Guardians 5, White Sox 0: Sunday shutout

The Cleveland Guardians won this afternoon’s game 5-0, dropping a shutout on the Chicago White Sox offense. This wasn’t really that exciting of a game to watch as a White Sox fan — then again, shutouts never are. Let’s go through this one, and see if there are even any highlights to include.

Michael Kopech allowed a second inning run after a the dreaded leadoff walk to Oscar González and two outs. Yay! But then he ... walked two more to load the bases, and gave a free pass to Andrés Giménez with the bases loaded to bring in a run. A lot of walking. Safe to say four walks in an inning will get you into some trouble, but control has been an issue for Kopech all year.

The game stuck at 1-0 until the fifth inning, when Steven Kwan led it off with a solo shot to right. José Ramírez joined the party with another solo shot two batters later to extend the lead to 3-0.

Meanwhile, Aaron Civale was breezing through the White Sox lineup, and he went six innings with three hits, no runs, two walks, and four strikeouts. His ERA moves to a 2.34.

Kopech was done after five innings, four hits, three runs, five walks, and two strikeouts.

We saw appearances from some of the new arms after the trades, both called up from Charlotte.

Declan Cronin started the top of the sixth inning, in his major league debut.

With two outs in the seventh inning, Cronin gave up a walk to Gimenez and then had to face Ramírez. Ramírez welcomed him to the big leagues with a two-run home run to extend the lead to 5-0 on a 2-2 pitch with two outs.

Sammy Peralta and Edgar Navarro (also making his major league debut) took the eighth and ninth innings and pitched scoreless outings. If you don’t know their names, you better get used to them for the rest of the season!

Emmanuel Clase closed it out for the Guardians to secure the shutout.

The White Sox have an off-day tomorrow before heading to Arlington to play the Texas Rangers, which should be interesting. Game time is at 7:05 p.m. CT on Tuesday.

Six Pack of Stats

By Allie Wesel

FanGraphs

Pressure Play
Michael Kopech’s second inning walk to Andres Gimenez had an LI of 3.02 today, and provided the Guardians’ game-winning RBI.

Pressure Cooker
Andrew Vaughn had the opportunity to drive in two runs this afternoon, and made outs on both occasions. His pLI this afternoon won out at 1.14.

Top Play
Steven Kwan’s fifth inning home run off of Kopech had an 11.5% WPA.

Top Performer
Winning pitcher, Aaron Civale, was today’s stifled Chicago and raked in a 33.3% WPA.

Hardest Hit
Josh Bell grounded out in the third inning at 108.5 mph.

Weakest Contact
On the contrary, Luis Robert Jr.’s fourth inning ground out came was an uncharacteristic 42.8 mph.

Luckiest Hit
Robert had both the weakest contact and luckiest hit of the day. His ninth inning double off of Emmanuel Clase had an .090 xBA.

Toughest Out
Tim Anderson has been on an offensive tear since the All-Star Break. His line out in the sixth had an xBA of .720.

Longest Hit
It’s no surprise: José Ramírez’s fifth inning home run was the longest hit of the day, landing 418 feet away.

Magic Number: 0
The number of runs baseball teams from Chicago scored today.

According to Chris Kamka, this is the first time both the South Siders and north siders put up a goose egg since Aug. 11, 2021.

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