The White Sox outlasted Gavin Williams, then survived a barrage of deep fly balls from Cleveland.
The White Sox night started and ended on very shaky notes, but they dominated the middle of the game, and that proved enough to return to Rate Field with a 2-0 lead in the ALDS.
The White Sox were down 2-0 after one inning due to an inaccurate pitch from Anthony Kay and an inaccurate throw from Sean Newcomb, and with Williams pulling, the White Sox needed someone to keep the deficit where it was.
Sean Burke provided the answer, taking over for Newcomb with one out in the third inning and pitching the next 5 ⅓ innings himself, during which the White Sox hit Williams for a run in the fourth and three runs against Williams and the bullpen in the sixth.
Burke came out a little cold on the radar gun, but the speed increased as his evening progressed, as did the visible confidence.
He walked Travis Bazzana with one out in the fourth, but sidestepped Bazzana’s attempts to distract him with a pair of flyouts that sparked a streak of 10 straight batters striking out. That streak ended when Sam Antonacci, who nearly let a Steven Kwan drive crush him, played a Chase DeLauter drive conservatively and dropped it in front of him.
Burke probably could have kept pitching, but with home run threat Jo Adell coming to the plate, Will Venable addressed Grant Taylor.
The move almost blew up in his face on the first throw. Taylor started Adell with a high 98 mph fastball, and Adell hit a high drive to deep left center. Fortunately for the White Sox, they didn’t break the high wall in left, bouncing around the field of play. Adell had to settle for an RBI triple that made it a one-run game, but Antonacci was able to recover a fly ball from Nathaniel Lowe to end the inning there.
Taylor then came out for the ninth and retired the team in order, but with an increasing level of alarm – bounce to first, a ball to deeper center and a ball that died into Brenton Doyle’s glove on the warning track.
Still, a win is a win, and the White Sox only need to win one of the next three to advance to the ALCS.
Williams went winless against the White Sox in four regular-season starts, and the Guardians went just 1-3 on the days he took the mound. He seemed determined to improve both records with a fastball that on average 99.5 – two ticks higher than his season average – and caused a whole bunch of nasty wobbles. White Sox hitters were stuck between cheating on the fastball and having to respect a two-seam fastball and two breaking balls that he also located. He struck out 11 batters in five innings, and from the visuals, that number looked low.
But the middle of the lineup was able to provide some useful pockets. After producing just two walks in the first three innings – including one erased by a double play – Kyle Teel broke up the no-hitter with a leadoff single in the fourth, and Miguel Vargas earned his second walk of the game. Munetaka Murakami arrived, and although he couldn’t duplicate his snap offensive exploits from two days earlier, he hit a single to the right side to score Teel and cut Cleveland’s lead in half. Then the nasty at-bats resumed, with Andrew Benintendi looking horribly late on fastballs, Tristan Peters flying out on his attempt to pop a first-pitch fastball, and Braden Montgomery losing a longer battle.
The second uprising took place at the very end of Williams’ evening, which Vargas ushered in. Vargas worked a 3-0 count to reach the point on his third walk, but Williams finally got into the zone against him to charge the count. After a foul ball, Vargas singled to left to bring Murakami home, and Stephen Vogt went to the bullpen.
A potential problem with Williams throwing as hard as he does? Cade Smith might be the only reliever whose business doesn’t represent a step back from what the Sox had seen. Erik Sabrowski came in and retired Murakami on a bouncer that advanced Vargas to second, but it only got tougher for him there.
The White Sox used the Grich Bullet and hit Randal Grichuk for Andrew Benintendi, and Sabrowski effectively threw around him. Then Venable got Tommy Pham to hit for Tristan Peters, and while a wild pitch advanced both runners, his hopes of another deep drive dissipated in a popout to left for the second out.
Braden Montgomery represented the last hope, and hope survived. Sabrowski tried to get ahead with a fastball to the low outside corner, but Montgomery hit how it was thrown and blasted a double just inside the right field line to score two runs and give the Sox a 3-2 lead. That marked the end of Sabrowski’s night, but not the end of the inning, as Hunter Gaddis came in and quickly gave up an opposite-field single to Chase Meidroth, making it 4-2. This proved to be sufficient.
The rally, combined with massive work from Burke, crushed a confidence-shaking opening effort from Kay and Newcomb. Kay retired only one of the three batters he faced, although the single to Steven Kwan was more acceptable than the following walk to José Ramírez. He forced DeLauter to retire to give him an ERA for the Series before Newcomb entered, and temporarily made things worse.
Newcomb intentionally walked Adell after the first few pitches didn’t go his way, but his attempt to get a double play ball from Nathaniel Lowe instead produced a two-story chopper off the plate. Newcomb handled the throw correctly at first, but he rushed the delivery and bounced it wildly past Munetaka Murakami to allow an unearned run to score behind the earned one for a quick 2-0 Cleveland lead.
At least Newcomb was able to settle down afterward. He limited the drama by throwing angrily, striking out Angel Martínez and Travis Bazzana to strand two runners and throwing three of his hardest pitches of the season in the process. Adrenaline led to some big misses, but he managed to recalibrate in time to retire six straight Keepers before DeLauter hit a single up the middle with one out in the third, and Burke took it from there.
Bullet points:
*The temperature was 61 degrees with a 13 mph wind from the center, and the White Sox pitchers used that to their advantage. The Guardians hit the game’s seven longest batted balls, and all but Adell’s triple ended up being flyouts.
* Kay (96.7 mph) and Newcomb (97.3 mph) also averaged much higher fastball speeds than their season, which made it even more shocking when Burke’s first fastball reached 91.8 mph.
*The White Sox were 3 for 8 with runners in scoring position; the Guardians were 0 out of 5.
*It’s been a while since the White Sox were able to win a home series.
The White Sox lead the series 2-0 | Boxed Sheet Music | Statistics
Gn sports
