Martin 'about as good as it gets' in longest White Sox no-hit bid in 2 years

KANSAS CITY -- Catcher Edgar Quero rushed out to the mound to meet with Davis Martin after the righty walked the first two batters of the fourth inning on a combined 16 pitches.

Things were going as well as they could up until that point -- nine up, nine down -- but Martin found himself in his first jam of the day against Vinnie Pasquantino, the Royals’ RBI leader.

Quero gave Martin one suggestion:

“He comes out after those two walks [before] Pasquantino and says, ‘I love sinker here.’ All right, let’s do it. [And then] double play,” Martin said. “You’re like, ‘All right, you love sinker. That was a great decision.’

“ … At the end of the day, when you throw your best offspeed pitches, your sliders, your changeups, they’re more effective.”

Martin was doing just that, taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning in a 6-2 White Sox loss to the Royals at Kauffman Stadium. It was Chicago’s longest no-hit bid since Michael Kopech (also 5 1/3 frames) on Aug. 5, 2023.

The 28-year-old allowed just one hit -- a bloop double to Mike Yastrzemski with one out in the sixth -- and struck out four. It was just the fourth time in Martin’s career that he tossed six innings with no earned runs allowed, matching a career best.

“That was about as good as it gets,” manager Will Venable said. “He was in the zone the whole day. When he didn’t get ahead with the first pitch, he was right back in the count. Got soft contact. I thought everything was working for him. Really good cutter, really good changeup. He’s aggressive and attacks the zone, so great job.”

Martin kept the Royals guessing from the start, using his five-pitch mix to both handed hitters to set up his changeup and sinker, inducing a total of eight ground-ball outs.

“Well, first of all, you got to give a lot of credit to Martin,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “I mean, you could tell right out of the gate. He had a really good changeup. It was hard. It had good depth. With his arm speed, that’s a really challenging pitch.”

Martin worked around a two-out walk in the fifth before allowing his first hit in the sixth, but responded by setting down Bobby Witt Jr. and Pasquantino to keep Yastrzemski at second. With a 2-0 lead and sitting at 87 pitches, Martin wanted to go back out for the seventh -- but agreed with Venable’s decision to turn to the ’pen as the heat index neared 100 degrees.

“Honestly, the heat, I was pretty tired,” Martin said. “Where the pitch count is this part of the year, Will told us why we were doing it, what we were doing, and I loved it. It was a great decision and you trust those guys coming in behind you. I had no qualms about that.”

But the Royals scratched across six runs the next two frames to take a potential win away from Martin, who lowered his ERA back under four to 3.94.

It’s a troubling trend for the White Sox, who are just 2-11 in their past 13 games after a red-hot 10-4 stretch out of the break. Chicago has scored two runs or fewer in five of its past six games, including all three in Kansas City -- where the Sox have now dropped 14 straight.

A run was left off the board in the second when Quero was thrown out at home after a ball got past a diving Yastrzemski in right field. The White Sox left 11 on base and went just 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position as their MLB-worst OPS with RISP dipped to .645.

“It just seems similar to the other games where you can’t string it together,” Venable said. “You have one good thing happen, and then two outs, a couple good things happen, and then a mistake on the bases, whatever it might be. So we just have to be better and try to string some things together.”

Martin did all he could on Sunday to avoid the sweep, but as the season winds down, the White Sox will need to go 19-19 to avoid 100 losses for the third consecutive season.

“… We have the talent. We have the ability. It’s just the little miscues here and there that are going to plague a young team,” Martin said. “Now, if we learn from them, I think .500 ball [the rest of the season] is definitely in our cards. Continue to learn, continue to get better at the game and do the little things right.”