CLEVELAND – White Sox manager Will Venable has repeatedly said he doesn’t understand how anyone hits Guardians starter Gavin Williams. In striking out 11 times against Williams in five-plus innings on Monday night, the Sox didn’t provide the biggest counterargument.
Yet in scratching out a 4-3 victory in Cleveland to take a commanding 2-0 lead in their best-of-five series against the Guardians, White Sox hitters found an alternate way to pester the American League strikeout leader. Working three walks and several long at-bats had Williams’ pitch count at 98 after yielding a full-count leadoff single to Miguel Vargas in the sixth.
That hit wound up being the tying run as the Sox erased a 2-1 deficit with a decisive three-run sixth, after getting to work on Guardians lefty reliever Erik Sabrowski. All year, Sabrowski was effective but wild, but the latter quality took center stage.
Sabrowski got Munetaka Murakami to bounce out to first, but walked pinch-hitter Randal Grichuk and pushed both runners into scoring position with a wild pitch. One out away from an escape after getting pinch-hitter Tommy Pham to pop up a 3-1 pitch, Sabrowski’s first-pitch fastball was ambushed by scuffling rookie Braden Montgomery for a go-ahead two-run double scorched down the right field line. When right-hander Hunter Gaddis entered for a favorable matchup against Chase Meidroth, the Sox second baseman continued his massive postseason by blooping a fastball off the plate into short right field for an RBI single.
As it turns out, Grant Taylor was available to pitch after logging four innings on Saturday. It was just a question of how crisp he was. After an eighth-inning two-out single to Chase DeLauter marked Sean Burke’s first hit allowed in 5 ⅓ innings of brilliant bulk work, Taylor came on and immediately allowed a booming triple off the center field wall to Jo Adell, before a deep fly out to Nathaniel Lowe ended the damage. Two more loud outs followed in the bottom of the ninth, but Brenton Doyle made a leaping catch at the wall on Patrick Bailey’s drive to center to end it.
The stirring rally erased an early 2-0 deficit built with the sort of mistakes that were supposed to be too much for the Sox to overcome. Venable has stressed that his club could ill-afford to yield extra bases to a relentless Guardians team in any form: be it via walks, errors, or stolen bases allowed. The best that can be said about Sox pitchers’ work in the first inning is that no stolen bases were attempted.
Venable would have liked a 1-2-3 first from opener Anthony Kay, and to pull him before he could face the right-handed Adell. Instead, Kay allowed a single to Steven Kwan before walking Jose Ramirez, prompting Venable to turn to Sean Newcomb. When Newcomb immediately fell behind Adell 2-0, Venable opted for an intentional walk to load the bases.
From there, Newcomb’s pitching was unimpeachable. He induced an infield chopper from Lowe before striking out Angel Martinez and Travis Bazzana to end the inning. The only issue was that Newcomb’s throw on Lowe’s chopper skipped in the dirt past Murakami at first, allowing two runs to score and staking the Guardians to a lead they’d hold until the sixth.
The Sox cut the lead in half by group half of their four hits off Williams together in the fourth. Kyle Teel fended off a sweeper at his knees for a leadoff single before a Vargas walk pushed him to second, from where he scored when Murakami ripped a 99.5 mph through the right side of the infield for an RBI single. Williams responded by retiring the next three hitters in order, striking out Andrew Benintendi (on three pitches) and Braden Montgomery to end the threat.