Most of the time, it feels like the 2025 season is going better than arguably the worst season in MLB history. But on the other hand, is May 8 too soon to be spend the fifth inning wondering if former President George W. Bush's line about "the soft bigotry of low expectations" is applicable to the offense's woes with runner in scoring position.
Starting pitcher Davis Martin picked up his fourth loss of the season, chased by seven hits and piling up 86 pitches before he could complete five innings. He struck out just two and wound up with four runs on his tab after Mike Vasil yielded a two-out triple to Maikel García that plated both of the inherited runners Martin left behind in the fifth.
And other than a fastball down the pipe that Salvador Perez drilled for an RBI double in the first, Martin's outing was frustrating for how often kick changes in enviable locations were fought off for singles--like Perez's two-out RBI knock in the third--rather than waved over for whiffs.
But after his position player colleagues wrapped up scoring four runs over four days in Kansas City, a more pressing question might be how long will it take for the White Sox lineup to pull off anything similar.
Royals starter Kris Bubic came into Thursday's series finale with a sub-2.00 ERA and allowed just seven baserunners in as many innings of work, so it's remarkable that the White Sox still stood out for how voraciously they cannibalized their meager scoring opportunities.
Chase Meidroth grounded the first pitch of the afternoon through the six-hole, but between Miguel Vargas striking out after a 3-0 count and Edgar Quero rolling into the first of three Sox double plays on the day, the inning was over eight pitches later.
Lenyn Sosa didn't exactly exemplify good process by swinging at an ankle-high fastball for a leadoff double in the third, but more troubling is that a routine fly out to right from Brooks Baldwin is the closest he came to advancing at all. When Andrew Vaughn led off the fifth by spraying a high heater down the right field line to again put a runner at second with no one out, the Sox made up for the prior lack of activity with cringe-inducing results.
For reasons he probably will hold close to the vest, Bobby Witt Jr. elected to juice the Sox RISP numbers by not gunning down the slow-footed Vaughn as he tried to advance to third on Joshua Palacios' slow roller to short. When Palacios was able to leg out an infield single from Witt's hesitation, it put runners on the corners with no one out, and set up the sort of scoring opportunity only Vaughn running home on contact could really undo.
Alas...
Four pitches later, Baldwin chopped a knee-high changeup 102 mph back to Bubic, who started an inning-ending double play that doubled as the last notion of the Sox getting back into this game. Royals hitting chased and bloodied Martin in the bottom half of the frame, and all things considered, multi-inning swingmen Vasil and Jared Shuster picked as good of day as any for their worst outings of the season.
The pair combined to allow 10 of the Royals 17 hits while recording eight outs, until Amaya introduced quick weak contact into the equation for the first time in hours. After Witt drilled a double to the gap in the eighth, chasing Shuster with his fourth hit of the day, he was subbed out for Cavan Biggio and cheered as the conquering hero.
A leadoff walk to Quero followed by a fisted single to Luis Robert Jr. seemed to spell the end for Bubic's brilliant afternoon in the seventh. Royals manager Matt Quatraro came out to speak to his starter, but more likely to stall for time as the bullpen had began stirring too recently to make a switch. Instead Bubic induced a medium depth fly out from Vaughn, struck out Palacios (the designated hitter on the day) on three pitches, and got Sosa to ground out on a cookie to end his day on his own terms.
The Royals enjoyed such privilege all week.
Bullet points:
*It has been 610 days since the last time the White Sox won in Kauffman Stadium.
*The Royals entered the day as one of four teams with a worse wRC+ with runners in scoring position than the White Sox, but you can throw out this one very specific record book when these two teams get together.
*Sox hitting went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. If you were paying attention, you already know it was Palacios' dribbler to short in the fifth.
*Jacob Amaya made his first career pitching appearance. Doesn't have to be his last!
*Generally, the most powerful people in society do not deserve your sympathy. Efforts to humanize them by forming parasocial relationships are largely misguided. They live in a level of privilege that makes the degree of suffering a regular person endures wholly alien to them. However...
