The Royals were finally rolling and then the rotation fell off a cliff.
Kansas City sits at 19-24 and third in the AL Central, and after a late April run that looked like it might save the season, the offense has cooled and the starters have stopped giving the team much of anything.
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Matt Quatraro spent all winter telling anyone who would listen how deep this group was, and through most of April it looked like he had a point.
Lately, it has looked like nothing of the sort, and the bullpen is paying the price for it.
One number sums it up.
Royals starters have one quality start in their last eight games.
That is brutal for a group that was supposed to be the steady thing carrying this team while the bats woke up.
Quatraro Backs His Guys
After another short outing left the bullpen hanging by a thread, Quatraro got the obvious question and gave an honest answer.
“We’re accustomed to quality starts regularly,” Quatraro said. “We haven’t gotten them in this stretch. That’s unfortunate. We believe in those guys and we know they’ll be better.”
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He has a fair case.
Seth Lugo has been everything Kansas City paid for, posting a 3.21 ERA through nine starts and one of the lowest home run rates in baseball.
Michael Wacha keeps pounding the zone like always, and Kris Bubic has been steady too.
That trio is enough of a foundation to fix this.
The problem is everything around them.
The Real Hole
Cole Ragans is the more interesting story.
The All-Star ace from 2024 landed on the 15-day injured list on May 9 with a left elbow impingement, which is troubling for a pitcher who has already gone under the knife twice for Tommy John.
Even before the injury, he was getting hit around at a 4.84 ERA over eight starts, so the Royals were already without their best guy.
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The timeline on his return is anybody’s guess right now.
Stephen Kolek gets the call from Triple-A Omaha to plug the hole until further notice.
How Kansas City Recovers
The help is in the lineup.
Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia, and Vinnie Pasquantino can flat-out carry a team for weeks at a time when they get going together.
The AL Central is wide open, nobody in the division has put any real distance between themselves and the pack, and Kansas City is still right in the wild card mix.
If Lugo and Wacha keep doing their thing every fifth day, and Bubic and Cameron find a rhythm, the rotation gets back to where Quatraro thinks it should be, then this slide could be a blip on the schedule.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’
