White Sox hitters maintained their league lead in hits tonight.
White Sox pitchers maintained their league lead in hits allowed, but they kept the ball in the park until the game's penultimate batter.
Fortunately, they led by seven at that point, so Andrew McCutchen could hit a crowd-pleasing homer off Reynaldo López with two outs in the bottom of the ninth with no impact to the bottom line.
The Sox didn't homer, but they did just about everything else offensively. They racked up 14 hits. They drew six walks, along with an HBP. They went 7-for-16 with runners in scoring position. They stole four bases in four attempts.
On the pitching side, Mike Clevinger joined the rest of the rotation in looking worse on his second turn, but he did just enough to maintain the lead and pick up his second win. He only got four swinging strikes on 88 pitches, and his slider spent plenty of time in the hittable zones, but the best contact went to the deepest parts of PNC Park, where either Luis Robert Jr. or Andrew Benintendi could catch it.
The Sox gave old friend Vince Velasquez a much harder time. Oscar Colás struck the first blow in the second inning, dropping a game-tying RBI single into left field to pick up Yasmani Grandal, who grounded into a double play after the first two batters reached.
Velasquez didn't make it out of the third. Tim Anderson doubled, took third on Robert's deep flyout, and then scored when Benintendi took advantage of a strange call to play the infield in with a single that barely cleared the standard shortstop position.
Benintendi then stole second, which took the double play out of order when Yoán Moncada hit the second of his five groundouts. Andrew Vaughn walked, and so did Gavin Sheets to load the bases. Velasquez hadn't looked right after an awkward landing during this time, and Grandal capitalized with a single through the middle to score two for a 5-1 lead.
Five runs didn't end up being enough to win the game, but the Sox made sure it never quite approached "tense." Oneil Cruz got one of the runs back in the bottom of the third by singling with one out, stealing second, advancing to third on an errant Clevinger pickoff, and scoring on a Brian Reynolds sac fly, but the Pirates never managed to go on a tear of unanswered runs.
The Sox restored the four-run lead in the fifth inning when they loaded the bases with nobody out, and Vaughn ended up coming home on Elvis Andrus' sac fly to medium right field. (Vaughn didn't seem convinced that he could score even on a clean break, but Andrew McCutchen couldn't immediately find the ball, and thus didn't get into throwing position. The throw went to a cutoff man, and Vaughn eventually motored home after the hesitation.)
Clevinger then gave up two runs during some fifth-inning woes that are characteristic of this staff, but the Sox put the game out of reach with a five-run seventh. Vaughn once again started it with a single,. moved to third on Grandal's one-out double, and scored on Colás single through the right side of another drawn-in infield (his first hit off a lefty).
Duane Underwood Jr. entered and immediately was penalized a ball for being late on his warm-up tosses, setting up the rare first-pitch RBI single on a 1-0 count. Elvis Andrus notched the knock and the RBI, after which Tim Anderson and Robert made it four consecutive singles and an 11-4 game.
Bullet points:
*Pitch clock violations were plentiful in this one. Kelly joined Underwood in starting his night with a 1-0 count, Robert and Ji-Hwan Bae were hit with batter violations, Velasquez and Rob Zastryzny let the clock lapse, and Graveman gave up ball four when he disengaged with the mound to request a new ball with a full count and nobody on.
*The Pirates' top four went 8-for-16. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-19.
*Moncada went 0-for-5 with a double play. The rest of the White Sox lineup went 14-for-33 with six walks.
*Colás drew one of those walks, his first in the majors.
*Robert made a fine running catch on the warning track in center without having to leave his feet. It didn't look like a highlight, but that's the point.
*Sheets reached base all three times, but Jake Burger struck out in both of his at-bats against lefty relievers, which is unusual.
