The Kansas City Royals will be sad to see the White Sox go.
White Sox fans remain stuck with them.
The Royals completed a 12-1 season series against the White Sox with a 10-3 victory, featuring all the hallmarks of a typical White Sox-Royals game in this cursed year. Bobby Witt Jr. reached base four times and scored three runs, the White Sox allowed 20 baserunners before counting their defensive miscues, and the offense disappeared after a surprising second-inning surge.
The White Sox have now lost 17 in a row.
At least they can say they didn't blow a lead. Drew Thorpe fared better than his last time out, but he didn't make it out of the first inning in his last start. He had a hard time getting to his changeup, because the Royals kept hitting his other pitches. They averaged a 95.4 mph exit velocity on his fastball, 97.7 mph on his slider, and 97.9 on his cutter. He threw 45 non-changeups, and only six of them were taken for strikes or whiffed on.
Vinnie Pasquantino outlasted Thorpe by singling on a 10th-pitch slider for an RBI single in the first. Freddy Fermin hit a two-run homer on an 0-1 slider in the second. After the Sox tied it at 3 in the bottom of the second, Sal Perez rifled a 1-0 slider for an RBI single in the third.
The biggest blow came in the fifth, when the Royals had runners on second and third with one out and Perez at the plate. Thorpe threw him a 1-1 slider off the plate, but Perez was still able to crush it 103 mph to left center. Dominic Fletcher took a decent route to it, but the ball rattled in and out of his glove. The solace was that it would've been a sac fly regardless, but the Royals took advantage of the extra out with an actual sac fly by Hunter Renfroe that made it a 6-3 game.
That was the first of three balls that White Sox gloves couldn't secure. Two of them came in the ninth, during a miserable one-third of an inning for Sammy Peralta. Andrew Vaughn couldn't make an over-the-shoulder catch -- a hit correctly ruled a hit -- but Miguel Vargas had a Garrett Hampson drive clang out of his glove after taking a sketchy route in left, and that should've been enough for him to join Nick Senzel in the error column. Instead, Peralta was charged with four earned runs on six hits. At least Fraser Ellard was able to build some confidence, as he replaced Peralta after 23 pitches and struck out both batters he faced.
As for the White Sox offense, it posted a surprising second-inning rally off Brady Singer. Gavin Sheets and Lenyn Sosa started the inning with singles, and Andrew Benintendi scored them both with a double to right. After a Senzel bunt, Dominic Fletcher shot a single through the left side, tying the game at 3.
The White Sox managed just two hits over the final seven innings.
Bullet points:
*Vargas has only been a member of the White Sox for two days, but he fits right in, going 0-for-8 with three strikeouts.
*Sosa went 1-for-4 while Andrew Vaughn was 0-for-4, so Sosa finishes the day with the lineup's highest batting average ... at .236.
*Touki Toussaint made his 2024 debut and pitched two scoreless innings. He also picked off Witt.
