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MINNEAPOLIS — Chicago White Sox starter Dylan Cease was in trouble in the fourth inning Monday at Target Field.
The Minnesota Twins had Matt Wallner on second and Christian Vázquez on first with one out and Michael A. Taylor batting. Taylor hit a grounder to third baseman Hanser Alberto, who ran Wallner back toward second before flipping the ball to Elvis Andrus to force Vázquez.
Wallner scrambled to third and collided with shortstop Tim Anderson, who was attempting to place a tag on him near the bag.
Anderson remained in the game until the sixth, when he exited with left knee soreness.
Despite losing Anderson and making three errors, the Sox found a way to beat the Twins 4-3 in front of 12,078.
“Not how we drew it up, but there were gutty performances,” Sox manager Pedro Grifol said.
Grifol said Anderson felt “a little bit” of pain when the injury occurred and thought he could play through it before it “stiffened up on him a little bit.”
“He’s getting further evaluated (Monday night), but we’ll see how that plays out,” Grifol said. “I’m optimistic, but he’s got to get further evaluated.”
The Sox were also without third baseman Yoán Moncada, who Grifol said was dealing with “a little back soreness.”
“Kind of the same thing that got him in the spring a little bit,” Grifol said. “He’s day to day.
“Moncada has had this nagging thing for a little bit. But 10 games in we’re going to err on the side of caution. If they miss a couple of games, they miss a couple of games.”
Alberto filled in at third base and made a fielding error in the third, with Taylor scoring on the sequence, but he more than made up for it with a tiebreaking three-run homer in the fourth.
“That’s the type of player he is,” Grifol said. “He’s been around for a long time and there’s a reason, right? We talked about it in the spring. He’s a good teammate and he’s great to have in the clubhouse and so on and so forth, but there’s no free passes here. You have to be able to do something special, something that’s going to make you stay in the big leagues, and he does.”
Alberto said he was looking for a splitter from Twins starter Kenta Maeda, got a “hanging slider” and put his “best swing” on it.
“After that error, that’s the best feeling,” Alberto said. “If you’re out there, you want to help. You go out there and try to make all the plays to help the pitcher, help the team. When you don’t do it, you feel bad. So I was angry. But I controlled myself because you can’t take the defense to the offense. You’ve got to separate and I think I did a really good job.
“Obviously we didn’t play the best defense. If you can help in the other way, it will be good. Our pitcher (Cease), he went out there and did a really good job. We didn’t play the best defense, but we got the game in the end.”
Cease allowed one earned run on three hits with six strikeouts and two walks in five innings. He hit two batters, and the Sox hit three in the game.
“Not my sharpest command by any means,” Cease said. “But just one of those games where I battled and kept us in it and the offense showed up and fortunately we were able to squeak it out.
“(Errors are) just part of baseball. There were just as many plays made behind me that saved me as there are that hurt me. At the end of the day, I’m just focused on executing.”
Sox relievers did just that. Jimmy Lambert, Kendall Graveman, Aaron Bummer and Reynaldo López allowed one hit and struck out seven in four scoreless innings.
López got the final four outs — striking out three — for his second save.
“There was a lot of leverage going on in that game for our relievers and they responded,” Grifol said.
The Sox placed reliever Joe Kelly on the 15-day injured list with a right groin strain, one of three roster moves announced before the game.
The Sox selected the contract of pitcher Keynan Middleton from Triple-A Charlotte and outrighted pitcher Jonathan Stiever to Charlotte.
Kelly is 0-1 with a 10.13 ERA and three strikeouts in three appearances. His IL stint is retroactive to Sunday. Kelly suffered the injury running onto the field during Sunday’s bench clearing incident in Pittsburgh.
Middleton, signed as a minor-league free agent in January, has a save and three strikeouts in three scoreless innings during three relief outings for Charlotte.
