White Sox fall again (yawn), drop first game 4-2 to Royals
At least we can weep and moan about a bad call this time, even if it’s very doubtful it made any difference
Hey, the Sox led most of the game this time! That must count for something, right?
Well, er, uh, no. Unless you mean counting for a sixth straight loss and a 2-15 record.
On the bright side, Jonathan Cannon made his major league debut as impressive as Nick Nastrini’s was on Monday, giving up only one run in five innings, and that was because Dominic Fletcher managed to trip over his own feet and fall down on a ball hit almost right to him. Cannon allowed just two hits besides the Fletcher Benny Hill imitation, walked just one, and mixed a lot of pitches into a lot of strikes — 54 in his 79 tosses.
That Royal run came in the second and was more than answered in the bottom half when Paul DeJong, who ended the day with a homer, double, single, and walk, crushed a liner 417 feet after an Eloy Jiménez walk, giving the Sox a 2-1 lead.
Things got very quiet until the eighth. Then speed killed.
Michael Kopech, who had been strong out of the pen, gave up a dribbler single to Bobby Witt Jr., who flashed his amazing speed on a 71 mph dribbler to third — about two-thirds the velocity of two balls he smashed earlier in the game. Witt stole second, and then Kopech got way too much of the plate on a first-pitch fastball to Salvador Perez, who planted it 431 feet away for a 3-2 KC lead.
Not to be outdone, Hunter Renfro drove a Dominic Leone cutter a foot longer to make it 4-2. The score was only that close because Leone had picked a pinch runner off first, something the Sox have gotten much better at this year.
The South Siders made it slightly interesting in the bottom of the ninth, when DeJong (who else?) lined a double with two outs. Robby Grossman came in to pinch hit and worked a 3-2 count, only to be punched out by Jordan Baker on a backdoor curve that sure didn’t look like it made it to the plate (in fairness, a two-dimensional box on the TV doesn’t give a good view of a backdoor breaking pitch that might bend over after the front of the plate, but we need to get all the apparently justified gripes we can these days).
So, we wuz robbed and all that good stuff. Given that the offense besides DeJong consisted of two stray singles, and he was already on base and unable to drive himself in, the chance of any comeback, even with a ball four call, was close to zilch. But what’s White Sox baseball for if not a chance to complain about the terrible unfairness of life?
By the time this is typed, Game 2 will be underway, so maybe something good will happen then.