Six Pack of Stats: Twins 9, White Sox 4

FanGraphs

The White Sox lose again, shocker! This time it was 9-4 against the Minnestota Twins. The Sox fall to 10 games back of first and almost certainly have no chance to win the division, which was the only way they’d even get a playoff spot. Let’s see the stats on how this loss came to be.

The Starters

It was a strange night for Lance Lynn. He gave up five runs in the first inning, rallied back a bit, gave up another two in the fourth, and then was strangely kept in until the seventh, when he gave up his final two runs. Granted, two errors meant only six of the runs were earned, but it was a baffling decision to keep Lance in that long and probably tank his trade value to almost nothing — especially because he gave up four home runs in the process. His fastballs were hit hard, and generated very few whiffs. Lynn did get a good amount of called strikes off of them, but staying in for that long will kind of skew the numbers a bit.

The rest of the pitch breakdown looks like this:

Baseball Savant

Joe Ryan had a decent outing for the Twins, and given the nine runs against Lynn, Ryan only needed to be decent to get the win tonight. Ryan went six innings with 10 strikeouts and four earned runs on seven hits, two of which were home runs. He mostly threw his fastball and splitter tonight, with a sweeper thrown in every so often for good measure. Ryan had as many whiffs (13) on his four-seamer as Lynn did on all of his pitches combined, although he only had four more in total (17).

His pitches looked like this:

Baseball Savant

Pressure Play
A one-out fly out in the seventh with two men on for Luis Robert Jr. was the tensest point of the game with a 2.27 LI in (at the time) a 7-4 game.

Pressure Cooker
Emilio Pagan got the hold for the Twins, and is the player who felt the most heat tonight with a 1.30 pLI.

For the Sox, the most pressure was felt by Luis Robert Jr., with a 0.94 pLI. He did not do well under that pressure either, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.

Top Play
It came early, with Byron Buxton’s three-run homer off Lance Lynn pushing the Twins lead to 5-1. His bomb had a .182 WPA.

The top play for the Pale Hose was Andrew Benintendi’s first-pitch home run to lead off the game (.102 WPA).

Top Performer
Byron Buxton, who had two homers and four RBIs on the night, came in at .209 WPA.

The top performer for the Sox (.097 WPA) was Andrew Benintendi with a home run, single, and an RBI.

Smackdown

Hardest Hit Byron Buxton’s absolute missile of a homer in the first had a whopping 114.3 mph exit velocity. Elvis Andrus had a 106.8 mph single in the third inning that took the honors for the South Siders.

Weakest Contact Zach Remillard’s puny 60.1 mph ground out in the ninth had the slowest exit velo of the ballgame.

Luckiest Hit It seems crazy, but Byron Buxton’s solo shot in the fourth had an insane xBA of just .060.

Toughest Out Elvis Andrus was robbed of a hit on an .880 xBA line drive in the seventh that was somehow caught by Matt Wallner.

Longest hit Surprise, surprise, Buxton’s first inning homer was the longest hit of the game, traveling 425 feet.

Magic Number: 1
The pitch number Andrew Benintendi took out of the ballpark to start the game, and also the amount of pitches he swung and missed on — although he only saw eight pitches all game.