With Dylan Cease on the mound, facing a Minnesota lineup that lacked Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and others, the White Sox really needed to win this game.
They did. Just don't ask them how, unless you only intend to talk to the bullpen.
Even with Joe Kelly hitting the injured list right before the game for the dumbest of reasons, four White Sox relievers successfully protected a one-run lead from the sixth inning on, capped by a four-out Reynaldo López save.
The White Sox gained their lead through one of the more unlikely avenues -- a three-run homer by Hanser Alberto off Kenta Maeda -- and then they almost gave it away with a series of errors and other unfortunate events.
Alberto atoned for one of his mistakes. With two outs and the bases loaded in the third inning, he boxed Nick Gordon's hard-but-direct grounder for the game's first run. Cease struck out Kyle Farmer to end the inning, and then the Sox went to work on their only scoring frame of the game.
Andrew Benintendi led off with a single, took second two batters later on Gavin Sheets' single to right, then scored when Yasmani Grandal's grounder found a hole to the right side of second base.
Up came Alberto, who watched a first-pitch sinker. Maeda then followed with a spinning slider on the inner half, and while he threw his share of them, Alberto was the only one who figured out how to do damage, hoisting it out to left for a three-run shot and a three-run lead.
Then Alberto played a part in whittling down said lead. Cease put two of the first three batters on base in the fourth with an HBP of Matt Wallner and a walk of Christian Vazquez. He recovered by getting a tailor-made 5-4-3 ball off the bat of Michael A. Taylor.
Alberto did not see the 5-4-3. He was instead distracted by Wallner, and chose to try to get the lead runners out. He forced out Vazquez at second while Wallner retreated, but when Wallner headed for third after the throw, Alberto cut off Elvis Andrus' throw to third halfway, but missed the tag on Wallner. Then he flipped wide to Anderson, and as Anderson sprawled to block the ball, Waller flopped onto him to get to third safely.
That mistake hurt the Sox in a couple ways. Trevor Larnach took advantage of the extra out with an RBI single that made it a 4-2 game, and Anderson eventually had to leave the game with a sore knee.
The right side of the infield then made a mess of things an inning later. With one out, Elvis Andrus got handcuffed by a Gordon grounder. Cease struck out Farmer for what should've been the third out, then got Wallner to hit a firm-but-direct grounder to Gavin Sheets for what should've been the actual third out.
Instead, Sheets Bucknered it, and then he spent the rest of the play in a daze. First, he suffered a jolt when he walked backwards into the baseline as Waller approached first, and then he cut off Oscar Colás on-target throw home, which might've had a real shot at getting Gordon at the plate.
Cease struck out Willi Castro for a fifth out to finish five innings, and his afternoon It was a classic Cease start, with all that entails. He had dynamic stuff, and he allowed just one earned run over five innings, six strikeouts, just three hits allowed, but he issued four free bases with two walks and two HBPs. It also didn't help that the errors put about 20 extra pitches on his tab, giving him 98 through five.
Fortunately, the bullpen was up to the task.
Jimmy Lambert, pitching for the seventh time in just 11 games, threw a perfect sixth with two strikeouts. Kendall Graveman pitched around a one-out single. Aaron Bummer plunked Castro with one out, but an exceptional ranging play by Romy González at second base got him his second out, and López came out of the bullpen to strike out Taylor to close out the eighth, followed by a perfect ninth.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox outhit the Twins 8-4, including a 3-0 edge on extra-base hits. The Twins nearly made up the margins with a 3-0 edge in plunkings, and a 3-0 edge in reaching on errors.
*Grandal bailed out López from a pitch clock violation that would've created a full count for Jose Miranda with one out in the ninth inning. López missed with a fastball to fill the count, but got a groundout.
*Alberto played because Yoán Moncada had a sore back. Moncada had lost some bat speed during the Pittsburgh series, with grounders to the right and pop-ups to the left over the last two games.
