<\/p>\n
Garion Thorne gives you a preview, prediction and pick for today\u2019s game between the Washington Nationals and the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n
The Royals<\/a> were somewhat surprising buyers at the MLB Trade Deadline, and if the team is going to reward management\u2019s confidence with a Wild Card berth, it needs to keep taking advantage of opponents like the Nationals<\/a>. Kansas City has taken the first two games of this series and it\u2019ll be looking for the sweep on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n Can the Royals move above the .500 mark? Let\u2019s preview this matinee matchup with the help of some odds and lines on the DraftKings Sportsbook.<\/p>\n One of the biggest shocks of last month\u2019s deadline wasn\u2019t even a trade. It was the Royals extending the contract of Seth Lugo, who seemed set to test the free agency waters at season\u2019s end. On the surface, Lugo\u2019s 3.46 ERA looks very similar to his mark of 3.00 in 2024 \u2014 a campaign where the veteran RHP truly broke out into the national consciousness as a front-line starter. However, the data from under the hood is much different. After surrendering a season-high seven earned runs to the Twins<\/a> his last time out, Lugo is now in possession of a 14th percentile xERA (5.05) to go along with a career-worst 4.66 FIP. Lugo\u2019s often outperformed his ERA estimators as a starter, yet it certainly feels as if the soon-to-be 36-year-old is far more reliant on his unsustainably low BABIP (.258) and unsustainably high strand rate (83.1%) in 2025. That\u2019s a package that simply does inspire a lot of confidence.<\/p>\n Thankfully, if you\u2019re a Kansas City fan or prospective bettor, Jake Irvin inspires even less confidence. Despite somehow holding a winning record of 8-7, Irvin has amassed an ugly 4.90 ERA and 5.32 xERA across 24 starts and 136.0 innings this season. If you want to get more granular, Irvin possesses a 6.38 ERA over his last 13 outings, a span of time where the right-hander is surrendering a ghastly 2.13 opponent home runs per nine. That\u2019s usually the result when you combine a sixth percentile opponent barrel rate (11.9%) with an eighth percentile strikeout rate (15.6%). Woof.<\/p>\n The Royals are also suddenly equipped to take advantage of Irvin\u2019s flaws. While the club hit for virtually zero power in the season\u2019s first-half, Kansas City has been finding the outfield bleachers with regularity since the All-Star break. In the team\u2019s 23 games since the Midsummer Classic, the Royals have racked up 34 long balls and a .193 ISO that is the fifth-highest mark in MLB. Kauffman Stadium isn\u2019t a great park for homers, but if any pitcher can overcome the odds, it\u2019s Irvin.<\/p>\n Both of these starters have an xERA above 5.00 for the season and the Royals, in particular, are swinging the bats well since the All-Star break.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source dknetwork.draftkings.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Garion Thorne gives you a preview, prediction and pick for today\u2019s game between the Washington Nationals and the Kansas City Royals. The Royals were somewhat surprising buyers at the MLB Trade Deadline, and if the team is going to reward management\u2019s confidence with a Wild Card berth, it needs to keep taking advantage of opponents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1958058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1958057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Washington-Nationals-at-Kansas-City-Royals-prediction-pick-for-Wednesday.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1958057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1958058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1958057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1958057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1958057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Nationals vs. Royals prediction, preview<\/h2>\n
Nationals vs. Royals pick, best bet<\/h2>\n
Best Bet: Over 9 (-101)<\/a><\/h3>\n