For seven innings, just about everything went well for the Chicago White Sox.
And then came the eighth. And soon after, a history-making defeat.
The Sox surrendered six runs in the eighth inning on the way to a single-season franchise-record 15th consecutive loss, falling 8-5 to the Kansas City Royals in front of 12,179 at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Bobby Witt Jr. gave the Royals the lead, hitting a grand slam with two outs in the eighth against reliever John Brebbia. It was the third home run of the inning for the Royals as the Sox saw a three-run lead become a three-run deficit.
“It’s a tough one to swallow, to battle that hard all the way through and it kind of just slips away at the end,” starter Chris Flexen said. “You can’t make it up either. It’s a tough stretch. Just got to continue battling, continue to fight, compete and put us in a situation to win like we did tonight. Just continue to fight for it.”
In addition to setting the single-season franchise record for most consecutive defeats, the Sox matched the overall franchise mark for a losing streak, which stretched over two seasons (the last five games of 1967 and the first 10 in 1968).
“If we won 20 straight and then lost one, that one loss is still a bummer,” Brebbia said. “You never like to lose regardless of how many you have or have not won or lost. Nobody wants to lose 15 straight.
“I stopped counting because every time we go on the field, we try to do the same thing. We try to hit the ball hard, throw the ball and get guys out. Try to make plays. Yeah, you never want to have a losing streak but you focus on it too much and it can snowball on itself.”
The records don’t stop there. At 27-82, the Sox are 55 games under .500 for the first time in franchise history.
For much of the evening, it looked like the Sox were going to stop the slide. They built a 5-2 lead, getting three hits and one RBI from Luis Robert Jr. and a solo home run by Andrew Vaughn along the way.
Flexen allowed two runs while scattering nine hits in six innings.
But the Royals stormed back in the eighth, getting back-to-back home runs by Hunter Renfroe and MJ Melendez against Steven Wilson to cut the Sox lead to 5-4. With two outs, Maikel Garcia singled. Brebbia entered and hit Adam Frazier with a pitch. Michael Massey walked to load the bases for Witt.
He hit the first pitch, a low-and-away slider, over the wall in left-center to put the Royals ahead 8-5.
“He’s a superstar,” Sox manager Pedro Grifol said of Witt, who went 4-for-5. “You see how he impacts the game in every single facet of the game.”
Witt made two spectacular fielding plays and throws in the ninth as the Sox clinched a losing record in the 109th game of the season.
“I’ve never really enjoyed a loss in my career, at all,” Grifol said. “I don’t care if it’s 2-1, 10-0, I don’t enjoy losses. I don’t think anybody does. And if you do, you’re probably in the wrong business. But I’m certainly not going to sit here and put my head down. I’m going to walk out here like I ask these guys to, with their heads up high knowing that they gave us a really good effort today and it just didn’t happen.
“We’ve got to come back out here tomorrow and work as well as we did today and go out and leave it all on the field. That’s what we did. We had a good day’s work, left it all out on the field, it didn’t happen. We’ve got to come back out and do it again tomorrow.”
Sox announce three roster moves
Before Monday’s game, outfielder Dominic Fletcher and pitchers Sammy Peralta and Touki Toussaint joined the Sox from Triple-A Charlotte.
Fletcher is hitting .173 (13-for-75) with four doubles, six RBIs and four runs in 28 games with the Sox this season. He was on the injured list from June 3 to July 9 with a left shoulder strain sustained while making a home-run saving catch on June 2 in Milwaukee.
Peralta has a 3.00 ERA with one hold and four strikeouts in four relief appearances over two stints with the Sox.
Toussaint appeared in 20 games (16 starts) with the Sox last season, going 4-7 with a 4.97 ERA.
