Six Pack of Stats: White Sox 4, Athletics 1
Dylan Cease is that guy, in case you missed it
The Chicago White Sox launched a couple of home runs (not to mention Dylan Cease’s continued dominance) and took the weekend series against the Oakland Athletics!
The Starters
With every game I have covered with Dylan Cease as a starter, I become more and more amazed on how incredible his pitching has been this year, and a little more angry over his lack of All-Star selection. However, Cease has a bigger goal: AL Cy Young. (Most stat prognosticators have him sitting in third place right now.)
Notching a quality start this afternoon, Cease scattered four hits (including a solo home run) across six innings with only one walk. He struck out seven.
His 94-pitch count breaks down like this:
Adam Oller had a better start than anticipated. Through 6 1⁄3 innings, Oller allowed four runs off of seven hits (two home runs), but zero walks. He did strike out six Good Guys.
His 96-pitch afternoon looked like this:
Pressure Play
With a runner on first in the seventh inning and down 3-1, Elvis Andrus grounded into a 2.36 LI double play for the first two outs of the inning against Joe Kelly (who is back and pitching!).
Pressure Cooker
Joe Kelly allowed a single to open the seventh frame, but he worked around it for a scoreless, 1.39 pLI appearance.
Top Play
José Abreu’s game-tying home run in the second inning recorded a WPA of .115 and catalyzed a three-run inning for the South Siders.
José Abreu!#ChangeTheGame | @NBCSChicago pic.twitter.com/DPi8P55LKv
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) July 31, 2022
Top Performer
Cease blew away everyone in today’s game with his .208 WPA.
Smackdown
Hardest hit: Eloy Jiménez finally saw one of his fly balls leave for a home run (109.8 mph) in the seventh inning.
Weakest contact: Tony Kemp’s 45 mph ground out in the first reigned supreme for the weakest contact all game.
Luckiest hit: Dylan Cease gave up a sixth-inning single, which is an out 91% of the time, to Jonah Bride.
Toughest out: Stephen Vogt’s eighth-inning line out is typically a hit 77% of the time.
Longest hit: Eloy’s insurance home run in the seventh traveled 420 feet.
Magic Number: 4
Dylan Cease:
— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) July 31, 2022
In June: 0.33 ERA (1 ER in 27 1/3 innings)
In July: 0.77 ERA (3 ER in 35 2/3 innings)
Complete list of MLB starting pitchers in all of history to allow only 4 earned runs in an 12-start span (not including openers):
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) July 31, 2022
Jake Arrieta, 2015
Jacob deGrom, 2021
Dylan Cease, 2022
That's it. That's the list. pic.twitter.com/WcwVrmJlZy
Glossary
Hard-hit is any ball off the bat at 95 mph or more
LI measures pressure per play
pLI measures total pressure faced in-game
Whiff a swing-and-miss
WPA win probability added measures contributions to the win
xBA expected batting average