Not a pretty picture: White Sox sink even lower with loss to Royals

Before playing the Royals Wednesday night at Guaranteed Rate Field, the White Sox gathered for their annual team photo.

It will not be suitable for framing.

Odds are, it will be tossed in the trash moments after the season mercifully ends on Oct. 1.

You figured things could only improve after the Sox tumbled out to a 7-21 start, but they've actually gotten worse.

After losing to Kansas City 7-1, the White Sox's record dipped to 56-90. If they want to avoid losing 100 games, they have to go 7-9 the rest of the way.

That doesn't sound overly imposing, but it's probably too much to ask for a Sox team that lost a three-game series to a Royals team that has the worst record (46-101) in baseball.

Kansas City also won the season series against the Sox, 7-6.

Sticking with the bad theme, the White Sox have not won a series since they took two of three against Cleveland in early August.

"It seems like we had a lot of underperformance across the board," starting pitcher Dylan Cease said.

That is accurate, as it's been center fielder Luis Robert Jr. and not much else from start to near finish.

So it's Robert, Cease and a boatload of players who won't be back in 2024 all slogging to the finish line.

"We've got to get better," manager Pedro Grifol said. "We have to get better offensively, on the pitching end, defensive end, baserunning, I mean all aspects of the game. A lot of that falls on me, if not all of it. We have to coach better, we have to have better plans, we have to hold each other accountable more.

"I mean, everything. Everybody has to get better here. There's nothing where we can actually sit down and look to this year and say, 'OK, that was good enough.' Nothing was good enough this year. A lot of it falls on me."

In Wednesday's loss, Mike Clevinger had another solid start, going 6 innings and allowing 2 runs on 6 hits. The right-hander had 7 strikeouts and didn't walk a batter while lowering his ERA to 3.61.

Clevinger came out after throwing only 82 pitches.

"Just working through some things," he said. "Back's a little tight. It's been a little tight since the prior start against Detroit. Wanted to be smart given the situation we're in this season."

Clevinger can make a case for being the White Sox's best starter this season, but his return next year is up in the air.

He does have a $12 million mutual option to come back, but the Sox hold a $4 million buyout.

"We'll see," Clevinger said. "They haven't talked to me about anything. I'm definitely open to talking to them. We'll see how it goes."