Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 8, Guardians 2

The Chicago White Sox played their second consecutive afternoon game, this time a must-win contest against the Cleveland Guardians. Looking to gain some ground in the AL Central race, the Good Guys blasted their way to a crucial win, with five home runs, to pull within three games of first place.

The Starters

Lance Lynn has been fantastic since the All-Star break and today was no different. After laboring through the first few innings and pitching around a big error by Yasmani Grandal, the Big Bastard gave just what the White Sox needed today from their starting pitcher. He had another quality start, giving up two earned runs, six hits, only one walk, and striking out six in 6 ¹⁄₃ innings. Lynn had an overall 22% whiff rate and lowered his ERA to 3.99.

Lynn’s 106-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

In an unorthodox move, righthander Hunter Gaddis got the start for the Guardians today. He struggled with the long ball, and the Sox tagged him for five home runs in only four innings. Also, I can’t decide if Gaddis’ side hustle is with the Geek Squad or playing guitar for The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Thoughts?

Baseball Savant

Pressure Play

In the bottom of the second, the Guardians had runners on first and third with one out. Steven Kwan reached first on a fielder’s choice out, with Will Benson out at home and Myles Straw to second. The play had an LI of 2.07.

Pressure Cooker

Fortunately, with a comfortable lead throughout most of the game, there wasn’t a whole lot of pressure on the Sox, thank goodness. Elvis Andrus had the highest pLI, at 0.41.

Top Play

Gavin Sheets finally hit his first home run of the season outside of Guaranteed Rate Field. His two-run blast was the highest WPA of the day, at .169.

Top Performer

Gavin Sheets gets the sweep with the Top Play and Top Performer honors. He had today’s top WPA of .146.

Smackdown

Hardest hit: Amed Rosario’s single in seventh inning off of Aaron Bummer was a scorcher: 106.9 mph off of the bat.

Weakest contact: Elvis Andrus has been phenomenal for the Sox, but the double play he hit into in the top of the ninth inning was a dribbler, at 54.8 mph.

Luckiest hit: José Abreu’s single off of Hunter Gaddis in the top of the fifth was the fortuitous play of the day, with a xBA of .040.

Toughest out: Andres Gimenez hit a screamer of a line out to center fielder Adam Engel in the bottom of the eighth against Reynaldo López. The out had a xBA of .790.

Longest hit: It was refreshing to see some power from Yoán Moncada. His third inning home run was blasted 420 feet to center field. It was his 10th homer of the season.

Magic Number: 5

Five big dingers were hit in this essential win for the South Siders.

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