CLEVELAND — Add the White Sox’ performance in Game 2 of the American League Division Series to their four games in the regular season against Guardians starter Gavin Williams, and it doesn’t look too bad at first for the AL strikeout leader.
Williams has a 3.91 ERA against the Sox, who have the AL’s best scoring offense. After punching out 11 in five-plus innings Monday in Cleveland, his strikeout rate against all hitters this season is a whopping 36.4%.
But he failed to earn the ‘‘W’’ in any of his starts against the Sox and has walked their hitters 10.3% of the time. The Guardians won only one of his five outings against the Sox, via a walk-off in extra innings in June.
It gets worse. Williams failed to get through six innings in any of these outings, and an attempt to get him there Monday — facing the heart of the Sox’ order a third time — is where the game flipped in the visitors’ favor, giving the Sox a 4-3 victory and a 2-0 edge in the best-of-five series.
‘‘With the talented arms that the Guardians have, it’s not just getting a good swing; you have to adjust,’’ manager Will Venable said. ‘‘You’ve got to find different ways to beat them.’’
Miguel Vargas found one. Having already walked twice against Williams, he worked a full count leading off the sixth before lining the seventh pitch he saw for a single. The hit chased Williams, who had entered the inning at 91 pitches, and kick-started a three-run Sox rally against Guardians reliever Erik Sabrowski.
‘‘[Williams] is a really good pitcher,’’ Vargas said. ‘‘My approach is [to] focus on one pitch: middle-middle. I don’t think I’ve got much chance at anything else.’’
Middle-middle is where Vargas hit Williams’ fastball for a single. He just had to make him work for a while first.
After his four-inning outing in Game 1 on Saturday, it was up in the air whether reliever Grant Taylor would be physically able to pitch two days later. The answer came when he entered in the eighth Monday, weathering Jo Adell’s RBI triple to notch a four-out save.
The conversation about his availability wound up being fairly short. Taylor said bench coach Walker McKinven approached him with a simple question: ‘‘You want it?’’
‘‘Obviously,’’ Taylor replied.
When Sam Antonacci, 23, told WGN on Sunday that he was eating an ice cream cone when Sox teammate Munetaka Murakami hit his two-run home run in Game 1, he noted he could have been in trouble with coaches if they had needed him to pinch-hit and saw what he was doing.
But the Sox, with the youngest position-player group in the AL, see purpose in the snacks in the visitors’ clubhouse.
‘‘I’ve noticed this in my baseball career: Ice cream cones are good luck,’’ said catcher Kyle Teel, 24. ‘‘There’s hits in ice cream cones.’’
Venable has allowed his players to create their own clubhouse culture and stood by that approach in this case.
‘‘I’m fully supportive of whatever these guys think is good luck,’’ Venable said. ‘‘Ice cream for everybody, then.’’
Antonacci, a lifelong infielder before this season, when he began playing left field, as well, initially took a step in on Steven Kwan’s liner to left in the eighth, but he held his focus to recover and make a scrambling catch for a crucial first out.
‘‘Nice catch from Sam,’’ Vargas said. ‘‘I guess he wasn’t eating ice cream, so he made that play.’’
