Mike Clevinger struck out a season-high 10 across seven sharp innings of a combined two-hitter and Yoan Moncada was 4-for-4 with two RBIs as the host Chicago White Sox defeated the Oakland Athletics 6-1 on Sunday.
After losing the first two games of the four-game weekend series by a combined score of 20-9, the White Sox outscored the A’s 12-3 in the final two games to salvage a split.
Clevinger (6-6) scattered one run, one hit and two walks. He threw 63 of his 95 pitches for strikes. Relievers Lane Ramsey and Tanner Banks followed with two innings of one-hit, one-walk relief with three strikeouts.
Chicago out-hit Oakland 14-2. Tim Anderson, Andrew Benintendi, and Andrew Vaughn had two hits each. Moncada collected his sixth career four-hit game and first at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Anderson hit a leadoff double in the bottom of the first inning and scored the game’s first run on Vaughn’s RBI single three batters later.
Sharper base running might have prolonged the rally against Oakland starter Paul Blackburn. Anderson merely jogged down the first-base line on his hit, which eluded a diving attempt from A’s right fielder Seth Brown. Eloy Jimenez, meanwhile, was cut down on the base paths after getting caught too far off second base on Vaughn’s hit.
Chicago capitalized on Oakland’s defensive struggles to score two runs in the third. A throwing error by third baseman Jordan Diaz allowed Benintendi to score from first base on a Vaughn single. Vaughn scored from third on a wild pitch later in the inning.
The A’s tallied their lone run in the sixth. Esteury Ruiz stole second and third base after leading off the inning with a single to left that spoiled Clevinger’s no-hit bid. Ruiz joined Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna Jr. as the only players with at least 50 stolen bases this season before scoring on a Zack Gelof sacrifice fly.
Blackburn (3-4) allowed four runs and nine hits in six innings with two walks and six strikeouts.
Gavin Sheets had an RBI single in the bottom half of the sixth inning to score Moncada, whose two-run double an inning later accounted for the final margin.
Brown was ejected in the sixth.
–Field Level Media
