White Sox can't shake Kansas City blues as late-summer losses mount

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The White Sox’ second-half surge has given way to a late-summer drought.

Their bats were mostly quiet once again while Kansas City knocked around starter Sean Burke to beat the Sox 6-2 Saturday, handing them their 10th loss in their last 12 games and extending their current skid to three games.

Kansas City right fielder Mike Yastrzemski hit Burke’s second pitch of the game 408 feet over the right-field wall to give the Royals a 1-0 lead.

After a one-out double the next inning from Randall Grichuk and a walk to Nick Lofton, Burke fielded a grounder from center fielder Kyle Isbel, but airmailed his throw to second base into center field, bringing another run home for Kansas City.

Burke got out of the jam with help from right fielder Brooks Baldwin, who caught a Yastrzemski liner and doubled Isbel off first base. But Burke had racked up 53 pitches by then.

Royals left fielder John Rave took Burke deep again in the third, and the 25-year-old starter couldn’t get out of the next frame, exiting after 3 ⅔ innings after giving up five hits and three runs, two earned, with a walk and three strikeouts — his second short start in as many outings.

Along the way, the Sox offense looked nothing like the one that powered them to a 10-4 run out of the All-Star break. They mustered only three hits off Royals starter Michael Lorenzen, who made his first start in more than a month after an injury.

A leadoff walk in the bottom of the fifth from Sox reliever Tyler Alexander and a bunt single from Rave set up a two-run double from Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia, whom Alexander then picked off second.

The Royals added another run in the sixth off three straight singles for insurance on their 13th straight win over the Sox at Kauffman Stadium dating back almost two years.

Andrew Benintendi put the Sox on the board against his former team in a two-out, eighth inning rally that was capped by his two-run double off reliever Bailey Falter to score Colson Montgomery and Luis Robert Jr. But they couldn't do any more damage.

“We haven't played our best baseball here,” manager Will Venable said before the game. “It's as good a time as any to change that.”

Buehrle, A.J. go bananas

While the Sox were in Kansas City, the 2005 reunion vibes flowed once again at Rate Field Friday night as Mark Buehrle and his World Series-winning battery mate A.J. Pierzynski suited up in yellow for the Savannah Bananas.

The brash former catcher and soft-tossing lefty both got standing ovations from the sold-out crowd at the Harlem Globetrotters-style baseball spectacle.

Buehrle’s fastball looked more than a few ticks slower than the 85-mph four-seamer he wielded for much of a workhorse career that was immortalized earlier this summer with a statue on the right-field concourse.

It was no World Series save, but Buehrle, throwing to Pierzynski for the first time since 2011, got the Bananas out of a seventh-inning jam by doing what he did so often on the South Side: inducing a groundout.

“Miss this!” Pierzynski said in a social media post.