Sunday Night Baseball: Tigers vs. Royals
A division rivalry will stream on Peacock on Sunday Night Baseball, as the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals wrap up their weekend set. This Tigers vs. Royals game presents an opportunity for Kansas City to rack up a sweep and get to within a game of .500. Detroit is just looking to salvage some kind of silver lining out of a brutal week, one in which Tarik Skubal had surgery to remove a loose body from his elbow.
We’ll get another MacGyver-esque pitching setup for the Tigers, as Brenan Hanifee will get the start and it will be a Johnny Wholestaff approach from there. The Royals will counter with left-hander Noah Cameron, whose start was pushed back after being scratched earlier in the week with a barking back.
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How to Watch Tigers vs. Royals
Where: Peacock
When: Sunday May 10, 7:20 p.m. ET
Tigers vs. Royals MLB Odds
Kansas City Royals -131 // Detroit Tigers +109
Total: 8 (-118/-102)
Tigers vs. Royals Game Preview
The pillow fight that is the AL Central took a big turn this week with the Skubal news and the Royals have the chance to go 5-2 against division foes. After taking the first two with the Guardians, they missed an opportunity by losing the last two and winding up with a split of that four-game series, but a sweep of the Tigers would certainly lessen the blow quite a bit.
Detroit has dropped five in a row and looks like a team that is having a hard time overcoming a plethora of injuries. There’s a pretty good MLB-caliber starting rotation on the IL right now, plus the Tigers are missing Gleyber Torres, Javier Baez, Parker Meadows, and Trey Sweeney on the position player side. This is still a Motor City squad that ranks 11th in wOBA and fourth in xwOBA, so they’ve made some solid contact despite the injuries and other hurdles to overcome.
That being said, a lot of their damage has come against right-handed pitching, as they are in the middle of the pack in wOBA against southpaws and actually grade well below league average by wRC+. That should be a positive for Cameron, who comes in with a 5.40 ERA, 6.31 xERA, and a 4.46 FIP over six starts and 31.2 innings. It’s been tough sledding for Cameron, who posted a strong 2.99 ERA in his rookie season last year. His other run estimators were all north of 4.00, so some regression was expected, but not really to this degree.
To that end, Cameron is running a .350 BABIP against and has just a 65.9% LOB%, two metrics that illustrate how lucky or unlucky a pitcher has gotten from a batted ball standpoint and a sequencing standpoint. If he can get on the right side of things with the baseball gods and cut back his walk rate, he’ll find some success moving forward.
Hanifee is a 6-foot-5 right-hander who made 54 appearances covering 60 innings for the Tigers last season. He was effective, posting a 3.00 ERA with a 3.25 FIP. His xERA of 4.13 was on the higher end because he didn’t miss a lot of bats or rack up a bunch of strikeouts. He also allowed a lot of hard contact, but because his ground ball rate is so high, he was able to mostly work around that.
Ty Madden really saved the Tigers on Saturday by working six innings in relief in the 5-1 loss. He’s unavailable, but all the rest of the bullpen options are on the table for manager AJ Hinch. Unfortunately, I do think he’ll wind up looking for some length out of Ricky Vanasco or Emmanuel De Jesus, who are fringy Major Leaguers at best.
After a really slow start offensively, the Royals are in the middle of the pack in wOBA and are inching towards league average in wRC+. Hanifee, Vanasco, and Drew Anderson are all righties, so it seems as though the Royals will be looking at that split throughout the majority of the game. They’re a below average offense across the board against righties, but have been improving over the course of the campaign.
Tigers vs. Royals Prediction
Cameron’s command has really let him down this season, as he’s allowed a 13.3% Barrel%. Maybe it had something to do with the back issue he’s been navigating this week, but he hasn’t pitched since April 30. Perhaps he’s been able to get straightened out with some bullpens and side sessions. I don’t know, but the Tigers offense really needs to get it going to give the beleaguered pitching staff some run support. I think that they have that opportunity here and I could see the Tigers figuring out a way on the pitching side, especially with their high-leverage arms all available for a close game late.
Pick: Tigers +109
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source vsin.com ’
