Davis Martin’s gem goes to waste in Kansas City as Sox stare down barrel of another 100-loss season

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Starter Davis Martin took a no-hitter into the sixth inning Sunday, but a stagnant offense and wilting bullpen kept the Kansas City curse alive for the White Sox as the Royals came back for a 6-2 win and the series sweep.

The deflating loss marked the Sox 14th in a row at Kauffman Stadium — and the latest blow to the rebuilding team’s hopes of staving off a third straight 100-loss season.

Martin kept a hot-swinging Royals team off balance all afternoon, pounding hitters with 96 mph four-seamers and sinkers in between his signature kick changeup. The 28-year-old righty mowed down the first nine Royals he faced until walking Royals right fielder Mike Yastrzemski and shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. to open the fourth.

Red-hot Lenyn Sosa gave the Sox a 1-0 lead in the first inning with his 16th homer of the season and second of the series, a 426-foot blast off Royals starter Ryan Bergert.

The Sox almost struck again in the second inning after an Edgar Quero single when Yastrzemski dove and missed Chase Meidroth’s line-drive double. But Royals cutoff man Jonathan India nailed Quero at the plate on an afternoon the Sox left 11 runners on base.

They did come through in the top of the sixth, when Royals left fielder Adam Frazier bobbled Andrew Benintendi’s one-out fly and he later scored on a single from Quero.

Martin kept the Royals out of the hit column until a one-out bloop double by Yastrzemski in the sixth inning. Martin finished six innings of one-hit ball with four strikeouts and three walks, a gem that was wiped out in the seventh when India plopped a 451-foot two-run dinger off reliever Steven Wilson into the Kauffman Stadium fountains to tie it at 2.

Witt Jr. singled off the Sox’ rookie flame-thrower Grant Taylor in the eighth inning, then stole second and came home on a single by Garcia to give the Royals the lead.

An errant pickoff attempt sent Garcia to second, and longtime Sox killer Salvador Perez blasted a single off the center-field wall to make it 4-2. The wheels came off for the Sox when reliever Jordan Leasure served up a two-run homer to Frazier.

With Sunday’s loss, the Sox would need to play .500 ball the rest of the way to avoid their third straight 100-loss season.

Earlier this summer, another triple-digit defeat total seemed like a shoo-in, but the Sox’ hot 10-4 start to the second half stoked hopes of taking a symbolic step forward in the rebuild with a slightly less dreadful season record.

They’ve come back to earth in the past two weeks, losing 11 of their last 13 games.

“We've run into some pretty good pitching staffs with a mix of some guys kind of struggling,” said Benintendi, who weathered 101 losses in his first season with the Sox before last year’s all-time record 121. “The mood in here is great still, and I think everybody's trying to get back to back to that and back to winning.”

His team’s final six weeks of the season are no cakewalk to avoid the century mark once again, with the postseason contending Royals, Yankees, Tigers and Padres on the calendar. The lowly Twins and Nationals await too, though.

Benintendi said while the team knew it when they surpassed last year’s win total of 41, avoiding the 100-loss mark is “maybe in the back of our minds, but not really.”

“Coming off last year, we eclipsed that number already, so I think we're just gonna try to win as many as we can, and if it ends up we don't lose 100, or even if we lose it, baby steps.”