CLEVELAND — The Chicago White Sox were already in major trouble before Corey Kluber threw one pitch.
Once he had a big lead, surrender was their only option.
The two-time Cy Young Award winner pitched six shutout innings and reached eight victories before any AL pitcher as the Cleveland Indians rolled to their fifth straight win, 9-1 Wednesday over the sagging White Sox to complete a three-game series sweep.
Spotted a nine-run cushion after four innings, Kluber (8-2) had little trouble with baseball’s worst team.
Kluber allowed three hits and struck out 10 while improving to 4-0 with a 0.33 ERA in four starts against Central Division teams this season.
“You know he has pitched so many games where you look up and it’s nothing-nothing in the fifth,” Indians manager Terry Francona said. “We’ve all seen it. So to give him a cushion, any pitcher, but he certainly knows what to do with it.”
Melky Cabrera drove in three runs off Reynaldo Lopez (1-4) and Michael Brantley extended his MLB-high hitting streak to 19 games for Cleveland, which used the series to gain some confidence and momentum. The Indians scored 25 runs against the White Sox and 43 during their win streak.
Jose Ramirez and Edwin Encarnacion connected for back-to-back homers in the fourth off Chris Volstad as the Indians opened a 9-0 lead.
The White Sox committed two more errors, dropped their fourth in a row and fell to 16-37. Chicago had five errors in the three-game series.
Yolmer Sanchez homered leading off the ninth as the White Sox avoided a shutout.
Kluber is tough to deal with under normal circumstances, but with a big lead and pitching at home, he’s nearly unbeatable. The right-hander is 5-0 with a 1.26 ERA at Progressive Field, and he didn’t walk a batter for the fourth straight start — a career-best span of 28 1/3 innings.
“Kluber was Kluber,” said White Sox manager Rick Renteria.
Chicago’s Yoan Mocada led off the first with a single off Kluber, who then struck out eight of the next 12 and spent the rest of the day fine-tuning his already fine-tuned collection of pitches.
By the time Kluber took the mound in the third, the Indians were up 7-0, but he had to focus as things were much tighter.
“You kind of train yourself or teach yourself to take each hitter, each pitch, whatever you want to call it, as if the game was tied,” he said. “I think that through experience I’m sure every pitcher would tell you, as soon as you let your guard down a little bit, things usually bite you in the rear.”
Cabrera’s two-run double highlighted a five-run third for the Indians. They had Lopez in trouble in the first inning, but let the right-hander escape by giving up only two runs.
Brantley singled in the first when the Indians took a 2-0 lead against Lopez, whose wild pitch brought in Greg Allen with Cleveland’s first run before Cabrera delivered a one-out sacrifice fly.
Since moving into the No. 2 spot in Cleveland’s order, Brantley is batting .368 (29 of 79) with six homers, 18 RBIs and 20 runs scored.
