Twins 10, White Sox 2: The new losing streak is going strong

The White Sox dropped their third straight game, and are now 7-3 against the Twins this year. Lack of run support has always been the name of the game with the South Siders, who couldn’t manage to rack up more than two runs tonight (thank you, Andrew Vaughn).

José Ureña went through the first six innings with a solid, quality start, giving up just two earned on two home runs in the fourth inning. Up until then, he in fact was perfect through three, and nearly all of his pitches were fairly effective tonight, going with his changeup and sinker each for about 30% of his 90 pitches.

Edouard Julien broken the no-hitter open with a solo shot to open the fourth, and Royce Lewis followed suit just a couple of batters later to send one 426 feet over the left-center fence.

Outside of those two pitches, Ureña bounced back in the fifth and sixth innings, holding strong and limiting Minnesota baserunners. Naturally, he couldn’t get any run support from the South Siders, who didn’t score any runs until after he exited the game — and even then, not nearly enough to keep them in it.

Ureña came back out for the top of the seventh, and it might not have been the best idea, but hindsight is always 20/20. After securing the first out of the inning, the Twins put together a rally that ultimately pushed four more runs across the board, capped off by a Kyle Farmer two-run blast — destroying what was a quality start.

Bryan Shaw did his job and got out of the inning after that, but six runs is pretty substantial damage.

Sick of seeing Minnesota bombs? In the bottom of the seventh, Vaughn launched his own two-run shot to left, scoring Yoán Moncada (walk). These would sadly be the only two runs the Sox would score tonight.

Deivi García entered the game to pitch for the Good Guys in the top of the eighth, and outside of giving up a leadoff double, he worked an efficient inning and stopped a rally from forming.

That wasn’t the same story in the ninth, however. García retired the first batter of the inning, but then things got out of hand very quickly. The next batter got on base via a dropped third strike, then a walk, and then a strikeout that should have been the final out of the inning. Jorge Polanco drove in an RBI on an infield single and García walked back-to-back batters, including walking in a run for the Twins’ eighth of the game.

Sammy Peralta came in to try to shut the door on this mess, but didn’t do so without giving up another RBI single to add two more runs for the Twins.

Eloy Jiménez ripped a double to left to open up the bottom of the ninth, but the next three Pale Hose would go down in order to put themselves and any fans that actually showed up out of their misery.

Three more games of this series. Maybe they will scrape together another W along the way. The season lasts until October, after all.

Six Pack of Stats

FanGraphs

Pressure Play
Kenta Maeda worked his way out of a jam in the fifth by getting Korey Lee to fly out to center, which was the highest-pressure moment of the game with a 2.45 LI.

Pressure Cooker
Korey Lee, of course, faced the most pressure tonight largely stemming from that play, and finished with a 1.26 pLI.

Top Play
Edouard Julien’s fourth inning homer was the top play, with 12.5% WPA.

Top Performer
After shutting down the White Sox for seven innings, Kenta Maeda proved to be. the top performer tonight, adding 34.1% win probability.

Hardest Hit
Matt Wallner’s single in the fifth was smoked off of the bat at 112.2 mph.

Weakest Contact
Korey Lee had the weakest contact tonight, with a ground out that left the bat at just 57.4 mph.

Luckiest Hit
Willi Castro doubled in the seventh despite having just a .040 xBA.

Toughest Out
Willi Castro was a batter of extremes today. He also authored the toughest out today, popping out to right field despite a .570 xBA.

Longest Hit
No surprise here, Royce Lewis’ long ball was the furthest hit and traveled 426 feet.

Magic Number: 10
10 hits for the bad guys, 10 runs given up, and White Sox batters struck out 10 times tonight, and left half of 10 (five) runners on base as a team. Tough outing all around.

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