Kansas City Royals rookie standout Bobby Witt Jr. made Chicago White Sox veteran pitcher Lance Lynn pay for one of the few mistakes he made Wednesday night. Witt blasted a Lynn fastball an estimated 441 feet for the game’s first run.
Witt’s home run got the Royals offense started. Unfortunately for the Royals, they couldn’t make more out of that opportunity.
Instead, the Royals were held to just the one run in that inning and two for the night in a 4-2 loss to the White Sox in front of an announced 17,168 in the second game of a three-game series at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.
The White Sox snapped a five-game losing streak and evened the series at one game apiece heading into Thursday afternoon’s finale.
The Royals (53-78) scratched catcher Salvador Perez from the starting lineup a little more than an hour before first pitch.
In the previous two games, the Royals scored a combined 24 runs and launched six home runs in those contests.
However, they were held to six hits and no walks by White Sox pitchers. Royals center fielder Michael A. Taylor went 2 for 4 with a triple.
He was the only Royals player with two hits. Michael Massey went 1 for 3 with an RBI and was hit by a pitch.
Royals starting pitcher Kris Bubic (2-10) allowed two runs on five hits, including two home runs, and four walks in six innings.
Bubic has made seven career starts against the White Sox, but still has not recorded a win against the AL Central Division rivals.
Bubic turned in a quality start after he hadn’t made it past four innings in each of his previous two starts.
He’d given up 10 runs in 7 2/3 innings in those two starts. Bubic escaped a bases-loaded jam with one out in the first inning — a 26-pitch inning — after he walked two batters and gave up an infield single Wednesday night,.
The Royals southpaw seemed to settle in after the first inning.
Meanwhile, Lynn limited the Royals’ scoring chances for the vast majority of his seven innings on the mound. Lynn held the Royals to four hits. He struck out eight, and he didn’t walk a batter.
Witt’s 19th home run of the season gave the Royals their first hit of the night in the fourth inning. Up until that point, Lynn had retired 10 consecutive Royals batters to start the game.
Witt’s homer was the first of three consecutive hits and four consecutive batters to reach base with one out, including Massey getting hit by a pitch, but the Royals left the bases loaded when Hunter Dozier grounded into an inning-ending double play.
The White Sox tied the score in the bottom half of the inning on a leadoff homer by AJ Pollock.
Then in the fifth, the White Sox took the lead on a solo homer by Elvis Andrus, a 430-foot smash to left field off of Bubic.
The White Sox (64-66) tacked on two more runs in the seventh inning against relief pitcher Amir Garrett, who faced three batters and didn’t record an out (two hits, one walk). The runs scored after Garrett had been replaced by Collin Snider.
Taylor roped a two-out triple in the ninth inning, and he scored on Massey’s RBI single to account for the game’s final run.
