White Sox offense pours it on in win over Indians

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CLEVELAND — The White Sox offense started a two-out hit parade early on Thursday night and didn't slow down.

Tim Anderson and Matt Davidson powered a five-run first inning with home runs and the White Sox added on late in a 10-4 victory over the Cleveland Indians in front of 15,060 at Progressive Field. Davidson and Avisail Garcia each drove in three runs for the White Sox, who produced nine two-out runs to improve to 4-4 and claim their first series victory of the season.

"When you get that hit with two outs it keeps it going and puts the pressure on the bullpen and pitchers extending their pitch counts and stuff," Davidson said. "I can't remember, there's a stat that somebody brought up about after a certain amount of pitches in an inning, the OPS skyrockets, like after 14 or 15. It was a pretty interesting stat, so extending those innings is huge for us."

The White Sox offense emerged for the first time since Saturday and they did so early.

Anderson ripped Josh Tomlin's first pitch out to left for a solo shot -- the team’s only run with less than two outs — and the White Sox continued to add on.

Garcia singled with two outs and a man on to extend the first inning for Davidson, who blasted a Tomlin pitch 401 feet the opposite way for a 4-0 lead. Davidson has driven in eight runs in 19 plate appearances.

Yolmer Sanchez then doubled and scored on an RBI single by Omar Narvaez to put the White Sox ahead by five.

The White Sox scored twice more in the second inning on a two-run single by Garcia that knocked Tomlin out of the game and made it a 7-1 contest. The two-out trend in the eighth inning when Jose Abreu, Cody Asche and Garcia all singled in runs.

It was a much-needed outburst from an offense that has struggled to score in all but two previous contests. While the team is averaging 4.4 runs per game through their first eight contests, 27 of the 35 have come in three games. The team has scored two or fewer runs four times already and produced three in their other contest.

"It's big," said Garcia, who is hitting .452 with eight RBIs. "They have a really good team. It's a strong team with strong pitching and hitting. It's good when you win a game like that. You just have to keep working and playing the game the right way."

Starter Miguel Gonzalez couldn't take advantage of the outburst, but the big cushion helped the White Sox manage a potentially precarious situation. Gonzalez ran a high pitch count early with four walks and five strikeouts in the first four frames and a two-run Cleveland rally chased him in the fifth. He allowed three earned runs, eight hits, four walks and struck out five in 4 2/3 innings.

The White Sox preferred to stay away from Zach Putnam, Nate Jones and David Robertson, all of whom had heavy use the previous few days.

Anthony Swarzak gave the White Sox a big lift with 1 2/3 scoreless innings. Dan Jennings went another 1 2/3 innings himself and Tommy Kahnle pitched a scoreless ninth to close out the victory.

"Everybody that came in and gave the innings they did and gave us the outs, they did a spectacular job," Renteria said. "All of them kind of rose to the occasion and stifled anything that the Indians were trying to do.

"The guys just came in and played. We had some good at-bats, we had some breaks, we had some things go our way and fortunately for us we walked away with this series and we're happy about that."

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