<\/p>\n
The last time we gathered here for one of my recaps, the Royals had just won the second of two straight against the Detroit Tigers<\/a>. It was the third straight weekend the Royals had won the first games of a weekend series, and the first two weekends had ended in a sweep. Things were looking very, very bright.<\/p>\n Now we come together, and the Royals have lost four in a row. They\u2019ve gone from second place in the AL Central and holding a Wild Card Spot to the bottom of the AL Central and 2.5 games back of a Wild Card spot. The vibes are bad<\/em>. Battlefield Earth<\/em> bad. Game of Thrones<\/em> finale bad.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Madame Web <\/em>bad.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not here to tell you that the vibes aren\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t be bad. What I am<\/em> here to tell you is that, somehow, the Royals are fewer than 3 wins from a playoff spot in the middle \u2013 or maybe the end! \u2013 of their second<\/em> set of awful<\/em> vibes in the first third of the season. It\u2019s less that the Royals need to immediately trade every moderately valuable player and more that we all need to just take a dang break. Maybe you don\u2019t want to take a break from baseball. Good news! It\u2019s Rivalry Weekend in baseball, which means every game except the national ones is available for free on MLB.TV this weekend. If you absolutely must watch some baseball but you find the Royals are ruining your mood, go watch any other team. They\u2019ll be here when you\u2019re ready to come back. Maybe they\u2019ll even be playing better again.<\/p>\n Some of us, of course, get paid to watch this team. And, yeah, sometimes that seems like a cheat code. But weeks like this week show why it\u2019s not just easy money. I\u2019m not asking for any sympathy for y\u2019all, just saying, if you\u2019ve ever thought about how dumb it is that I get paid even the small amount I get paid to watch baseball, remember I\u2019ve got to watch the truly awful baseball, too.<\/p>\n OK. On to the game.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Michael Wacha<\/a> will take the mound. He was also the pitcher the last time the Royals won, so that feels like a good omen. And, frankly, he\u2019s been fantastic<\/em> this year. He\u2019s the seventh-most valuable pitcher in the AL by bWAR. (fWAR doesn\u2019t like him as well because he\u2019s not getting strikeouts. Still, he, Seth Lugo<\/a>, and Kris Bubic<\/a> are all top-25 in AL fWAR.) Nothing is guaranteed in baseball, but having 2026 Michael Wacha on the mound feels like a good thing.<\/p>\n The Cardinals will counter with, thankfully, a right-hander in Dustin May<\/a>. May was a top\u201420-in-MLB prospect when he debuted in 2019, but he has never gotten anywhere near that hype. He has been hurt a lot and, beginning last year, he hasn\u2019t been remotely effective. That has continued into this season. He faced the Royals twice last year, once with the Dodgers<\/a> and once with the Red Sox<\/a>. He gave up a total of 7 runs in 7.2 innings. He lost the one with the Red Sox, though Noah Cameron<\/a> had a poor game against the Dodgers, and the Royals lost that one 5-4. If the Royals lose tonight, it seems unlikely to be because Dustin May finally started getting them out.<\/p>\n The Royals are putting the usual vRHP lineup. I don\u2019t have anything to say about it I haven\u2019t said before. And, honestly, as much as Sal shouldn\u2019t be in the cleanup spot, the Royals have won plenty of games with him in that spot this year when their pitchers have otherwise done their jobs. So I guess it doesn\u2019t matter enough to have a cow about.<\/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 last time we gathered here for one of my recaps, the Royals had just won the second of two straight against the Detroit Tigers. It was the third straight weekend the Royals had won the first games of a weekend series, and the first two weekends had ended in a sweep. Things were looking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2418926,"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":[21849,377417,345193,345065,473345,43627,311278,313842,457919,311237,314825,341113,244474,22091],"class_list":["post-2418925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-baseball","tag-cardinals","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-dodgers","tag-dustin-may","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kris-bubic","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-masyn-winn","tag-michael-wacha","tag-noah-cameron","tag-red-sox","tag-seth-lugo","tag-the-royals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Game-thread-XLV-\u2013-Royals-at-Cardinals.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418925","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=2418925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2418927,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418925\/revisions\/2418927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lineups<\/h2>\n