Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 6, Guardians 0

FanGraphs

The White Sox take the series from the Guardians with a shutout, storybook ending. Michael Kopech had his second beautiful outing in a row, and the offense helped secure a win with some fourth-inning pop. Let’s break this fun game down.

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The Starters

Michael Kopech was scorching batters left and right, in his second consecutive hot start. He only allowed two hits and didn’t allow a walk until the sixth. Kopech threw 92 pitches through seven innings, with 62 pitches called strikes, 16 of which were stringing strikes. In the last two games (15 IP), Kopech has dropped his ERA from 5.74 to 4.24.

Kopech’s 92-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

Cal Quantrill had a rough outing against hot bats and was hurt by a few overthrows. He only made it through four innings after giving up six earned runs on four hits and three walks, and five of those runs came off three hits (with a walk or two sprinkled in) during the fourth inning. Quantrill was also struggling with command, and stayed true to form with only two strikeouts. The Guardians offense didn’t pick Quantrill up, either, as Michael Kopech was nearly unhittable, and the White Sox were turning plenty of double plays.

Quantrill’s 64-pitch outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

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Pressure Play

Quantrill had a really rough fourth inning that would peak at a 1.91 LI. Insert a bases-loaded situation with no outs and Jake Burger approaches the plate, where Burger hit a sacrifice fly to right that allowed Yoán Moncada to score.

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Pressure Cooker

Romy González’s pLI went up to 1.11 after being up to bat for big moments. Thankfully, he was able to handle the pressure and secure the win.

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Top Play

The White Sox only needed one run to win this game, and that was Tim Anderson’s .109 WPA single to center that allowed Clint Frazier to score.

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Top Performer

No one had a particularly bad game today, but Michael Kopech brought the heat to Cleveland by throwing seven scoreless innings, and only allowing two hits. Kopech topped the charts with a .215 WPA.

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Smackdown

Hardest hit: It’s a somewhat rare game where the two biggest exit velos were on outs. Clint Frazier’s single in the fourth was smoked at 105.7 mph, but the winner here today is Josh Naylor, with a 106.6 mph ground out in the seventh inning.

Weakest contact: Myles Straw’s eighth-inning single came off of the bat at 72.7 mph.

Luckiest hit: Andrés Giménez managed to reach first in the sixth, despite Kopech mowing Guardians down. His hit only had a .140 xBA.

Toughest out: Andrew Vaughn’s hard-hit liner in the eighth had a .790 xBA.

Longest hit: Steven Kwan’s last-ditch effort in the ninth was caught, but still traveled 364 feet. Right behind him was Romy González’s fourth-inning RBI double that traveled 327 feet.

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Magic Number: 13

Michael Kopech had faced the minimum amount of batters in 13 consecutive innings. While the streak ended in the sixth, that’s one hell of an effort from someone so many of us were worried about at the beginning of the season.

He is also the first pitcher in White Sox history with consecutive starts of seven innings pitched, two or fewer hits, no runs, and 9+ strikeouts.

Please enjoy this text from my son.

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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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