Royals beat Lucas Giolito, extend White Sox’ losing streak to four games

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Lucas Giolito was fine Monday night — he allowed three runs in six innings for a quality start in the White Sox’ fourth consecutive loss coming out of the All-Star break — but for the fourth time in his last five starts, he wasn’t the lights-out Giolito who was one of baseball’s best stories of the first half.

Giolito, like the Sox as a group, seems to have hit a bit of a wall.

“He’s managing right now,” manager Rick Renteria said of his ace. “That’s the reality of a full season. This is uncharted territory for him, being as effective going deep into games. His body is learning how to deal with it.”

Losing to the Royals for the first time in his career, Giolito exited the Sox’ 5-2 loss with an 11-4 record and 3.23 ERA, hiked by a 6.48 mark over those five starts. His velocity topped out at 94.9 mph.

“It’s going to happen,” said Giolito, who pitched for the first time since working a scoreless inning in the All-Star Game last Tuesday. “Coming off the All-Star Game just going out and trying to blow it out for one inning and then off a long time between starts. There’s going to be games where I don’t have my best velocity, and that’s when I really have to do a better job of executing. I think my fastball command kind of got worse as the night went on. That’s just part of it. Just need to get back in the gym, get my legs right, and we’ll see it creep back up.”

Giolito allowed seven hits, struck out five and walked one. Not bad, not great.

“Pretty good in the beginning, but out of the stretch, there were a few pitches that I didn’t execute well,” he said. “I kind of lost my slider in the middle of the game. But, overall, I thought it was OK. Just a few pitches that I left over the middle that they were able to take advantage of.”

Giolito isn’t the only Sox player performing with a case of the blahs. James McCann hit his 10th homer, but the Sox were 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position. Royals righty Jakob Junis (5.08 ERA) was the best pitcher, striking out a career-high 10 and limiting the Sox to five hits in seven innings.

This after a lackluster three losses in Oakland over the weekend.

“Not to make an excuse for them, but we go to the West Coast, we have the night game, we came out Saturday morning and had a day game, we lose a couple of hours,” Giolito said. “I can see they’re dragging a little right now. It’s visible.

“But as you’re coming off the All-Star break, you’re thinking, ‘They should be OK.’ No. It’s a long season.”

So Renteria won’t have his hitters take batting practice Tuesday.

“I told them to keep their heads up,” Renteria said. “We’re going to continue to push and play, embrace the expectations that we have of ourselves because the reality is we’re trying to prepare ourselves to be a winning organization.”

After heading into the break two games below .500, the Sox have the look of a team that might not see it again.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” Giolito said. “There’s going to be stretches where we aren’t playing our best, but the message is take tonight and tomorrow to kind of relax a little bit, come back to the game a little more fresh, and hopefully we get back on track tomorrow.”