White Sox games against Kansas City, and certainly in Kansas City, feel like a nightmare. A specific nightmare, where the impossibly slow villain that you can easily outrun is chasing you, but you keep falling down, repeatedly, and then inexplicably, and then it becomes the rule, and by the time you realize the game is rigged is when you wake up.
1. Which is all to say that of course David Robertson waded through the middle of the Royals order while protecting a 4-3 lead in the ninth, only to yield it on a two-out RBI single to light-hitting Alcides Escobar. Of course he did! And of course the run he brought home was Jarrod Dyson, pinch-running after a leadoff single from Kendrys Morales, and scoring after easily stealing second. And of course Dyson had been stranded there just long enough while Robertson got Salvador Perez to fly out and struck out Alex Gordon, to push the threat of Dyson slightly back from the front of everyone’s minds.
2. The script change waited for the 10th, where Todd Frazier followed up a poked one out single by Jose Abreu and a double down the right field line by Justin Morneau with a mighty blast that rendered all their work to get in scoring position moot.
Striding up in the middle of an 0-for-4 night, Frazier lined up a center-cut 97 mph fastball from Kelvin Herrera and winged into the left field seats for a shot definitive enough to make the Jacob Turner-Dan Jennings closer combo the Sox used in the 10th passable.
3. The 10th inning was the second improbable offensive rescue of the evening. They transformed a 3-1 deficit into a 4-3 advantage with five-straight two-out singles in the fifth off Edinson Volquez. Tim Anderson started the carousel, then took off running on a 3-2 pitch to Melky Cabrera, and raced around the bases on a single to deep center and slid in well before a tag. His speed was electrifying, but was also proved unnecessary when Adam Eaton, Abreu and Morneau followed it all up with knocks of their own.
4. That rally unexpectedly put a lead in Chris Sale‘s hands. Right on the heels of his biggest strikeout night of the season, which was powered by a dominant slider, Sale hung a bunch of breakers and got nailed early. After a leadoff double to Paulo Orlando and a single to Cheslor Cuthbert, Sale was trailing 1-0 after his first two batters, and had Eric Hosmer spray a two-run single to left off of him in the third.
Suddenly finding his changeup–a solid four months and a week into the season–Sale stabilized and tacked on four scoreless to his rocky first three innings, and struck out seven on the night.
5. Everyone in the Sox lineup who made a trip to the plate collected at least one hit, but Morneau slapped four to boost his season line to .300/.351/.500. He can still do this.
Team Record: 54-58
Next game is Wednesday at Kansas City at 7:15pm CT on CSN
Lead Image Credit: Denny Medley // USA Today Sports Images