We could spend a lot more time second-guessing the White Sox's strategy against Salvador Perez, but given the way the offense looked against Brady Singer, the White Sox would've needed Dylan Cease's best in order to stand a chance.
Cease fell behind 3-0 before recording his first out due to Perez's 41st homer of the year to start this game on the wrong foot. Maybe the Sox offense would've been more inspired -- or Singer would've felt more threatened -- with a smaller or nonexistent deficit -- but that only flies to a certain extent.
It's not just that the White Sox were shut out. They didn't even get a runner into scoring position until two outs in the ninth inning, with Brian Goodwin walked and Leury García reached on an infield single. The White Sox lineup mustered just five singles, struck out 10 times against just one walk, grounded out eight times and lined into a double play.
Cease's rough start became more or less an afterthought. He usually has one inning where his mechanics aren't right, and it happened to be the first, which opened with a walk to Whit Merrifield and a Nicky Lopez double. With first base open, Cease had the option of walking Perez. It looked like he tried to follow Craig Kimbrel's strategy of not throwing him a strike, but his 99-mph fastball, while an inch off the plate, was thigh-high, and considerably closer to Perez than the first-pitch slider he saw for ball one. Perez launched it into the water for a 3-0 KC lead, and the Royals never looked back.
Cease settled in well enough afterward to give the White Sox five, allowing an unearned run on a seemingly innocuous Perez grounder to third in the third inning. Yoán Moncada's throw to first was low but catchable, but the ball glanced off the glove of Gavin Sheets and trickled behind him ...
... into the path of Perez, who kicked the ball into shallow right field and enabled Lopez to score all the way from second.
Cease struck out nine over five innings and got 24 swinging strikes on 98 pitches against a KC lineup that doesn't whiff much, but enough damage had been done. The Sox tagged Matt Foster for a couple of runs in the sixth to make it a rout.
Bullet points:
*Eloy Jiménez's defense provided the only highlights of the game. He made a nice sliding catch to end the second, and a long running catch on the warning track to end the fifth.
*Jimenéz also got caught too far off first base on Leury García's lineout to third in the second inning.
*Moncada's hitting streak came to an end at 16 games because a 107-mph grounder that Merrifield couldn't stop at second was scored an error.
*The Royals won the season series 10-9.
