The White Sox made it two in Cleveland as they took the second game, and the series from the Indians on Saturday afternoon behind solid pitching by Edwin Jackson and multi-RBI days from Gordon Beckham and Carlos Quentin. Jackson, who has not earned a loss against the Indians in his past nine starts against them, was solid through six frames, giving up just three runs on five hits. Jackson actually pitched better than the stat line suggests as only one of those runs, a Travis Hafner home run, was his fault. The others were allowed in large part thanks to errors by third baseman Brent Morel.
Fortunately, the Sox had taken advantage of a bad start by Carlos Carrasco to take a 5-0 lead by the end of the second. Perhaps in a sign of the times, less than 10,000 Cleveland fans were on hand to watch the Indians dig themselves into yet another deep hole.
The Sox put up most of their runs in the second inning after good hitting by Alexei Ramirez, Beckham, and Adam Dunn. Chicago likely would have had more runs tallied had Cleveland’s Jack Hannahan not made a fantastic catch to rob Alex Rios of a run scoring line drive hit. Unlike in their opener, the White Sox bullpen was also sharp on Saturday, holding the Indians scoreless after Jackson departed. The Sox put the game away in the sixth and seventh as they grabbed two more runs off of Carrasco and one off of Chad Durbin in relief.
The Sox will go for the sweep on Sunday afternoon at 12:05 P.M. CDT.