{"id":2418890,"date":"2026-05-15T23:26:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T23:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2418890"},"modified":"2026-05-15T23:26:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T23:26:46","slug":"matt-quatraro-stands-by-royals-rotation-despite-recent-slide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/matt-quatraro-stands-by-royals-rotation-despite-recent-slide\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Quatraro Stands By Royals Rotation Despite Recent Slide"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Royals were finally rolling and then the rotation fell off a cliff.<\/p>\n

Kansas City<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lately, it has looked like nothing of the sort, and the bullpen is paying the price for it.<\/p>\n

One number sums it up.<\/p>\n

Royals starters<\/a> have one quality start in their last eight games.<\/p>\n

That is brutal for a group that was supposed to be the steady thing carrying this team while the bats woke up.<\/p>\n

Quatraro Backs His Guys<\/h2>\n

After another short outing left the bullpen hanging by a thread, Quatraro<\/a> got the obvious question and gave an honest answer.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

He has a fair case.<\/p>\n

Seth Lugo<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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Michael Wacha<\/a> keeps pounding the zone like always, and Kris Bubic<\/a> has been steady too.<\/p>\n

That trio is enough of a foundation to fix this.<\/p>\n

The problem is everything around them.<\/p>\n

The Real Hole<\/h2>\n

Cole Ragans<\/a> is the more interesting story.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The timeline on his return is anybody’s guess right now.<\/p>\n

Stephen Kolek<\/a> gets the call from Triple-A Omaha to plug the hole until further notice.<\/p>\n

How Kansas City Recovers<\/h2>\n

The help is in the lineup.<\/p>\n

Bobby Witt Jr.<\/a>, Maikel Garcia<\/a>, and Vinnie Pasquantino<\/a> can flat-out carry a team for weeks at a time when they get going together.<\/p>\n

The AL Central<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/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 sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. Advertisement Matt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2418891,"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":[91466,311239,310650,311278,313842,311274,311237,349062,27155,244474,347944,22091,102808],"class_list":["post-2418890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-cole-ragans","tag-kansas-city","tag-kris-bubic","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-matt-quatraro","tag-michael-wacha","tag-quatraro","tag-royals","tag-seth-lugo","tag-stephen-kolek","tag-the-royals","tag-vinnie-pasquantino"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Matt-Quatraro-Stands-By-Royals-Rotation-Despite-Recent-Slide.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418890","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=2418890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2418892,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418890\/revisions\/2418892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}