When Tanner Bibee needed just four pitches to complete an eighth scoreless inning against the White Sox, the question wasn't so much whether he could complete the shutout, but whether he could post a Maddux by doing it in fewer than 100 pitches.
There turned out to be a little more mystery when Bibee opened the ninth by plunking Will Robertson on the foot. Some mild fluctuations in command forced him to throw 103 pitches, but Nolan Jones snared Lenyn Sosa's soft line drive to right with a diving catch to preserve the shutout part of the equation.
The Sox wasted no time being flummoxed when Bibee retired the first six in order, including three strikeouts looking. They briefly showed signs of life in the third inning when Chase Meidroth and Robertson poked a couple of soft singles into the outfield with one out. Mike Tauchman followed with a bouncer up the middle, and Robertson never ended up tracking the contact, so he ran right into Gabriel Arias' tag as he came across the middle, allowing him to start an easy 6-3 double play to end the inning.
Those were the only two hits the Sox mustered all night, and a José Ramírez two-out error yielded the only other Bibee baserunner before the ninth inning.
That meant that Martín Pérez suffered the loss as soon as his 2-2 cutter to David Fry with two outs in the fourth inning drifted over the inside half of the plate, and Fry golfed it over the left field wall for the game's first run.
The Guardians hassled the Sox into three more runs scattered over three other innings, all with two outs. In the fifth, Pérez jammed Austin Hedges with a runner on second, but Hedges was able to overcome a shattered bat to muscle a single into left for a 2-0 Cleveland lead.
Pérez recovered for a scoreless sixth, but his bid for a scoreless seventh ended an out short. He gave up a two-out double to Gabriel Arias, and when Steven Wilson entered to face Jhonkensy Noel, Steven Vogt countered with Nolan Jones, who grounded a single past Chase Meidroth to make it 3-0.
In the eighth, Angel Martínez then dropped the bat head on a decent 1-2 Wilson changeup off the plate and lofted it over the right field wall for the final score. At least Will Venable only had to use two pitchers on the evening, although that was one more than Vogt needed.
Bullet points:
*Kyle Teel went 0-for-4 with three groundouts and a strikeout, ending his on-base streak at 20 games.
*Miguel Vargas made a great play ranging to his right, throwing across the diamond to beat José Ramírez by a fraction of a step preceding the Fry homer in the fourth.
*The White Sox have been shut out 10 times this season.
*Brooks Baldwin left the game early with what the team termed as left hip soreness.
