Royals 5, White Sox 1: Rough ninth erases idea of comeback

After spending most of the night seeing how close they could get without scoring, the White Sox finally got onto the board in the eighth inning with a Conor Gillaspie solo shot.

Then Matt Lindstrom came in, and it made one wonder why Gillaspie even bothered.

Lindstrom had an off night, starting with a walk to Billy Butler to start the ninth. Ned Yost replaced him with Jarrod Dyson, who stole second, and all hell broke loose. Lindstrom failed to retire any of the four batters he faced, and three of them came around to score. David Purcey did a surprisingly nice job of calming things down, even pitching around a Casper Wells drop that was ruled a sac fly/error. But enough damage had been done, and Luke Hochevar buzzed through three hitters on four pitches to end the game.

Jose Quintana ended up the hard-luck loser. He pitched beautifully over seven innings, allowing just two runs on six hits and a walk over seven innings. He gave up a solo shot to David Lough in the third, and then couldn't strand a leadoff double in the seventh. Otherwise, he was seldom in trouble.

In fact, James Shields had to sweat more. The Sox stranded nine runners over his seven innings, and came within a couple lucky Gordon Beckham line drives from being behind. Lorenzo Cain ran down a Beckham drive with two on to end the second, and another liner with two on and two out in the fourth just missed the chalk in the right-field corner by six inches.

Shields pitched around Beckham in the sixth to put runners on first and second with two outs for Josh Phegley, but he escaped that jam as well, getting Phegley to bounce out to the left side for the third time in as many at-bats.

Bullet points:

• Donnie Veal pitched a scoreless eighth, which was nice to see.
• Alejandro De Aza was picked off by Shields, which wasn't.
  
• Wells' error was the 71st of the season over 100 games. Last year, they only committed 70 over all 162.

Record: 40-60 | Box score | Play-by-play | Highlights