CHICAGO _ Ian Kennedy pressed through a doorway and appeared in the visitors clubhouse Sunday afternoon, his right hand clutching a plate of sushi in the moments after an 8-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox.
All around him, teammates sat at tables and ate from the postgame spread inside a somber room. Kennedy had no wish to delay the inevitable. He had permitted five runs in 51/3 innings in an excruciating performance, a dull slog that left the Royals just days from being officially eliminated from the playoff race. So he placed his plate down, and called over a group of reporters, ready to rehash another lost outing.
"It's frustrating," he said.
Kennedy did not place the blame on the rotator cuff fatigue that dogged him in late August and early September, causing him to miss 11 days before his last start. He felt his fastball had the requisite life and his stuff was sharp enough. He just made mistakes, too many of them, as Chicago's Avisail Garcia and Kevan Smith clobbered him for homers and he failed to go at least six innings for a seventh straight start.
"It's more frustrating when you do feel good, or you feel better than you have in the last month or so," Kennedy said. "And you don't get the results."
To put the performance squarely on the shoulders of Kennedy would be to excuse an offense that appeared somewhat disinterested against Chicago rookie starter Lucas Giolito. Perhaps Giolito was just that effective, as Royals manager Ned Yost said, but as the club finished out its 10th road game in 11 days, the results were not pretty.
Giolito, acquired last offseason in a trade that sent outfielder Adam Eaton to the Nationals, yielded five hits and one run in seven innings.
The Royals' only run came on a solo homer by Lorenzo Cain, who clubbed his 15th in the fourth inning. The offensive unit moved to 12th in the American League in runs with 681, falling behind Chicago (684) by the end of the afternoon.
"We just couldn't generate any offense off him," Royals manager Ned Yost said of the 23-year-old Giolito. "He was good. We've been swinging the bats good but couldn't get anything going. He shut us down."
With the Minnesota Twins completing a four-game sweep in Detroit, the Royals (76-79) dropped 5{ games out of the second American League wild card with seven games to play. At this point, the end is merely procedural.
The Twins, losers of 103 games last season, are rolling toward a wild-card spot the Royals once thought belonged to them. Yet with Minnesota off on Monday, the Royals cannot be officially eliminated, even if they lose a one-game makeup at Yankee Stadium on Monday afternoon.
If Kansas City does close out its four-city, 11-game road trip with a loss in New York, elimination will come sometime this week at Kauffman Stadium, where the Royals will open a series against the Tigers on Tuesday night.
Perhaps that will be fitting, or as fitting as disappointment can be, a collection of former world champions possibly saying goodbye in the season's final home stand. But first, the Royals sought to leave town with a series victory over the White Sox (63-92) at Guaranteed Rate Field. Instead, they left having finished the year with a 9-10 record against Chicago, a rebuilding team that could lose more than 95 games.
It is one fact, among many, that will keep the Royals from playing in the postseason for the third time in four years.
At the heart of the loss was Kennedy, who surrendered a two-run homer to Garcia in the bottom of the first before missing with a first-pitch slider to Smith in the fourth. Smith cranked the baseball out to left-center field. The White Sox had a 3-1 lead. They would chase Kennedy in the sixth and pile on against reliever Kevin McCarthy.
In his last start, Kennedy managed to thrive for five innings in Toronto, allowing two runs in a 5-2 loss. Kennedy said his shoulder felt healthy. Yost credited the extra time off for a higher release point. But three days after the birth of his fifth child _ and first son _ on Thursday, Kennedy returned to Chicago and stepped on the mound. And Sunday, well ... it represented another setback.
"The (performance) didn't reflect what the stat line shows," Kennedy said. "I felt like my fastball was good. I made that one mistake with the slider to Smith. But (it's) just frustrating, because I felt better than the results."
