KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Drew Thorpe had one of his best outings of the season.
But the Chicago White Sox couldn’t find any sustained success against Seth Lugo and lost 4-1 to the Kansas City Royals in front of 22,226 at Kauffman Stadium. The Sox suffered their seventh straight defeat as they were swept in the three-game series.
Thorpe allowed three hits, struck out five, walked two and hit one batter in six scoreless innings. He left with a 1-0 lead, as Tommy Pham drove in Nicky Lopez with a two-out single in the sixth.
The Royals tied it with a run in the seventh against reliever Justin Anderson and scored three runs in the eighth against John Brebbia. Lugo went the distance for the Royals, allowing the one run on three hits.
It’s the 14th time this season the Sox have been swept in a series. They are a season-high 47 games under .500.
Here are three takeaways from the series.
1. Drew Thorpe made the big pitches time and again.
Thorpe hit the first batter he faced, Adam Frazier, and then surrendered a single to Bobby Witt Jr. He escaped without allowing a run by making big pitches. Vinnie Pasquantino grounded into a force out at second. Then Salvador Perez grounded into an inning-ending double play.
Thorpe settled in from there. He didn’t allow another hit until the sixth inning when he gave up back-to-back one-out singles to Witt (who had nine hits in the series) and Pasquantino. Thorpe got out of that jam by striking out Perez and getting Hunter Renfroe to line out to center fielder Luis Robert Jr.
“It’s really big navigating a bit of traffic and putting up a zero,” Thorpe said. “It’s super good.”
Thorpe’s strong 97-pitch performance came a day after Jonathan Cannon rebounded from a three-run first to go six innings — allowing four runs — in a 6-1 loss.
“When you look at those two guys, what they did here against a playoff (contending) team, it’s pretty special,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “These guys are rookies. They are standing out there in the sixth inning going through the lineup three times and (the Royals) can play.
“We’ve just got to continue to develop, go through the process and try to win some games. We’ve got to close these things out.”
2. Here’s the explanation behind Chuckie Robinson’s “weird” single.
Chuckie Robinson hit a looping liner that curved as it went over the head of Witt at shortstop for a single in the fifth inning of Saturday’s game.
It was Robinson’s first hit with the Sox after joining the team from Triple-A Charlotte on Friday.
“Always good to get the first one out of the way so you can breathe a little bit,” Robinson told the Tribune on Sunday morning. “And it was weird. I hit the ball twice.”
Robinson watched the at-bat in super slow-motion to get confirmation of the double contact on the Brady Singer sinker.
“I thought I broke my bat,” Robinson said. “Somebody told me, ‘Did you hit that ball twice?’ I said, ‘I really don’t know.’
“It had a weird little knuckle and died at the end.”
Robinson said he had never done anything like that in his life.
Earlier in the game, Robinson made an impact behind the plate, throwing out Witt when he attempted to steal third.
“It was good just to help the team out, to get an out, help out Cannon and help the team,” Robinson said.
It was Robinson’s first big-league game since 2022. He appeared in 25 contests that season for the Cincinnati Reds, going 8-for-59 (.136) with two doubles, two home runs and five RBIs.
“It was good to be back out there,” Robinson said. “It was good energy. Unfortunately, we lost the game, but Cannon, once he got settled in, we got into a rhythm.”
3. Manager Pedro Grifol gave insight into how losing has affected him.
Grifol was asked how tough the losing has been on him after Sunday’s defeat.
“I’m a competitor at the end of the day and want to win baseball games,” he said. “That’s the most important thing at the major-league level. But there is a process to this thing we’re going through right now.
“It hurts, it’s painful as s−−−. I can’t lie. I mean, it’s painful. But my faith is in the good Lord up there, man. There’s a reason I’m going through this, there’s a reason we’re going through this as an organization. A reason these young kids are here with this opportunity to perform and develop.”
He pointed to the Royals, who lost 106 games last season and are 55-45 this season, as an example of a turnaround.
“This turnaround can happen really quick, especially when we’re seeing what we’re seeing daily, which is really good starting pitching,” Grifol said. “And we drafted (pitcher Hagen Smith) with the fifth pick. We had a couple guys throw four (Noah Schultz) or five (Jairo Iriarte) no-hit innings in Double A (during a doubleheader on Saturday), so there are some really good things happening here. But this is painful, I can’t neglect that fact.”
