I don\u2019t know about you, but whenever I think of Independence Day, I think about Independence Day<\/em>, the 1996 film. And I always first remember President Whitmore\u2019s grand speech ahead of the climactic battle against the aliens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What a speech. We used to be a gorram country with gorram movies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Anyway. The other thing I always remember from that – let\u2019s face it, excellent<\/em> – film is Will Smith\u2019s first encounter with an alien<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s the latter clip I hope to see the Royals replicate against the Philadelphia Phillies this evening. \u201cWelcome to Kansas City, please enjoy this jab to the jaw.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Royals will, much like Will Smith and the rest of Earth in this movie, be the underdogs in today\u2019s contest. They simply don\u2019t have the firepower that their opponents can boast. They don\u2019t have the speed, and they don\u2019t have the technology. But maybe with some grit they can pull off a win.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n OK, now that I\u2019ve gone on about that for way too long, let\u2019s talk about the matchups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jes\u00fas Luzardo, a very tough left-hander, is going for the Phillies today. The Royals have had their problems against lefties this year. They\u2019ve beaten a few in recent weeks, including torching Shane McClanahan in Tampa Bay just last week. But Luzardo would be a challenge even if they were consistently good against lefties. He was a 5.3 fWAR pitcher last year, and he\u2019s been almost exactly the same guy this year after signing a nice, long extension with Philadelphia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Luzardo is a true four-pitch pitcher; he throws none of them more often than 36.2% or less than 17.5%. His sweeper leads the way, and it\u2019s an absolutely filthy pitch. He gets chase and whiffs on his three best pitches, but uses his sinker to try to keep lefties honest to mixed effect. Honestly, that might be his one weakness this year. It\u2019s not much of a weakness, though, as he\u2019s still significantly better against lefties overall than righties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Royals will counter with Michael Wacha. Wacha has been fantastic for KC this year, a true anchor in the stormy seas of their lost season. He\u2019s also probably their most valuable trade chip as the deadline looms in less than a month. It\u2019s unclear if the Royals will trade him, but either way, it would be nice to see him have more success, if only because it\u2019s more fun to watch the Royals in competitive games than otherwise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Interestingly, after years of being the leadoff guy for the Phillies, Kyle Schwarber has spent most of his time batting second this year. He\u2019ll be there again, even though that makes the Phillies\u2019 middle of the order potentially vulnerable to a left-handed reliever. I guess Matt Strahm and Daniel Lynch IV are the only ones the Royals have, and they\u2019re not particularly frightening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite the lefty on the mound, Carter Jensen will still lead off tonight. Jac Caglianone has been demoted to the four spot, though, as he\u2019s been a bit cold since the two-home run game against the Rays last week. Salvador Perez is still out of the lineup and Tyler Tolbert gets another start in right field over Kameron Misner, who had a couple of adventures out there last time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\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 www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t know about you, but whenever I think of Independence Day, I think about Independence Day, the 1996 film. And I always first remember President Whitmore\u2019s grand speech ahead of the climactic battle against the aliens. What a speech. We used to be a gorram country with gorram movies. Anyway. The other thing I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2488684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[446438],"class_list":["post-2488683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-kansas-city-royals-game-information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Royals-vs-Phillies-July-4-game-discussion.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488683","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=2488683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2488685,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488683\/revisions\/2488685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2488684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2488683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2488683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2488683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}