KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Right-hander Davis Martin took a no-hitter into the sixth inning Sunday, but a stagnant offense and a wilting bullpen kept the White Sox’ curse in Kansas City alive as the Royals came back for a 6-2 victory to complete a series sweep.
The deflating loss marked the Sox’ 14th in a row at Kauffman Stadium in the last two seasons and was the latest blow to their hopes of staving off a third consecutive 100-loss season.
Martin kept a hot-swinging Royals team off-balance all afternoon, pounding hitters with 96 mph four-seamers and sinkers to go with his signature kick changeup. He mowed down the first nine Royals he faced until walking Mike Yastrzemski and Bobby Witt Jr. to open the fourth.
Red-hot Lenyn Sosa gave the Sox a 1-0 lead with his 16th homer of the season and second of the series in the first, a 426-foot blast against Royals starter Ryan Bergert.
Lenyn Sosa is back at it again! pic.twitter.com/ulk2HT2XFr
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) August 17, 2025
The Sox almost struck again in the second. After a single by Edgar Quero, Yastrzemski dived and missed Chase Meidroth’s line-drive double to right field. But Royals cutoff man Jonathan India nailed Quero at the plate on an afternoon the Sox left 11 runners on base.
‘‘You have one good thing happen and then two outs,’’ manager Will Venable said. ‘‘We just have to be better and try to string some things together.’’
The Sox’ bats did come through in the sixth, when Royals left fielder Adam Frazier bobbled a one-out fly by Andrew Benintendi, who scored on a single by Quero.
Martin kept the Royals out of the hit column until a bloop double by Yastrzemski with one out in the sixth. Venable called it a day for Martin after six innings of one-hit ball in which he struck out four and walked three.
At 87 pitches, Martin said he would have liked a shot at the seventh, but he had ‘‘no quarrels’’ with getting the hook on a 94-degree afternoon.
‘‘I was pretty tired,’’ he said.
Instead, his gem was wiped out when India plopped a 451-foot, two-run homer off reliever Steven Wilson into the fountains at Kauffman Stadium to tie the score in the seventh.
In the eighth, Witt singled against rookie flame-thrower Grant Taylor, then stole second and came home on a single by Maikel Garcia to give the Royals the lead. The wheels then came off, with an errant pickoff attempt sending Garcia to second and Sox killer Salvador Perez blasting an RBI single off the center-field wall before reliever Jordan Leasure served up a two-run homer to Frazier.
With the loss, the Sox (44-80) have to play .500 ball — 19-19 — the rest of the way to avoid their third consecutive 100-loss season.
A hundred losses seemed a shoo-in before the Sox’ 10-4 start out of the All-Star break stoked hopes of taking a symbolic step forward in their rebuild. But they’ve come back to earth, losing 11 of their last 13 games.
‘‘The mood in here is great, still, and I think everybody’s trying to get back to that and back to winning,’’ said Benintendi, who weathered 101 losses in his first season with the Sox in 2023 before a modern-day-record 121 last season.
Benintendi said avoiding the 100-loss mark is ‘‘maybe in the back of our minds but not really.’’
The Sox’ final six weeks are no cakewalk if they want to avoid the century mark, with the pesky Royals on the calendar to go with the postseason-contending Yankees, Tigers and Padres. The lowly Twins and Nationals await, too, however.
‘‘We have the talent, we have the ability,’’ Martin said. ‘‘It’s just the little miscues here and there that are going to plague a young team. Now, if you learn from them, I think .500 ball is definitely in our cards.’’