Royals show why they were sellers in grizzly 9-2 loss to the White Sox

The Royals traded Carlos Santana a month ago. They traded Andrew Benintendi a week ago. And today, they traded Cam Gallagher and, finally, Whit Merrifield. They should have sold off more, to be honest, because the team has been an utter disaster. Games like this are why—a surpisingly efficient, albeit no less complete, loss to the White Sox, 9-2.

Kansas City was in the game precisely once in the third inning when they scored a pair of runs and came within one run of the White Sox. Sure enough, those two runs the Royals scored were the only runs they’d score all night. It began with a pair of walks from Nicky Lopez and MJ Melendez, who were knocked in by a single from Salvador Perez and a double from Hunter Dozier, respectively. Nick Pratto even walked, too, but that’s all they’d get. Nobody would walk again for the rest of the night.

On the pitching side of things, whoo boy, Brad Keller struggled. Five straight White Sox hitters reached base in the first inning, with three of them scoring. Chicago would score another pair in the fourth inning when four consecutive hitters reached base. But Mike Matheny was asleep at the wheel tonight, and the sixth inning didn’t have to happen. Keller allowed another stretch of hitters to reach—three in a row, this time—with nobody warming up in the bullpen. Matheny let Abreu to hit a three-run bomb before finally deciding to remove Keller, who allowed a whopping 13 hits in his 5 ²⁄₃ innings. Josh Staumont gave up a bonus run in the eighth inning.

There just wasn’t a lot going on in this game. You can tell how interesting a game was in part by how many highlights the Bally Sports KC Twitter account posts. Tonight, they posted one—Dozier’s double. That’s the lowest I’ve seen all year. It was a comprehensive defeat. So it goes.