CHICAGO (AP) Chris Sale went the distance on a masterful four-hitter, becoming the first major league pitcher since 2008 to win his first nine starts, as the Chicago White Sox snapped their season-high four game losing streak by beating Houston 2-1 on Thursday night.
Sale walked none and struck out a season-high nine en route to his second straight complete game. No other pitcher has more than seven victories in the big leagues this season.
The Arizona Diamondbacks’ Brandon Webb had been the last to post a 9-0 record in his first nine starts. The last White Sox pitcher to accomplish the feat was Eddie Cicotte in 1919, when he won 12 in a row.
Houston broke the shutout bid in the eighth, when Evan Gattis clubbed Sale’s first pitch for a home run. Jerry Sands’ two-out single off Collin McHugh (4-4) staked Chicago to a 1-0 lead in the second as Todd Frazier got home from second base. Alex Avila hit a sacrifice fly for the second run in the seventh.
Sale lowered his earned run average to 1.58, second to teammate Jose Quintana (1.54) in the American League. He retired the first five batters, allowed a single to Gattis in the second inning then mowed down the next 12 before Jose Altuve singled in the sixth.
White Sox manager Robin Ventura believes the best of 27-year-old Sale is still to come.
”I just see him continuing to get better as the season goes along, as he goes through his career,” Ventura said. ”He’s confident. He’s doing a lot of different things that he hasn’t done in the past as far as just adding a little bit (to his pitches), taking a little off in the heat of the moment.”
The White Sox’s big-lead leading cross-town rivals, the Cubs, suffered their third loss in four, dropping to 28-11 with a 5-3 defeat at Milwaukee.
Brewers’ pitcher Junior Guerra struck out a career-high 11 batters and Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Chris Carter homered to lift Milwaukee to victory.
Jason Hammel (5-1) allowed four runs and five hits in six innings. He had been 8-0 with a 2.37 ERA in 11 career starts against the Brewers.
San Francisco’s Jeff Samardzija pitched eight strong innings, Joe Panik had four hits and Brandon Crawford homered as the NL West-leading Giants won 3-1 at San Diego for their season-high eighth straight victory.
Samardzija (6-2) held San Diego to three hits and one run, struck out eight and walked none. He retired his final 19 batters after giving up an RBI double to Alexi Amarista with two outs in the second.
Samardzija was trying to become the third straight Giants pitcher to get a complete game, after Madison Bumgarner and Johnny Cueto went the distance in the first two games of the series. Samardzija threw 105 pitches.
The Giants went 7-0 on a swing through Arizona and San Diego. They head home to open a three-game series against the Cubs.
In other games, Toronto won 3-2 in 11 innings at Minneapolis, St. Louis beat visiting Colorado 13-7, Washington won 9-1 at the New York Mets, the Yankees won 4-1 at Oakland, Seattle won at Baltimore 7-2, Pittsburgh won 8-2 against visiting Atlanta, the Angels beat the Dodgers 7-4 to take three out of four games in the LA Freeway Series, and Cleveland beat Cincinnati 7-2 to complete the first sweep of the annual Ohio intrastate series, which began in 1997.
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