The Kansas City Royals built a 2-0 lead and came back to tie the game at 5-5, showing some fight. But in Major League Baseball, “almost” doesn’t cut it, and the Chicago White Sox where the victors in tonight’s contest.
The Royals struck first. Bobby Baseball smacked a solo home run to give the Royals a 1-0 lead.
The Royals also struck second, in the same inning! Salvador Perez knocked his own solo home run.
At this point, let’s go to a few sentences
I said in the pregame:
Welp, Salvador Perez is hitting cleanup, dragging his .233 OBP along with him. Perez wasn’t in the lineup on Sunday, so there was maybe some hope that he’d be further down the lineup when he reappeared. The answer is: no. I’m sure that won’t negatively impact the game at all tonight, but we’ll quote these sentences and see if that’s correct truly or ironically.
The good news is that the sentence was correct (truly), at least here! And Salvy did get another hit later, so he was legitimately productive there in his return to the game. Maybe some more off days are in order, TBH.
On the pitching side of things, the Royals sent Stephen Kolek to the mound in place of the injured Cole Ragans. Kolek, somewhat famously, had started his Royals career with six consecutive quality starts. For four innings, Kolek sure seemed like it would be another quality start. But he ran into trouble in the fifth inning. With one out Drew Romo (seems like a fake name, tbh) hit a home run. Sam Antonacci (also seems fake, who are these people) hit a double. And with Munetaka Murakami up, the looming threat of a Murakami bomb to truly push the game over the edge was a problem.
But it wasn’t Murakami who hit the bomb. That would be Chase Meidroth (seems like a name from a Final Fantasy game, but I digress) two batters later. That gave the White Sox a 5-2 lead.
The Royals bats weren’t done, though. In the sixth inning, Carter Jensen walked and Jac Caglianone hit a rocket line drive out to center field. Were the Royals finally going to do some damage? Yes, as it turns out. Isaac Collins doubled to put runners on second and third. And for the second time in a week, Nick Loftin hit a key RBI double. Later, Maikel Garcia singled him home to tie the game. It was exciting.
The excitement wound end rather unceremoniously. Matt Strahm replaced Daniel Lynch IV, and though he pitched a mostly clean eighth inning, his one mistake was a home run meatball swatted by Derek Hill. That gave the White Sox a 6-5 lead, a lead they would not relinquish as Witt, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Salvy went 1-2-3 in the ninth inning.
Just like that, the Royals are back in last place in the AL Central—well, tied for it at least. They are a dreadful 6-13 away from Kauffman Stadium. Hopefully, they can win some games on the road soon. If they don’t, the season will continue to slip away.
