Indians 9, White Sox 4
CLEVELAND -- When their three-game series began Friday night both the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White were struggling. After the first two games of the series, the Indians are no longer struggling but the White Sox still are.
Cleveland belted three home runs, including a grand slam by Mark Reynolds, and right-hander Zach McAllister pitched into the seventh inning as the Indians followed their 1-0 win on Friday with a 9-4 victory Saturday at Progressive Field. The White Sox have now lost five games in a row and seven of their last nine.
McAllister pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing one earned run on five hits. He struck out six and did not walk a batter to even his record at 1-1. White Sox starter Chris Sale, meanwhile, never made it out of the fifth inning, giving up a career-high eight runs. He is 1-1.
After Chicago scored two unearned runs in the top of the first inning the Indians, who were held to just three hits in their win Friday night, went to work on Sale.
With two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the first, Ryan Raburn walked and rode home on Nick Swisher's first home run in a Cleveland uniform, a two-run shot over the left field wall that briefly tied the score at 2-2.
It was all Cleveland after that. The Indians made it 3-2 in the third inning on an RBI single by Reynolds, who matched his career high with five RBI.
The Indians blew the game open, and knocked Sale out of the box, with a six-run, two-homer fifth inning. Asdrubal Cabrera led the inning off with a single and went to third on a double by Raburn. Swisher was hit by a pitch, loading the bases.
Reynolds then pounded a 1-1 pitch from Sale over the leftfield wall for his fifth home run of the season, a grand slam that made it 7-2. Sale hit the next batter, Michael Brantley, with a pitch, prompting a warning to both benches from home plate umpire Ed Hickox.
One out later, Sale was relieved by Deunte Heath, and Heath's first pitch was blasted over the centerfield wall by Yan Gomes, a 415-foot two-run homer that made it 9-2.
Alejandro De Aza's two-run home run off Indians reliever Bryan Shaw in the seventh inning accounted for the White Sox's final runs.
NOTES: Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis was a late scratch due to left elbow inflammation... Catcher Carlos Santana was in the Indians' original starting lineup, but he was scratched after batting practice due to continued pain in his bruised left thumb. Santana hasn't played since April 8... White Sox catcher Tyler Flowers went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and is now hitless in his last 21 at bats and is in a 2-for-26 slide... Chicago outfielder Alex Rios went 0-for-4, which snapped his 10-game hitting streak that had been the longest in the majors. Rios had also hit safely in 16 consecutive games going back to last year.
