By throwing José Ramirez a hittable 3-2 fastball with a base open in the first inning, Lance Lynn looked like he was more concerned with taking the straightest line to six innings regardless of the score.
Unfortunately, the rest of his teammates were similarly inclined to get the game over with as quickly as possible, at least when they came to the plate. If they took that attitude in the field, perhaps Lynn's six innings might've come easier.
Lynn accomplished his goal of six innings, but it wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Ethan Katz and James Kruk visited him on the mound before the fifth inning due to what he said was "a tweak in his back" but stayed in the game.
That didn't appear to be the problem so much as the White Sox infield, with Yoán Moncada, Tim Anderson and César Hernández all having problems getting a handle on the baseball at various points of the evening.
A 3-0 game turned into a 6-0 snoozer in the sixth due to a lot of bad contact. Hernández allowed a Myles Straw infield single to start the inning when he couldn't get a clean exchange, and moved to second on Amed Rosario's grounder to short that Anderson double-clutched on. Ramirez shot a single past Hernández's outstretched glove for an RBI single that putrunners on the corners, and after a Ramírez stolen base, Franmil Reyes' grounder glanced off Lynn's glove and into shallow center field for another run. Bobby Bradley's sac fly made it a 6-0 game, and Lynn ended up needing 31 pitches to finish the inning despite not doing anything particularly wrong.
The mistakes were plentiful elsewhere. On defense, Moncada bobbled a Harold Ramirez grounder and threw wide for a leadoff error in the second, although Lynn erased it with a double-play ball. Anderson also couldn't snag a sinking liner, although at least he stopped it and got a force at second, since the runner at first froze on the assumption it'd be caught.
At the plate, the White Sox only had three hits, or four if you count Eloy Jiménez's hard grounder through Ramírez at third. While Cleveland hit a couple homers off Lynn -- a two-run shot by Ramírez in the first, and a solo shot by Andres Gimenez in the third -- the Sox's best flies off Eli Morgan died on the warning track. There weren't many of those. Morgan allowed just a shanked double to Moncada and a walk to Yasmani Grandal over six innings. His changeup was equally effective to righties and lefties, resulting in six strikeouts and six groundouts. All that work was necessary just to lower his ERA to 5.27.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position, while Cleveland was 3-for-4.
*Ryan Burr struck out the side in a scoreless eighth.
