Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 4, Guardians 2

FanGraphs

The White Sox take one for the Guardians after a try not to suck battle between the two starting pitchers. Insert Yasmani Grandal and his beautiful bat drop to turn things around and lead the South Siders to victory.

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The Starters

Dylan Cease started the first two innings with plenty of ground-out balls and strikes, despite a lack of command. Towards the end of the second, the wheels were slowly falling off, and in the third, he gave up a home run to Will Brennan of all people. He walked a pair in the fourth and fifth but was able to eat innings and made it through six. With his lack of command, it did come with two earned runs, five hits, and just three strikeouts. Cease earned his first win since April 10.

Cease’s 88-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

Rookie Logan Allen didn’t help the Guardians at all by allowing seven hits and three earned runs and ending the day with a -0.40 WPA. Allen also lasted six innings, struck out four, and kept the White Sox off the board until the fifth inning.

Allen’s 85-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

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Pressure Play

Kendall Graveman held his breath facing Gabriel Arias with one on and no outs in the ninth. Arias ended up grounded into a double play to shortstop, with Josh Bell out at second. With the game potentially on the line, tension was rising, to an LI of 3.42, to be exact.

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Pressure Cooker

Like the play above, Kendall Graveman faced the most pressure after the White Sox failed to get insurance runs in the top of the ninth. Graveman was able to save the game, even with a pLI of 1.82.

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Top Play

Andrew Benintendi’s double to right advanced Andrew Vaughn advanced to third, setting the White Sox up for success with a WPA of .206.

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Top Performer

Yasmani Grandal’s home run on an 0-2 count gave the White Sox the momentum shift that was severely needed. He tied the game and ran off with a 0.26 WPA.

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Smackdown

Hardest hit: A Romy González double was tattooed at 112.8 mph.

Weakest contact: Yasmani Grandal got on base from a fielding error after hitting the ball at just 71.6 mph.

Luckiest hit: The fielding error comes back into play, as it only had an xBA of .050. Yet right behind that with an xBA of just .080 was José Ramírez’s triple.

Toughest out: Ramírez’s fly out in the sixth inning had an xBA of .610.

Longest hit: Yasmani Grandal’s home run flew 414 feet.

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Magic Number: 6

Romy González only has six games in the majors this season, but has shown real power at the plate.

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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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