KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Minutes before he entertained a trio of reporters in his Kauffman Stadium office on Thursday afternoon, Royals manager Ned Yost had to sort through some papers to find his team's record.
He didn't know it off-hand. He'd been avoiding it, more than likely out of habit.
But he didn't need much of a point of reference _ he sat in the dugout enough to know how often his team had lost during the first month of this season.
He finally saw the Royals were 5-17.
Relief poured over him.
"We're better than I thought," Yost said.
He'd guessed the Royals were 5-20. Not because he didn't believe in the talent on his team _ he defended them with fervor following the comment, citing a never-quit attitude and palpable energy in the dugout and the clubhouse _ but because this squad hasn't caught breaks this season.
The Royals were forced into three April doubleheaders because of weather, one of them scheduled after the roof of the domed Rogers Centre sustained damage from an ice storm in Toronto.
They entered Thursday ranked third in baseball with a 38.2 percent hard-hit rate, according to Fangraphs, yet had seen little come of the solid contact. They ranked last in runs scored with 72 and were 29th with a batting average of .192 (32 for 167) with runners in scoring position.
Much of that failure is self-inflicted, including this most recent twist of fate: Starting pitcher Jakob Junis, who has at times in his short career been considered the stopper of a losing streak, tied a single-game record for most home runs allowed by one Royals pitcher in a game when he allowed five in Thursday's series-opening 6-3 loss to the White Sox.
The White Sox struck early. Yoan Moncada string-lined a homer into the Royals bullpen in right field to lead off the game.
Wellington Castillo added the White Sox's second homer in the fourth inning, another one hit at such a low angle that the baseball only reached a height of 54 feet in its flight to the visiting bullpen.
Matt Davidson, who has seven homers this season and has hit five of them against the Royals, knocked a pair out of the ballpark. And Trayce Thompson joined the parade with a leadoff homer of his own in the fifth.
Coupled with a Moncada single in the third, Junis allowed only six hits. The White Sox just made the most of them, as he was charged all six of their runs through his 5 2/3 innings.
Exacerbating their offensive woes, the Royals led off back-to-back innings with doubles off White Sox starter Lucas Giolito _ Ryan Goins in the fifth and Mike Moustakas in the sixth _ but couldn't drive either base runner home.
Goins and Salvador Perez then led off back-to-back innings in the seventh and eighth, respectively, with singles. Only Perez scored, as Alcides Escobar fisted a two-out, bases-loaded single into shallow center field. No other runs scored on the hit. Jon Jay struck out to end the threat.
The Royals, who dropped to 5-18, stranded 11 men on base and were 2 for 15 with runners in scoring position.
