The Royals start the final series of their Texas homestand tonight, hosting the Houston Astros. Most analysts figured the Royals needed to go 4-2 on this homestand if they wanted to continue to work their way back from the depths they sank to with all their early-season losing. That’s still technically on the table if they can sweep Houston. A sweep would start with a win tonight in what might be the most difficult pitching matchup of the series.
Luinder Avila has been much better in his second stab at starting at the big league level, but there are still a lot of questions. Like whether a 1.80 ERA is sustainable with an 8-7 K-BB ratio. Or whether he can ever pitch into the sixth inning. There’s no doubt he has the stuff to be a successful big league pitcher, but the biggest question is whether he can ever harness it well enough to be a consistent big league starter. He’s going to have at least a couple more weeks to try and show it.
Tatsuya Imai has had a weird start to his career with the Astros, who were determined to land one of the three Japanese stars that were posted last off-season to go with their Japanese-company-named ballpark. Since they had too many infielders already, they got the starting pitcher. He had a bit of a rough start, but he has pitched much better his last three times out. That includes the first six innings of a combined no-hitter against the Rangers on May 25.
Technically, Imai has a 6-pitch mix, but he primarily throws his goofy slider (meaning it’s thrown like a slider, but moves backwards from how they normally do), closely followed by a four-seam fastball. He struggles to throw his pitches in the zone – even in that no-hitter, he walked 4 while striking out 2 – but the slider can get chase and whiffs. His fastball averages 94.8 MPH, which is downright reasonable in modern baseball. He throws a sinker about 9.8% of the time, but it can get hit pretty hard. He’s thrown 14 splitters, 14 changeups, and 6 curveballs all year, so you can probably just ignore those pitch types.
If you’ve been wondering what it would take for the Royals to bat Salvador Perez lower than fifth, you finally have your answer. All it took was Salvy with a .245 OBP and .135 ISO (the absolute lowest of his career, even when he came up with no power.) Plus Jac Caglianone hitting better than Bobby Freaking Witt Jr. (Jac has an .808 OPS to Bobby’s .799.) I still wish Michael Massey was ahead of him, too, but I guess we should be grateful for what crumbs the team will give us in this regard. For all people have been furious with the underperformance of Isaac Collins – batting ninth today – his second-worst-in-the-lineup OPS is still 60 points higher than Sal’s. What a disaster.
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