth .417 WPA, far and away the highest number of the day.

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Top Performer

Vaughn’s .350 WPA would have taken the cake on most days, but was outstripped by Eloy Jiménez (.390) and Jorge Polanco (.440).

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Smackdown

Hardest hit: The second of Polanco’s two home runs on the day was the product of the hardest contact we saw today, registering 109.8 mph on the radar gun.

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Weakest contact: Tim Anderson’s third-inning pop up left the bat just 34.3 mph, the lowest I’ve seen in these pages for quite some time.

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Luckiest hit: The fifth inning Andrew Vaughn single that helped set the stage for Luis Robert’s game-tying jack came on a batted ball with just an .060 xBA, or a 6% hit probability.

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Toughest out: Tough scene for Gio Urshela, whose 97.1 mph smash straight at Yoán Moncada turned into an out despite a .710 xBA.

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Longest hit: Polanco’s second homer (402 feet) was also somehow the only home run out of six total to break the 400-foot barrier.

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Magic Number: 10-3 (.769)

That’s only the 13th time in 2022 the White Sox have hit multiple homers in a game. They’re 10-3 in those games. It’s the fourth time they’ve hit three home runs in a 2022 game; they’ve won all four.

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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

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