Royals 5, White Sox 3: The South Siders continue to find innovative ways to embarrass themselves

I thought we were at the part of the season where were supposed to be “cruising through the easy part of their schedule”? After dropping ANOTHER to the fourth place Kansas City Royals — making them 7-8 against them on the season‚ the White Sox are back to square one (.500) at 56-56 with just 50 games left on the season.

Dylan Cease was as powerful as ever today, giving up just one earned run over the course of six innings. The Royals were only able to scrape together three hits, scattered over the second, fifth, and sixth innings — the only run coming from Tyler Pasquantino’s solo shot in the second, because apparently he is part-owner of the White Sox now. Dylan adds to his historic run, posting a 0.66 ERA, the lowest across a 14-game span in over 100 years. Since he began this extraordinary stretch on May 29, he has also struck out 103 batters. (Insert one-millionth All-Star complaint).

To make it even sweeter, in Cease’s three starts against Kansas City in 2022, he has a 1.53 ERA and 26 strikeouts, giving up just three runs in 17 ²⁄₃ innings. These other two starts took place in April and May, so he as only gotten better throughout the season — extremely sorry to the league. It’s a shame that you can’t give an L to the offense, considering Dylan did everything he needed to put this team in a position to win today, and they just went and took the day off (or two, or three, or ...).

MLB veteran Zack Greinke was on the bump for the Royals this afternoon, and while he is still a relatively solid pitcher, the White Sox made him seem like an All-Star snub over his three starts against Chicago. He has a 2.50 ERA when facing the South Siders this year, giving up just five runs over his 18 innings after today’s outing, where he gave up nine hits without the White Sox scoring a single run — and boy, did they have their chances.

The Pale Hose threatened in the second, third, and the sixth, but had nothing to show for it, sealing a scoreless outing for Greinke and zero run support for Dylan Cease. Seven of the 11 runners the Sox left on base came from those three innings alone.

There is absolutely no excuse to not be scoring more than three runs in a game after getting 14 hits. Every White Sox batter had at least one hit in this game, except for rookie SS Lenyn Sosa — with four of nine batters having a multi-hit game (Eloy Jiménez, Andrew Vaughn, Yasmani Grandal, and Seby Zavala). Grandal had a three-hit game, blasting a homer in the eighth that was sadly still not enough for the Sox to complete the comeback.

The Royals have been a special kind of annoying this year — and it’s not even just Greinke. Throughout their 15 games played against each other this season, the Sox have actually outhit K.C., 137-116, but they have also been outscored 53-52. If you needed something to sum up the 2022 season, that pretty much does it.

The best thing about our offensive output (or lack thereof) is that we consistently get a bunch of hits, but don’t have the run production to show for it. The White Sox actually have the second-most hits in the league with 1,002 — behind the Colorado Rockies at 1,042, just as we all predicted — while also having the fifth-highest batting average. The problem isn’t that we can’t hit, it’s that we can’t do anything except hit singles until we die. In fact, with RISP, the White Sox are ranked seventh in the league with a batting average of .263, which is somehow better than the Dodgers, Padres, Guardians, and Twins. Menechino Magic, baby.

I would like to say that there should be more optimism entering a home series against the Detroit Tigers. However, the White Sox are even worse (sub-.500) at home, with just a .247 batting average. It’s a special treat if you’ve been able to catch a win at Guaranteed Rate Field this year, given they’ve only won 25 games there.

Still, the South Siders kick off a three-game series against the Detroit Tigers, who actually fired their GM, Al Avila, yesterday — the Tigers are truly living out some Sox fans’ dreams, especially if you want to factor in the AJ Hinch hiring. I’m just hoping that if we keep talking about someone getting fired, we can manifest it into happening.