Six Pack of Stats: Guardians 3, White Sox 0

FanGraphs

The White Sox opened up their brief stint in Cleveland with a loss, bringing their record to 19-30. The South Siders rolled with a bullpen day, and overall, it was successful, as the two opening pitchers held Cleveland to just one run, but the offense could not get it done today.

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The Starters

Jimmy Lambert was the opener for today’s bullpen day, and had a quick, one-inning outing to start the game. He threw 20 pitches, and relied mostly on his fastball, topping out at 95.4 mph.

Jesse Scholtens was also called up to help fill in for the time being, and was today’s bulk starter, throwing for the next five innings after Lambert. It appears the Lambert-Scholtens combination might have worked, as Scholtens was lights-out after a small blip in the first, where a lead off walk ended up scoring on a wild pitch. He relied mostly on his fastball and slider, throwing both at 29% and 28% of the time, respectively. The fastball, however, had a much stronger 28% CSW. Scholtens threw 40 of his 67 pitches for strikes, and gave up just two hits in his five innings, walking two and striking out one — a big one to end the sixth and get out of a jam.

Here is Jesse Scholtens’ pitch breakdown:

His 67-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

Hunter Gaddis was on the mound for the Guardians this evening, in what we assumed would be the opposite of a pitchers’ duel, given that both starting pitchers had an ERA worse than 6.00. Of course, the White Sox made him look like Cy Young instead, and Gaddis gave up only two hits across his six innings. Gaddis’ four-seamer topped out at 95.1 mph today, which he threw for 43% of his pitches. His cutter, however, was his most effective, producing 11 called strikes + whiffs at a 32% CSW.

Here is his pitch breakdown:

Gaddis’ 90-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

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Pressure Play

Yasmani Grandal could not handle the pressure today, watching a perfectly good strike go by to end an inning with runners on first and second. Pain. The play had a 3.83 LI.

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Pressure Cooker

Nick Sandlin faced just one batter today to get out of the seventh inning, and it was a red-hot Jake Burger, with runners on first and second. He was able to force a weak line out to second to get out of the inning. He had a 3.28 pLI.

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Top Play

Mike Zunino’s home run off of Gregory Santos to put the Guardians up 3-0 had a .154 WPA.

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Top Performer

No surprise here considering the lack of offense — Hunter Gaddis and his two-hit outing made him today’s top performer, with a .363 WPA.

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Smackdown

Hardest hit: Gabriel Arias had a ground out in the fourth that left the bat at 107.2 mph.

Weakest contact: Jake Burger’s line out in the seventh left the bat at just 51.1 mph.

Luckiest hit: Andrew Benintendi’s double in the fourth had a .180 xBA.

Toughest out: José Ramírez lined into a double play to Andrew Benintendi in the third, despite an .810 xBA, the second-highest of the day.

Longest hit: José Ramírez also had the longest hit of the day, with a fly out that traveled 382 feet — even further than Mike Zunino’s home run.

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Magic Number: 3

When most of the team goes 0-for-3, and you only put up three hits, it’s probably not going to get the job done. Two more left of this three-game set to try to take the series back. I miss when we only scored three runs every night instead.

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Glossary

CSW called strikes plus whiffs
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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