The White Sox outlasted Gavin Williams, and then outlasted a barrage of deep Cleveland fly balls.
The evening for the White Sox started and ended on very shaky notes, but they owned the middle of the game, and that turned out to be enough to return to Rate Field with a 2-0 lead in the ALDS.
The White Sox trailed 2-0 after one inning due inaccurate pitching from Anthony Kay and inaccurate throwing from Sean Newcomb, and with Williams coming out firing, the White Sox needed somebody 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 jabbed Williams for one run in the fourth, and three runs off Williams and the bullpen in the sixth.
Burke came out a little cold on the radar gun, but the velocity ticked up as his evening wore on, and so did the visible confidence.
He walked Travis Bazzana with one out in the fourth, but worked around Bazzana’s attempts to distract him with a pair of flyouts that started a string of 10 consecutive batters retired. That streak died when Sam Antonacci, who nearly let a Steven Kwan drive get over him, played a Chase DeLauter line drive conservatively and let it fall in front of him.
Burke probably could’ve kept pitching, but with home run threat Jo Adell coming to the plate, Will Venable went to Grant Taylor.
The move almost blew up in his face on the first pitch. Taylor started Adell with a high 98 mph fastball, and Adell hit a high drive to deep left center. Fortunately for the White Sox, it didn’t clear the high wall in left, bouncing back into the field of play. Adell had to settle for an RBI triple that made it a one-run game, but Antonacci was able to haul in a Nathaniel Lowe fly ball to end the inning there.
Taylor then came out for the ninth and retired the side in order, but with an increasing level of alarm — bounceout to first, fly ball to deepish center, and a fly ball that died in Brenton Doyle’s glove on the warning track.
Still, a win’s 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 appeared hellbent on improving both records with a fastball that averaged 99.5 — two ticks higher than his season average — and induced a whole bunch of ugly swings. White Sox hitters were stuck between cheating on the fastball and having to respect a two-seam fastball and two breaking balls he located as well. He struck out 11 batters over five innings, and based on the visuals, that number seemed low.
But the middle of the lineup was able to put forth a couple of pockets of usefulness. After producing just two walks over the first three innings — one of which erased by a double play — Kyle Teel broke up the no-hitter with a leadoff single in the fourth, and Miguel Vargas drew his second walk of the game. Up came Munetaka Murakami, and while he couldn’t reproduce his instant-offense heroics from two days earlier, he did smack a single through the right side to score Teel and cut Cleveland’s lead in half. Then the ugly at-bats resumed, with Andrew Benintendi looking horribly late on fastballs, Tristan Peters flying out on his attempt at jumping a first-pitch fastball, and Braden Montgomery losing a more protracted battle.
The second uprising came at the very end of Williams’ night, which Vargas ushered in. Vargas worked a 3-0 count to reach the cusp of his third walk, but Williams finally came into the zone against him to load the count. After a foul ball, Vargas rifled a single to left to bring Murakami to the plate, and Stephen Vogt went to the bullpen.
One potential issue with Williams throwing as hard as he did? Cade Smith might be the only reliever whose stuff doesn’t represent a step down from what the Sox had been seeing. Erik Sabrowski entered and retired Murakami on a bouncer that advanced Vargas to second, but it only got more difficult for him form there.
The White Sox used the Grich Bullet and pinch-hit Randal Grichuk for Andrew Benintendi, and Sabrowski effectively pitched around him. Then Venable called for 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 on the low outside corner, but Montgomery hit how he was pitched and shot a double just inside the right-field line to score two runs and put the Sox ahead 3-2. That spelled the end of Sabrowski’s night, but not the end of the inning, as Hunter Gaddis entered and promptly yielded an opposite-field single to Chase Meidroth that made it a 4-2 game. That turned out to be enough.
The rally, combined with Burke’s bulk work, overwrote a confidence-rattling opening effort by Kay and Newcomb. Kay only retired one of the three batters he faced, although the seeing-eye single to Steven Kwan was more acceptable than the subsequent walk to José Ramírez. He did get DeLauter to ground out to give him an ERA for the series before Newcomb entered, and made things temporarily worse.
Newcomb intentionally walked Adell after the early 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 correctly processed the throw to first, but he rushed the execution 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 further drama by pitching angry, striking out Angel Martínez and Travis Bazzana to strand a pair of runners and throwing three of his hardest pitches of the season in the process. The adrenaline resulted in some big misses, but he was able to recalibrate in time to retire six straight Guardians before DeLauter singled through 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 in from center, and White Sox pitchers used it to their advantage. The Guardians hit the seven longest batted balls of the game, and all but Adell’s triple ended up being flyouts.
*Kay (96.7 mph) and Newcomb (97.3 mph) also averaged well above their season fastball velocities, which made it more jarring when Burke’s first fastball clocked in at 91.8 mph.
*The White Sox went 3-for-8 with runners in scoring position; the Guardians were 0-for-5.
*It’s been a while since the White Sox could clinch a series at home.