Dylan Cease matched career-high 11 strikeouts in back-to-back starts, but wasn’t enough to lead the South Siders to victory.
It’s starting to feel like the same old song-and-dance: “White Sox lose a heartbreaker.”
Unfortunately, the Chicago pitching wasn’t enough to hold off New York in the opener of a huge, four-game set.
Luis Gil for the Yankees made his first major league start of the 2022 season, and while he gave up four runs to the White Sox, he was able to hold them to four with his team in the lead.
In four innings, Gil gave up four runs on five hits, while striking out five South Siders. Gil used three pitches, relying heavily on his fastball, and of his 83 pitches, he threw 54 for strikes (65%) and had a 30% CSW rate.
His outing looked like this:
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Baseball Savant
Dylan Cease had somewhat of a strange game, as 11 of his 12 outs were strikeouts. Eleven strikeouts through four innings hasn’t been done since 2019, but Dylan scarred his whiff-fest with six hits and six earned runs. He shuffled through four pitches, throwing his fastball on 40 of 90 pitches. His knuckle curve was as disgusting as ever: Seven of 15 thrown were called strikes or whiffed, and it also drew a 47% CSW rate. Overall, Cease had a 48% CSW rate — truly a wild game!
This will be an interesting outing for him to draw back on, as he was still effective, in a way, — but man, did some of those Yankees batters beat him.
His outing looked like this:
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Baseball Savant
Pressure Play
With two outs in the top of the eighth, Aaron Judge came up to bat with bases loaded against Joe Kelly, who had suddenly lost his command. Judge ended up reaching on an infield single to Leury García, and two runs scored on the play to put the Yankees up two. The plate appearance had a 5.71 LI.
Pressure Cooker
Joe Kelly had a 2.11 pLI in today’s outing, the most of any player in the game. Unfortunately, Kelly cracked under that pressure, giving up five earned runs on one hit and four walks.
Top Play
Yoán Moncada’s three-run shot in the bottom of the seventh had a 3.00 LI and increased Chicago’s chances of winning by 34.8% (.348 WPA). Aaron Judge followed closely behind, with a WPA of .340.
Top Performer
Giancarlo Stanton was the top performer, with a WPA of .44 after putting up two home runs, a single, and a walk.
Smackdown
Luckiest Hit: Joey Gallo’s single in the ninth off of Tanner Banks had an xBA of just .070.
Toughest Out: Yoán Moncada’s deep fly out in the fifth inning left the bat at 107.6 mph and had an xBA of .780.
Hardest Hit: Giancarlo Stanton’s single off of Tanner Banks in the eighth left the bat at 116.7 mph.
Weakest Contact: Leury García’s check-swing ground out with the bases loaded in the fourth left the bat at just 41.4 mph. Pain.
Longest Hit: Aaron Judge’s home run off of Ryan Burr nearly reached the Guaranteed Rate Field concourse, traveling 456 feet.
Magic Number: 15
Fifteen runs for the Yankees, 15 hits given up by the Sox, and what felt like 15 walks to seal our fate in the eighth inning. Let’s get ’em tomorrow.