Sale Outpitches Lester, White Sox Beat

Remember the talk last spring that all the big offseason acquisitions had spurred ticket sales on the South Side? The Sox had a 2-0 lead by then and it looked like Lester was headed for a disaster.

Lester got outpitched by Chris Sale, and the Chicago Cubs lost 5-1 to the White Sox on Saturday.

Samardzija did Thursday, and celebrated his 2-0 shutout victory over the Blue Jays by throwing the ball into the right-field upper deck, where it landed above a suite.

They broke open the game with three more in the seventh against Lester (4-8), making the most of Kris Bryant’s errant throw on Avisail Garcia’s grounder. That’s why you play 162. “It wasn’t pleasant to watch, a lot of mistakes happening”. I believe it will come back to the “glory days”, but this is going to take some time. “He battled all the way and really deserves better”.

Sale said the game was fun, coming into the game with jokes, laughter, and some music playing. That made Abreu’s job simple, as he just bounced a single past Starlin Castro for the Sox’ second run.

Indians 5, A’s 1 • Danny Salazar scattered five hits while allowing an unearned run in 8 2/3 innings, and Cleveland capitalized on a four-run sixth inning to win at home.

The Cubs scored their only run off of Sale in the bottom of the seventh inning.

Both teams made some nice defensive plays. Minus a couple of exceptions – namely Rick Sutcliffe in 1984 – that pitcher isn’t winning 90 percent of those starts. With runners on first and second, Adam LaRoche doubled to extend the lead to 3-0.

Buehrle (10-5) limited the Royals to two runs and five hits while improving to 4-0 with a 1.24 ERA in his past four starts against them.

“You don’t want to count on it”, he replied. And as long as the Cubs’ pitching staff is healthy it’s not like Samardzija would necessarily be a playoff pitcher until they got deep into a series. They will face a Cubs team struggling to get anything moving on offense. For many games, that might have given a pitcher’s team a chance to come back.

Sale has been so brilliant of late that allowing one run while striking out 10 on Saturday was nearly expected.

“Yeah, man, it’s a rivalry”, he said. “Good atmosphere, sold-out crowd …”

While Samardzija and the Chicago White Sox have finished their season series with Toronto, the right-hander has been the subject of trade rumours as the July 31 non-waiver deadline approaches. Hard to believe it was only two weeks ago that Williams went into Ventura’s office in Detroit and asked a simple question.

“It kills me to watch them go out there constantly and give a great effort and strike out 12 or 14 the other night”.