Something I wrote in last night’s recap keeps parading through my mind. This team was constructed to be a team with a high floor and enough talent to be play consistently above-average but without top-end potential outside Bobby Witt Jr. and Cole Ragans. The flaw with this build shows in games like the one last night but also in road trips like the one they’re currently on. They have played 8 games and they have gone 3-5. Ignoring sweeps and such, that’s not a terrible road trip. But because the floor has completely fallen out a couple of times, it’s simply not as good as they need to be to even pretend to get back in the hunt. They could win this afternoon and tomorrow and have a 5-5 road trip. That would be a successful road trip in a vacuum, but for a team that has endured the losing the Royals have, it simply wouldn’t be enough to help them dig out of the whole they’ve fallen into. And that’s in the best case scenario for today and tomorrow, far from any kind of certainty.
A lot of Royals fans have expressed that this season feels worse than many of the losing seasons we have endured. Part of that is the weight of expectations. But part of it is that it’s so hard to shift your mindset from wins not mattering to individual performances mattering. If the Royals lose today but Luinder Avila throws six shutout and Jac Caglianone crushes a couple extra-base hits, that’s a good day. Speaking of which.
Advertisement
Luinder Avila is coming off the best start of his big league career, five innings of one-run ball. He still walked 4, so control issues continue to plague him in his longer outings. But the Royals want to believe he could be a frontline starter. Most analysts, including yours truly, don’t see it. Still, in a lost season they might as well see if he can prove them right. Interestingly, his calling card is his curveball but it’s been an awful pitch for him this season. For what it’s worth, it was his most-used pitch and absolutely dominant last year. This year, though, he can’t get anyone to chase it or miss it, and they often hit it quite hard. His sinker and changeup have been quite effective, though, so if he can figure out what’s wrong with the curveball, he could have three plus pitches to draw on and maybe that could help him become the starter the Royals envision.
The Twins will be using Joe Ryan. Royals fans are likely familiar enough with him by now that we don’t need to go into great detail, but still, we’re here so we might as well summarize. He has a six-pitch mix but uses a splitter in place of the more common changeup. He throws his fastball more than 40% to great effect both in terms of chase and whiffs. Until last September, he had a history of never having lost to the Royals, but they’ve now gotten to him in back-to-back starts. Maybe they’ll be able to make it three straight today.
Lineups
Maikel Garcia is back in the lineup for the Royals. Salvador Perez gets his fourth day off of the year, meaning Jac Caglianone gets to still bat fifth. Josh Rojas gets his first start after his pinch-hit heroics on Thursday night. The Twins will be without Byron Buxton, at least for today. Hopefully the Royals score more runs than the Twins!
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’
