'This isn't over': White Sox night of HRs has team believing

CHICAGO -- The White Sox didn’t need much of an opening to take control of an eventual 8-3 victory over the Guardians during Tuesday’s series opener at Guaranteed Rate Field.

And that spark inadvertently came from Cleveland catcher Mike Zunino.

With two outs, nobody on and a 3-2 count on Luis Robert Jr. in a scoreless pitchers' battle between Lance Lynn and Shane Bieber in the bottom of the fifth, Robert Jr. reached on a catcher’s interference call against Zunino. The contact from Robert Jr. knocked the ball toward first baseman Josh Naylor for a routine grounder, but his direct hit on Zunino’s glove is what really counted.

Six straight hits followed in what would be a six-run inning, keeping the White Sox (15-28) from falling 14 games under .500 for the first time this season. That stat is admittedly a cup half-empty way of looking at one of the team’s most impressive wins from a disappointing season.

“That's the crazy part about this game, right?” Lynn said of the odd rally-starter. “Something as weird as a catcher's interference can spark an inning like that. But the guys just kept it rolling, kept the pressure on with two outs and the next thing you know, he's out of the game.

“Guys had a great game plan. They waited him out and they finally made him pay when they got some runners on."

Yoán Moncada’s single to right, with Robert Jr. running, scored the game’s first run in the fifth. Andrew Vaughn singled, and Gavin Sheets launched a long home run to right-center field for his fifth overall and a 4-0 advantage.

“Both of the guys were throwing it really well,” Sheets said. “So to have that inning was huge for us. The way Lance was throwing the ball tonight, give him some run support finally and let him do his thing.”

“When Gavin got up to the plate, I’m like, ‘He’s about to go yard here,’” White Sox designated hitter Jake Burger said. “There’s just a feeling. He connected and the place erupted.”

Sheets didn’t get to wear the Chicago mob-looking celebratory hat and jacket for too long, as Burger went deep for the ninth time following Yasmani Grandal’s single. Burger has homered in two straight games, and his opposite-field drive down the right-field line knocked Bieber from the game.

Those 12 hits allowed by Bieber (3-2) represented a career high.

“I’m just happy with our guys,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said. “They’re just continuing to fight and put together at-bats and not waste any at-bats. That’s the key to this whole thing. We’ve got 27 outs, don’t waste them.”

Robert Jr. made sure Tuesday’s statement was punctuated with an exclamation point, as he homered in the eighth. It was the fourth straight game with a homer for Robert Jr., who leads the AL with 12, and he now sits one short of tying the franchise record of homering in five straight.

Seven players share that mark, with talk show host and one-time White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski the last to do such a thing from July 30 to Aug. 5, 2012. All of this support made a winner of Lynn (2-5), who came into this game with the worst ERA among AL qualified pitchers and exited allowing one earned run (three overall) in seven-plus innings.

Lynn looked like his old self to Cleveland manager Terry Francona.

“Yeah, he sure did,” Francona said. “To the left-handers, he cut it. To the righties, he sank it in. He just had the fastball going two different directions and gave us a really tough time.”

A trick for the White Sox is to keep this great feeling going for more than a day or three. Fifteen of their next 18 games are against the AL Central, so they are in a perfect spot to dig free from the hole where Grifol’s crew presently resides.

“This isn’t over. It’s not over,” Sheets said. “We have too much talent. We got some big matchups these next two weeks and we can still make a statement and have a great May and take it into June and see what happens. This isn’t over.”

“We have to take it one game, one series at a time,” said Lynn, who struck out seven without a walk. “But that's how you've got to do it anyway, really. You start looking ahead for series or stretches or stuff like that, that's usually when this game kicks you in the ass. Hopefully we stay in that mindset: one series at a time, one game at a time."