With four-fifths of the original White Sox rotation injured, struggling or otherwise compromised, there are going to be games like this.
The good news is that "games like this" doesn't denote an automatic loss. The White Sox have enough offense to win a slobberknocker.
The Sox pounded Daniel Lynch for the second time in three tries behind huge games from Luis Robert, José Abreu and Yasmani Grandal, which was enough to hold off a Royals offense that outhomered the White Sox 3-2, including Salvador Perez's 39th and 40th blasts of the year. Pair it with a Cleveland walk-off loss in Boston, and the White Sox lead the AL Central by 10½ games and lowered their magic number to 18.
Luis Robert greeted Lynch with a 452-foot homer in the first, and Yasmani Grandal added a two-run shot to center before the third out, giving the Sox a 3-0 lead before Reynaldo López took the mound. They held a pair of six-run leads entering the bottoms of the third and fifth innings, but ultimately had to sweat it out a little.
The key was the six-run leads, and while that sounds banal, Mike Matheny already charted a course with his lesser relievers before Perez's two blasts gave Kansas City more of a chance than it seemed. The Sox chased Lynch in the third with three runs thanks to their first four batters reaching and two productive outs. Matheny called for Ervin Santana, paving the path for more runs down the line.
The Sox needed most of them. López looked more like his 2019 self, getting only five swinging strikes on 65 pitches, and with a fastball that hovered between 92-94 over the second half of his four innings. Both his fastball and slider were hit hard -- 93.4 mph average exit velocity on the former, 89.9 mph on the latter -- and pitching backward didn't help matters. He gave up three hits on the slider in the third -- a leadoff single, an RBI double, and a two-run homer to Perez on the first pitch with two outs that cut the White Sox's lead to 6-3.
The Sox got those three runs back over the next two innings. Danny Mendick and Robert hit infield singles over the first three batters, followed by Abreu's 500th extra base hit in the form of an RBI double, and a Grandal sac fly.
In the fifth, Leury García led off with a single, beat Whit Merrifield to the bag on César Hernández's infield single up the middle, then advanced the other 180 feet on a pair of productive outs, including a soft Romy González groundout for his first career RBI.
Those runs became necessary when Michael Kopech saw a couple of his fastballs end up over the wall. In the fifth, a pair of unremarkable ground ball singles extended the game to Perez, who turned on a first-pitch fastball on the inside corner at 99 and hoisted it just over the wall in left for a three-run homer and a 9-6 game. An inning later, Carlos Santana crushed a groove fastball way out to right to make it a two-run game for the first time.
Pérez had a chance to tie the game in the seventh when Nicky Lopez's checked-swing single with two outs extended the inning. Craig Kimbrel didn't give him anything to hit, and that turned out to be the correct strategy. Perez swung at three knuckle curves that were nowhere close to the zone.
Sometimes it's just that simple.
The Sox did kick in one more run to get to double digits. Abreu, who saw 34 pitches over his five plate appearances, lined the final of thsoe pitches for a leadoff double, moved to third on a wild pitch during a Grandal walk, and scored on Andrew Vaughn's single through the right side.
That run proved unnecessary because the post-Kopech relievers did their job. Ryan Tepera finished the sixth, followed by scoreless innings from Kimbrel, Aaron Bummer and Liam Hendriks. At least that part went the way the White Sox drew it up.
The others: Luis Robert going 4-for-5 with three runs scored from their second spot, backed by José Abreu going 3-for-4 with a walk, Eloy Jiménez drawing three walks, and Grandal driving in four with a 3-for-3 game from the fifth spot.
Bullet points:
*Mendick ended the seventh inning by getting thrown out trying to go from first to third on a Luis Robert grounder that Whit Merrifield kept in the infield. The idea was fine. Inexplicably stopping between second and third for half a second, then not sliding into third is what killed him.
*González batted leadoff in his first start and went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts.
*López gave up five batted balls over 100 mph, but a number of them found Robert, who had a great game in center.
*Sunday's game will decide the season series, which is tied at 9.
