Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 14, Athletics 2

The White Sox played another late-night, West Coast contest, this time against the Oakland Athletics. Looking to gain some ground on the AL Central-leading Cleveland Guardians, the Good Guys came out scorching hot and put this game out of reach early.

The Starters

Dylan Cease followed up his brilliant prior outing with another strong start. Cease continued to make his case as a finalist for the AL Cy Young. His numbers were solid, as he gave up only three hits, two walks, and struck out nine. He lowered his ERA to 2.06. Cease had an overall 30% whiff rate and 36% specifically on his slider, which seemed to baffle the A’s. He is well above the MLB league average-whiff rate of 23%.

Cease’s 95-pitch, six inning outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

JP Sears, one of Oakland’s better starting pitchers, struggled from the get-go. The Sox had his number tonight.

Baseball Savant

Pressure Play

In the top of the second, the Sox had runners in scoring position. Elvis Andrus singled to center. Romy González scored. Seby Zavala advanced to third base. The play had an LI of 1.19.

Pressure Cooker

In this high-scoring game, there wasn’t a whole lot of pressure on the South Siders, for once. Elvis Andrus had the highest pLI, at 0.44.

Top Play

Elvis left the building with his leadoff home run in the top of the first inning, with a WPA of .110.

Top Performer

Yoán Moncada is back, baby! Yo-Yo had five hits tonight, including two home runs, and five RBIs for a WPA of .201.

Smackdown

Hardest hit: Andrew Vaughn had the most violent smash of the night, with his first inning line out at 110.1 mph.

Weakest contact: AJ Pollock’s seventh inning pop out was the wimpiest attempt of the night at 61.5 mph.

Luckiest hit: The A’s had very little luck, but Dermis Garcia’s single in the bottom of the second inning squeaked in with a .040 xBA.

Toughest out: Elvis was having himself a night in his old stomping grounds. His first inning home run was a bomb with a 1.000 xBA.

Longest hit: That first inning home run by Elvis was a superstar play tonight. It landed 444 feet away in center field.

Magic Number: 14

Two touchdowns for the Sox tonight. Will that be more than the Bears score this weekend?

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