Six Pack of Stats: Twins 7, White Sox 3

FanGraphs

The Sox should have had this one won about five different times, but lack of situational hitting and poor defense will get you every time. The winning streak is OVAHH.

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The Starters

Today’s getaway game was Lucas Giolito’s seventh outing of the season, and he was looking to follow up his last strong start against the Tampa Bay Rays on April 28 with another good one. Boy, did he! Gio earned his fourth quality start of the season, going seven innings, surrendering only one earned run on two hits, three walks, and seven strikeouts. The slider was really working today. If we can get this Giolito every five days, the Sox just might be able to turn this around, and some team will give him a nice, juicy free-agent deal this offseason. I’ll take that trade-off. It was a well-fought game, but the boys couldn’t get the win today for Lucas or the team.

Here are Giolito’s pitch visuals from Baseball Theater:

Giolito’s 101-pitch, seven-inning outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

Pablo López took the mound for the seventh time this season for Minnesota Twins in search of his third victory — wamp, wamp, too bad for him. The 27-year-old ace signed with the Seattle Mariners as an international free agent in July 2012. In 2017, the Mariners traded López to the Miami Marlins, where he spent his entire five-year MLB career before being traded to the Twins in January 2023 for Luis Arráez. López pitched well in his last season, with Miami going 10-10 with a 3.75 ERA, a 1.167 WHIP, and 174 strikeouts in 180 innings. He was good today, just not quite as good as Giolito. López gave up two runs on six hits with one walk and eight strikeouts.

Here are López’s pitch visuals from Baseball Theater:

López’s 101-pitch, seven-inning outing looked like this:

Baseball Savant

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Pressure Play

Elvis Andrus couldn’t beat the pressure today when he struck out swinging with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th on a 6.39 LI play.

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Pressure Cooker

This game was one giant autoclave. Jorge López felt the most pressure pitching in the bottom of the ninth while trying to keep the Sox from walking it off, which he did. He had the highest pLI, at 3.80.

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Top Play

In the 12th inning, José Miranda reached on an error by Tim Anderson, and Trevor Larnach scored, giving the Twins a 3-2 lead on a .341 WPA play.

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Top Performer

Ever a pest, Byron Buxton was first-rate today for the Twins. He hit a solo bomb to knot the game at two in the eighth inning and compiled .378 WPA.

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Hardest hit: Eloy Jiménez continued his hot streak with a solo bomb cranked to center field at 112.8 mph.

Weakest contact: Michael A. Taylor tapped a soft, fifth-inning ground out to Giolito at 37.7 mph.

Luckiest hit: Jorge Polanco’s ground-ball single off of rookie Sammy Peralta in the 12th inning scored Nick Gordon and Max Kepler though it had just a .160 xBA.

Toughest out: Christian Vázquez’s sharp line out at 91.7 mph to left field in the top of the second had an .850 xBA.

Longest hit: Eloy’s bomb takes the prize here. It landed 409 feet away, in center field.

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Magic Number: 1

The White Sox only drove home one single runner in scoring position all day. They had 16 chances. Not good, folks, not good.

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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

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