White Sox blank Guardians, 3-0

Five pitchers gone from the roster in the past few days? Never mind. The ones left will take care of things.

Mainly taking care of things was Touki Toussaint, who tossed five innings of three-hit, one-walk, shutout ball, with one of his 83 pitches being the one that was the key to victory.

Cleveland had loaded the bases in the first on a usually-dreaded leadoff walk, a Gavin Sheets error and a single, but Josh Bell got excited over a middle-middle sinker and bounced it into a double play, and that was basically it for the Guardians offense.

The White Sox then got all the offense they would need three batters into their half of the inning, when Luis Robert Jr. got a hanging curve from Xzavion Curry.

The 412-footer left the bat at 104.2 mph, which was all the oomph it needed.

That was it for scoring until the bottom of the sixth, when Jake Burger welcomed old friend Daniel Norris to the GuRF on his first visit in a new uniform with a blast that made Robert’s look like a pop-up.

Six Pack of Stats

By CHRYSTAL O’KEEFE

FanGraphs

Pressure Play
Touki Toussaint was in a bases-loaded, 2.56 LI jam in the first with one out. He was able to get Josh Bell to hit a double play grounder to end the inning.

Pressure Cooker
Josh Bell always seemed the final out each inning: Stranding runners, not getting a single hit, and topping the pLI chart, at 1.72.

Top Play
Jake Burger’s homer in the sixth sat at 11.4% WPA and count as an insurance run, thanks to a shutout of Cleveland.

Top Performer
Touki Toussaint would cobble a win and 28.7% WPA. The righthander went five innings, allowing only three hits and a walk, with four strikeouts.

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Hardest Hit
The Burger bomb fired off at 111.6 mph.

Weakest Contact
Oscar Colás struggled all evening, and managed to also have the weakest contact, at 63.7 mph for his fourth-inning pop out.

Luckiest Hit
Known White Sox pest, Josh Naylor, managed to hit a double in the sixth. Andrew Benintendi couldn’t quite glove the ball, giving Naylor’s hit a .130 xBA.

Toughest Out
José Ramírez’s first-inning line out, which really would have helped the Guardians, had a .640 xBA.

Longest Hit
Once again, Burger’s home run flew into the night sky at 450 feet.

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Magic Number: 17
Jake Burger hit home run No. 25, and 17 of those have been at home this season. Per Chris Kamka, Andrew Vaughn led the team in homes last year, at 17. Burger tied last year’s team-leading total in home games alone — and it’s still July.

Burger’s 111.6 mph, 450-foot crush job was his third homer in two days. Having the Guardians be kind enough to leave a tiring lefty in against him was appreciated.

Oscar Colás wrapped up the scoring with an RBI single in the eighth. That was Chicago’s first hit in nine tries with runners in scoring position, but in this game ineptitude in such situations didn’t matter, because the visitors went 1-for-8 in such situations themselves.

Tanner Banks followed Toussaint’s excellent outing with three scoreless frames of his own. Gregory Santos came in for the ninth, and it looked like another bullpen implosion was underway when he gave up a single and hit a batter. Santos then threw four bad pitches in a row to Oscar González, but González was kind enough to wave futilely at three of them for some reason, and the shutout was complete.

Bizarre stat to remember — the White Sox drew six walks.

Honest.

And six batters drew one each.

The last one even led to a run.

Bet you didn’t think that was possible, did you?

The win ends a six-game losing streak and pulls the Sox to a mere 21 games shy of .500, while bringing the Guardians back to even on the season.

It also ties this series at one apiece, with the next game set for 6:10 p.m. Saturday. The famed Undecided will take the mound for the Sox against rookie Logan Allen.