Chicago White Sox Pummel Cleveland Indians 8-1, Earn Series Split

It took Adam Dunn almost three months to hit his 10th home run last season.

What a difference a year makes!

Dunn crushed a two-run homer in the first inning as the Chicago White Sox cruised to an 8-1 victory over the Cleveland Indians Wednesday night at Progressive Field.

"I don’t feel bad," said Dunn via Mark Gonzalez of the Chicago Tribune.  “I don’t feel like I’m on fire by any means."

Dunn has been on quite a tear of late as he has six homers in his past 11 games. He batted a paltry .159 in 2011, with 11 HR and 42 RBI.  

Jake Peavy pitched seven strong innings allowing only one run—lowering his ERA on the season to 1.89.

“I want to play where there’s a chance to win; this team is not far off,’’ Peavy said via Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times. “A lot of good things are happening here, and I can’t see many other places that would be more appealing to me, even this winter, if the situation was right to come back here. The young pieces are going to get experience. Dunn is going to grow with another year in the league, [Paul] Konerko has another year. We’re not far off.’’

The White Sox would take a 2-0 lead into the fourth when they would explode for six runs—their largest such scoring outburst of the season. Eduardo Escobar and Alejandro De Aza hit RBI singles and Gordon Beckham rounded out the inning with a sacrifice fly to left.

Peavy was almost flawless throughout his seven innings of work. He encountered some trouble in the seventh after he gave up leadoff singles to Carlos Santana and Shin-Soo Choo. Santana would score on a groundout by Jason Donald.  

"I really had to battle there to try to keep it respectable," Peavy said. "It’s just good for us to come back and get these two wins after losing the doubleheader (Monday) and getting back and pushing us toward .500."

Will Ohman and Nate Jones would follow Peavy and pitch two scoreless innings in relief. Cleveland starter Jeanmar Gomez had a rough outing—surrendering eight runs in 6 2/3 innings,

"Gomez just couldn't throw strikes the first four innings,” Indians manager Manny Acta said via Dennis Manoloff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "When you're not overpowering, you're not going to get away with that up here. But he does deserve credit because he got it together and gave us three more innings. It would have been a disaster if we had to tax the bullpen.”

Notes: The start of the game was delayed for a little over an hour because of the threat of inclement weather, The White Sox (15-17) leave first-place Cleveland (17-13) and return home to US Cellular Field on Friday to open up a brief five-game homestand against the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers. The Sox will play a brief two-game series in Anaheim following their homestand and return to play the Cubs for three at Wrigley Field.