On a night 21° colder than Thursday, everyone on the field was playing like it was 21°, period, as it didn’t even take two hours for Kansas City pitching to utterly eviscerate and embarrass their visitors’ offensive attack.
Kansas City starter Kris Bubic and White Sox counterpart threw pitches like they had to pay per toss, burning through the first two-thirds of the game. Bubic rang up five Ks (yep, shocking) in his first run through the order, piling up his sixth of 10 batters with a second punch-out of Chase Meidroth and seventh of 12 batters treating Munetaka Murakami likewise. By the end of the fourth, the southpaw had held the Pale Hose hitless and added insult with a nine-pitch frame.
But ascending ace Martin matched Bubic through three, ending that stanza on just five pitches. That effort was aided by a tidy toss-out of Isaac Collins by Tanner Murray, as Collins got greedy on a bloop to left he deigned a double. The effort ended in d’oh, and Martin put his windbreaker on in the dugout at just 32 pitches.
But Davis got rocked and socked a bit to start the fourth, as just four pitches in the Royals broke ahead on two sharp hits: Makiel García singled to right and Bobby Witt Jr. doubled deep to left.
Bobby Baseball now has a 23-game hit streak against the White Sox.
But even through the trauma of a broken tie, Martin was ruthlessly efficient, dispatching the R’s on 12 pitches and leaving Jr. stranded on third.
And almost as efficiently, the White Sox came back in the top of the fifth, as Lenyn Sosa cancelled the postgame show with a double of his own deep to left — just the second Sox baserunner, nearly halfway through the game. And two weak pops and a three-pitch K later, Sosa was left lonely in scoring position. The K, from Tanner Murray, was his second of the game, making it eight Ks of 15 outs and just 64 pitches for Bubic, cruising through the easiest first five frames he’s ever tossed.
Jac Caglianone smashed a drive 110.3 mph the other way with one out in the K.C. fifth, but that double died on the vine. Overall it was an 11-pitch, 11-strike frame for Martin, as he left Caglianone stranded just as sad as Sosa: A K and sharp ground out to first rendered the Royals hitless in their last 28 with RISP, stretching back to Monday.
After Derek Hill led off the sixth with a two-strike single to right, Meidroth gave Bubic a tie for his all-time single-game K mark, bowing for the third time to give tricky Kris nine for the night. Mune surrendered one out later for his third of the night and a record 10 for Bubic. The City Connects-bedazzled starter was sitting at 80 pitches through six.
While the bats were stiff, at least the leather was supple for the Sox. Martin cruised through the Royals sixth thanks to a smart pursuit of a Witt pop out to the no-man’s land in short center; as Luisangel Acuña struggle to find the ball in the dull heartland twilight, Meidroth kept on the pursuit for an easy elimination. And to end the inning, Vinny Pasquantino set a soft liner out to right, which Hill spread out and into for the diving catch. Martin surpassed Bubic in every way but the score on the board, tossing 50 strikes on 68 pitches, for a nifty 74% success rate.
Bubic’s 11th K got the game into the seventh-inning stretch, ending an eight-pitch frame for the southpaw, as the White Sox apparently had gotten the memo to push the lefty onto a future Hall of Fame ballot.
And as if adding insult to ineptitude, Carter Jensen stepped up with one out in the bottom of the seventh and crushed a first-pitch cutter in for a 425-foot homer to right, doubling K.C.’s lead. At 113.7 mph, it would stand as the hardest-hit ball of the night.
Michael Massey followed with a hustle double to center, and suddenly Martin slipped from catbird seat onto the ropes, with a wild pitch pushing Massey to third. The WP was yet another pitch that could have been knocked down by Edgar Quero behind the plate, but instead bounced high and deflected into the White Sox dugout. Martin escaped — but at just 82 dominant pitches, he would exit the game and wear the horns as tonight’s hard-luck loser.
After another “make quick work of the White Sox” half-inning (is that their rallying cry on the T-shirts under their jerseys this year, or what?), Duncan Davitt made his major league debut. In a desperate attempt to prevent Davitt’s first face-off ending in a walk, Quero challenged ball four, 2.7´´up and out of the zone:
But all’s well that ends, as a double play and fly out let Davitt finish his first frame clean.
Chicago’s last gasps went quickly, and mercifully. Meidroth escaped a golden sombrero by flying out to left, but not before getting victimized for the second time of the game by catcher Salvador Pérez challenging a called ball into a strike. A tap back to the mound and line out to center ended the proceedings.
The White Sox ended the game with two batters in the lineup hitting better than .200. Chill out, dear reader, the clubbers of this inept bunch are Meidroth at .224 and Hill at .214. Let’s hope the clubhouse staff can apply some elbow grease in scrubbing the stink from all nine of these pretenders out of this game.
