Nolan Jones drew a base-loaded walk at the bottom of the ninth to give Cleveland Guardians a 1-0 victory against the visiting Chicago White Sox in the opener of their three-game series Tuesday.
Carlos Santana founded a single outside the glove of diving first bass man Andrew Vaughn to start the ninth by Mike Clevinger (0-2). Kyle Manzardo and Jhonkensy Noel then pulled back-to-back walks and picked up Jones, who followed to finish the game.
Cleveland Starter Ben Lively threw five shutdown rounds, which allowed two hits, knocked out four and went three.
White Sox -Starter Shane Smith dropped the Guardians on two hits over six rounds in his second MLB start, knocked out six and went one.
Smith retired the first 12 beats in a row and then became the first Cleveland jug since David Cone in 1996 to take a no-hitter into the sixth round of a home opener.
Jose Ramirez broke it up with a slow roll up the third baseline outside the end of his bat with two outs on sixth. Santana then grounded a single through the right side to put runners on the corners, but Smith knocked out Kyle Manzardo to end his excursion.
Lively beat around a couple of walks in the first round, then went his third batter to lead the second, but got Lenyn Sosa to enter a double game.
White Sox put runners on the first and third but out in the fourth, but Lively got Vaughn to show up to the second and Matt Thaiss to enter an inning-ending double play.
Guardians, who made four errors in a series of three games last weekend and came in with the worst field percentage in Majors at .970, was favored by a sharp game by other bassema Gabriel Arias on a hard En-Hopper to finish fifth.
Cade Smith took over for Lively to start the sixth and walked the first two beats he met, but then retired the next three hitters.
Paul Sewald, Hunter Gaddis and Emmanuel Clas (2-0) followed with speechless turns of relief for Cleveland.
Tyler Gilbert relieved Smith and beat 1 2/3 speechless innings before Clevinger got Ramirez to fly out to end eighth.
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