Singer sets tone and Salvy homers again as Kansas City Royals beat White Sox
One day after the Chicago White Sox lineup unloaded for 10 runs on 15 hits and scored in five separate innings, Kansas City Royals right-hander Brady Singer took the bats out of their hands with his slider-fastball combination.
Singer pitched seven scoreless innings for the first time all season, while Salvador Perez once again powered the offense Sunday in a 6-0 Royals win in front of an announced 19,696 at Kauffman Stadium.
“That was probably the best fastball he has had all season,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “The movement. The location. He found it, and he was down. There was only one pitch I remember him kind of climbing out of the zone and it had intent. He ended up getting a strike-three swing on it.”
The Royals (61-75) won two of three in the weekend series and finished 10-9 against the AL Central Division-leading White Sox this season. The Royals also improved to an MLB-best 20-16 against first-place teams this season.
“We’re getting better,” Perez said of the significance of the club’s success against the White Sox this season. “Pitchers are starting to learn how they need to pitch to these guys.”
Last year in the pandemic-shortened season, the Royals were 1-9 against the White Sox. Had they gone .500 against the White Sox, they’d have finished .500 overall for the season.
“It doesn’t matter what team we play, honest,” Perez said. “We’ve got to go and play hard. That’s something we’ve got to do day-by-day, day-by-day if we want to be in the playoffs. The way we played these guys, we’ve got to go out tomorrow and play the same way, keep the same mentality, the same focus and try to win the game tomorrow.”
Perez, the Royals’ All-Star catcher, hit his 41st home run of the season and third in a 24-hour span after his two-homer performance on Saturday night. He went 1 for 3 with a run scored and three RBIs.
Shortstop Nicky Lopez went 2 for 4 with a double and two runs scored, and All-Star second baseman Whit Merrifield went 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run scored. Hunter Dozier also had an RBI with a sacrifice fly.
Adalberto Mondesi, who started his second game at third base, went 1 for 4 with a hit, two stolen bases and a run scored.
Singer, who’d held the Seattle Mariners to one earned run in six innings in his previous start, struck out six and didn’t walk a batter.
“I think throughout the game the command actually got a little bit better,” Singer said. “I felt like the slider was kind of struggling at the beginning and then kind of figured that out throughout the game. … I think command was the biggest thing today, just working to both sides of the plate.”
He pitched seven innings for just the second time this season. He also pitched seven innings against the Detroit Tigers on April 24.
Singer also matched his season high with 106 pitches. He threw his much talked about and highly-analyzed changeup just twice, including the final pitch of his outing and induced a groundout.
Singer actually shook off a changeup call by Perez earlier in the at-bat, but Perez insisted upon it at the end of the nine-pitch at-bat with the left-handed hitting Gavin Sheets.
“That really is kind of an example of why a guy gets away from a third pitch,” Matheny said. “When the fastball is that effective and the slider is that effective, there’s usually a tendency to look in the mirror and realize that you probably don’t need anything else that day. He ended up throwing a couple, but he really didn’t need them today because the sinker and the slider where that good.”
The White Sox had just four hits against Singer, and they didn’t have multiple hits in any inning with Singer on the hill.
Pitchers Domingo Tapia and Wade Davis each gave the Royals an inning of scoreless relief.
The Royals hit the road and begin a four-game series with the Baltimore Orioles Monday afternoon. Left-hander Kris Bubic (4-6, 5.16) is scheduled to start for the Royals. The Orioles had not announced their pitching plans for the series before Sunday’s game.
This story was originally published September 5, 2021 at 4:15 PM.
