Nova shines as Sox bats rally behind him

TORONTO -- Battling instability in the rotation of late, the White Sox were looking for consistency from Iván Nova on Saturday and that was exactly what the right-hander provided, as he helped his team to a 7-2 win over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

Nova kept Toronto scoreless through his first six innings of work, allowing just three hits and fanning three. After surrendering a leadoff homer to Randal Grichuk followed by a Freddy Galvis single to open the seventh, White Sox manager Rick Renteria went to the bullpen. But Nova had left with his team in a position to win, which was all his skipper could ask for.

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“He did very, very well,” Renteria said. “He attacked the strike zone, was working both sides of the plate, in and out, away, down, up. He did a nice job. Him and [catcher James McCann] have been working very well together and he obviously gave us some distance, and we’ve been looking for that from our guys so that was a good game for him.”

In support of Nova’s quality start, Yolmer Sánchez got the White Sox on the board in the third with his first home run of the season. Back-to-back singles from Leury García and Yoan Moncada -- with an assist from a throwing error by Toronto starter Marcus Stroman on a pickoff attempt -- plated another run in the inning.

The visitors added two in the seventh inning, with RBIs from Nicky Delmonico and Sanchez, and Charlie Tilson drove in two more in the eighth with his second double of the year.

McCann continued his hot start to the season with four hits in the matchup, including his seventh and eighth doubles, raising his average to .376 and his OPS to 1.029. He also scored two runs and drove in one with an RBI double in the ninth.

“Even still, my focus is my defense,” McCann said. “Game planning, and going over scouting reports and watching video and helping my pitchers get through each inning and going through the lineup. As much as I love the results today offensively, getting Nova through six and then winning the ballgame is what’s most important.”

Nova’s outing on Saturday marked his 18th career appearance and 16th career start against the Blue Jays. Entering his latest outing at Rogers Centre, the right-hander was 5-7 with a 5.66 ERA over 82 2/3 lifetime innings against Toronto.

“We put a lot of good work in [these last] two starts,” Nova said. “Things started going the way we want them to go and we’ll keep working and hopefully everything goes well. … I had a good feel today for my pitches. I was throwing strikes today and limited the damage.”

The 32-year-old was coming off one of his best outings of the season, when he allowed one run on eight hits over seven innings against the Indians on Monday. He tied his season high with those seven frames, notching his first win of the season. In that start, he received a season-high nine runs of support.

“He just kind of built off his last outing against Cleveland,” McCann said. “Used his fastball to both sides of the plate, used all his offspeed pitches and he attacked. He attacked, he threw all of his pitches to both sides of the plate at any time.”

The win for the White Sox snapped a three-game losing streak and marked the team’s third win over its last nine contests, and was a solid sign of the consistency the squad is looking for.

“You’re going to go through periods of time, like we did early in the season, where guys weren’t comfortable, whatever it was,” McCann said. “But [to have] a guy like Nova, whose track record speaks for itself, a guy like [Reynaldo] Lopez, who’s got unbelievable stuff, [Manny] Banuelos is such a huge force too; [Lucas] Giolito’s come back after a hamstring injury throwing the ball well.

“The talent’s definitely there. It’s just a matter of executing and our offense doing what they did today to allow those guys to pitch relaxed and not uptight.”