Luis Robert Jr. homered with two outs in the top of the ninth inning to propel the visiting Chicago White Sox to a 1-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox in wet conditions Saturday.
The home run, which landed just inside the foul pole in right field, came against reliever Josh Winckowski (4-3). According to Statcast, the ball traveled 311 feet. It was Robert’s 38th home run of the season.
The Red Sox had runners on first and second with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, but Bryan Shaw struck out rookie Ceddanne Rafaela to end the game. Shaw, who gave up singles to Enmanuel Valdez and Reese McGuire in the inning, recorded his third save.
The loss ended Chicago’s three-game losing streak. A loss would have left the White Sox (59-96) 39 games below the .500-mark for the first time since 1970.
Boston (76-79) squandered a good scoring opportunity in the eighth when Rafaela and Rafael Devers led off the inning by drawing back-to-back walks against White Sox reliever Aaron Bummer, but Bummer (5-5) struck out Justin Turner, retired Alex Verdugo on a shallow fly ball to center field and got Masataka Yoshida to ground out to first.
Chicago received a strong start from Dylan Cease, who struck out 11 in seven scoreless innings. He allowed six hits, and didn’t issue any walks.
Cease entered the game with 196 strikeouts and surpassed the 200-strikeout mark for the third consecutive season. Cease joined Ed Walsh (1910-12) and Chris Sale (2013-16) as the only White Sox pitchers to have three straight seasons with at least 200 strikeouts.
Boston’s Nick Pivetta also tossed seven scoreless innings. Pivetta limited the White Sox to three hits — all singles — walked one and struck out seven
Yoshida collected three hits for the Red Sox, who also received two hits from Valdez.
Eloy Jimenez had two of Chicago’s five hits.
–Field Level Media