KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After finishing 16 games below .500 last season, the Chicago White Sox made wholesale changes, adding 12 new faces to their 2015 roster.
Many prognosticators predicted the White Sox would win the American League Central with the influx of new talent, but they lost each of their first three games, getting swept by the Royals. Kansas City completed the season-opening series with a 4-1 win Thursday.
“I’m not comparing us to the Cavs. I’m not,” White Sox center fielder Adam Eaton said. “But everyone was freaking out when LeBron (James) and all of them (were) not meshing correctly, and then all of a sudden they win 12 in a row. Again, I’m not comparing us to the Cavs, but it does take a little while to mesh together with all the new faces we have. You hope we can be a little like them and mesh at the right time and get hot and play good baseball.”
The White Sox are 0-3 for the first time since 2004.
“You’ve got to see a few more games before people can start making a synopsis of how the season is going to go and what the teams are going to be like,” Eaton said. “We’re all right. We’ll be fine. There’s no freaking out here, just a little frustration right now.”
Left-hander John Danks absorbed the loss, his first ever against the Royals.
“I think they just played better than us for three games,” Danks said. “It would have been nice to win a couple here. … We’ve got a lot of baseball left, and we still feel good about what we have here.
“There are things we certainly need to do better, and we will. That’s just the way it’s going to be. We have too much talent in here to keep playing like this, but we’ll be better.”
White Sox manager Robin Ventura said things can get magnified at the beginning of the season.
“We’ve had a three-game losing streak before,” Ventura said. “You kind of push aside the beginning of the year and get that out of the way and get back to playing baseball.”