KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Chicago White Sox were one out away from a scoreless first inning Saturday against the Kansas City Royals.
But the next three batters each collected hits against starter Jonathan Cannon, and the Sox found themselves in a three-run hole.
They had a chance to get back into the game, loading the bases with two outs in the fourth. But the inning ended with Brady Singer striking out Brooks Baldwin.
Game No. 100 of the season highlighted some of the year-long situations that have not gone the team’s way. The Sox dropped their sixth straight game, losing 6-1 to the Royals in front of 27,545 at Kauffman Stadium.
“We have to keep showing up every day and try to get better,” shortstop Nicky Lopez said.
At 27-73, the Sox are a season-high 46 games under .500. It’s the worst 100-game start in franchise history. The previous mark was 34-66, which had occurred three times — most recently in 1970.
They are the 14th team in Major League Baseball history with 73-plus losses in the first 100 games of a season.
Six batters into the bottom of the first inning, the Sox were down 3-0. Salvador Perez drove in a run with a two-out single and then scored on a triple by Michael Massey. Hunter Renfroe then hit a liner to left field that went over Andrew Benintendi’s head for an RBI double.
“I just maybe got a little too amped up in the first inning, made some mistakes,” Cannon said. “They made me pay for it, kind of put us in a hole to start with, which is difficult to climb out of. I thought I had good stuff, just made a couple of mistakes over the plate.”
Manager Pedro Grifol said of the ball that got over Benintendi’s head, “I think that ball took off on him.”
Grifol liked how Cannon rebounded to go six innings. The right-hander allowed four runs on eight hits with four strikeouts and no walks in the 91-pitch outing.
“He retired 12 of the last 13 hitters,” Grifol said. “That’s what a good starter is supposed to do. You have one bad inning and you’ve got to flush it and give us a good start. He gave us a chance to win because he kept that at four.”
Cannon said pitching six innings after the tough first was a “big step forward for me.”
“That outing could have gone toward a trajectory like (June 23 at) Detroit (eight runs — five earned — in one-plus inning),” Cannon said. “And (I) was able to kind of regroup and gather myself and lock back in and refocus.”
The Sox were down 4-0 in the fourth inning when they came up empty on the bases-loaded opportunity. They still trailed by four in the seventh and had runners on first and second with two outs when Chuckie Robinson popped out to end that threat. They scored a run in the eighth, and had runners on first and second with two outs when reliever Hunter Harvey struck out Baldwin.
“He took some good swings,” Grifol said of Baldwin. “I really liked his at-bats. Those are not at all non-competitive ABs. They are all competitive ABs. It didn’t work out today.”
The Royals scored two unearned runs in the eighth on the way to sending the Sox to their 12th loss in their last 15 games. The Sox are 1-8 against the Royals this season.
