Even after the last two nights, the Guardians have a ways to go to catch the White Sox for walk-off hits on the season, but they'll settle for the AL Central division lead instead.
The Sox have made a name for themselves largely with power, and hit six of the seven farthest struck batted balls on Friday night. But five of them went for outs, where as a pair of hard grounders from Travis Bazzana and Khalil Watson off Sean Newcomb plated a game-winning Manfred Man for Cleveland in the 10th, three innings after an Austin Hedges grounder off Colson Montgomery's foot, and a Steven Kwan bloop single erased an early 3-1 lead.
That's why they play the game, rather than determine the winner by sorting a Baseball Savant chart. At least the one Sox breakthrough was well-timed to string out the drama.
Two outs into the fifth with runners on the corners, down 0-2 with rain pelting down from a dark Cleveland sky, Miguel Vargas basically had the game on his shoulders. Despite only having a single 1-2-3 inning, Gavin Williams was one good sweeper away from sealing five scoreless and possibly making a 1-0 Guardians win official with the oncoming weather delay. Instead, Williams' fourth bender of his 10-pitch battle with Vargas was his worst, and was instead bent around the left field foul pole for a three-run shot to put the White Sox ahead, and deny a tidy resolution.
A one hour and 55-minute rain delay followed, pushing both starters from the affair, and booting Anthony Kay an inning shy of qualifying for the victory. He only struck out two in four innings of one-run ball, but the Guardians looked no more dangerous against his stuff than they did a week ago in Chicago. The lone run against Kay came when he lost his feel of the inside corner to righties, walking Gabriel Arias and Hedges successively, before Bazzana softly poked a cutter off the edge into short center, plating a run with Cleveland's only hit off the starter.
Getting 15 outs on a night where Kay looked primed to go deeper required Will Venable to probe the depths of his bullpen, but that turned out to be the best part. After Jordan Hicks and Chris Murphy delivered scoreless innings in the fifth and sixth, Trevor Richards cut through the heart of the order to deliver a scoreless eighth and ninth, pitching over a dropped third strike to Hedges to send it to the extras.
It's when Venable tried to revive a name brand leverage option by giving Seranthony Domínguez the seventh, and rescue him with another in Bryan Hudson that things went sideways in a manner typical to a late night at Progressive Field. Domínguez (and Hudson) pitched a bit better than being charged with the two tying runs might indicate, but as is often the case, he did himself by no favors with an uncompetitive leadoff walk in what should've been his best matchup, right-hander Rhys Hoskins.
After recovering to further Kyle Manzardo's awful night (0-for-4, 3K), Domínguez got ahead of Thursday's villain Bryan Rocchio, but didn't get the call on a full count slider, and Venable wasn't inclined to include "strand the tying runs" in his scuffling closer's performance improvement plan. Hudson came on and aced Daniel Schneemann before getting Hedges to top a heater into the hole at short, and jamming Kwan with a fastball on his hands, both to ill effect. Montgomery's misplay of Hedges grounder was ugly and allowed Hoskins to score, but he would have come home on Kwan's bloop anyway. Sam Antonacci was charged with an error for booting Rocchio to third while fielding Kwan's hit, but it didn't lead to an extra run.
The Sox went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position while the Guardians went 5-for-8, but both lines got distended by the extra runner in the 10th. Pinch-hitters Randal Grichuk and Junior Pérez both stared at two-strike fastballs in the zone from lefty Erik Sabrowski, while Antonacci flied out to the track for his second-straight at-bat, setting up Cleveland to win it by just hitting ground balls off a ground ball pitcher.
Bullet points:
*Vargas' 20th clout of the year gives the Sox a trio of hitters (Colson Montgomery, Munetaka Murakami) with 20 home runs or more before the All-Star break for the first time Jim Thome, Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko in 2006.
*Teel went 2-for-3 on challenges behind the plate, but the Sox theory that it's the bullets you don't fire that really haunt held true. Domínguez's outing might have flipped had Teel challenged his full count backdoor sweeper to Rocchio, and Vargas hated but declined to challenge the call on a low 1-1 curveball from Colin Holderman before striking out to lead off the eighth.
*For the second time in three days, Peters made a highlight reel catch capped by slamming into the center field wall, this time to rob Schneeman of extra bases in the ninth.
*At 47-42, the Guardians now both lead the AL Central by a game, and hold a 3-2 season series lead.
