<\/p>\n
Michael Wacha has been the Kansas City Royals’ most consistent starting pitcher in 2026. Of late, however, he hasn’t looked like the All-Star he has been this season.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old right-hander has been exceptional during his career against the San Francisco Giants, who visit the Royals on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Wacha (5-7, 3.77 ERA) ranks among the major league leaders with 12 quality starts. Just one reason he earned his second All-Star Game nod — 11 years after his only other such honor.<\/p>\n
“Just the way I still love the game, and how much I love to prepare,” said Wacha, Monday’s scheduled starter for Kansas City. “I love to go out there and compete every day. I’m glad that the fire is still there.”<\/p>\n
Wacha remains an inspiration and Royals management has stated it’s not actively shopping him in advance of the upcoming trade deadline.<\/p>\n
However, he has allowed a combined 10 runs and four homers over 10 2\/3 innings in losing each of his last two starts. In his most recent, at the New York Mets on July 9, Wacha matched a season high with six runs surrendered, plus three walks, across a season-low 4 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
Wacha has not faced the Giants since 2024, but he’s 3-1 with a stellar 1.94 ERA in 10 career starts against them.<\/p>\n
Kansas City is last in the AL Central with 40 victories but took two of three from San Diego at home despite losing 19-2 on Sunday. Budding Royals star Jac Caglianone homered in that series finale, and has recorded seven extra-base hits during his 10-game hitting streak.<\/p>\n
Teammate Bobby Witt Jr. was given the day off Sunday. Perhaps that rest will help the All-Star shortstop get back on track after batting .167 (6-for-36) with 10 strikeouts in his last eight games.<\/p>\n
He’s batted .310 with six RBIs in 12 career games against the Giants.<\/p>\n
San Francisco has just two more wins than Kansas City and will try to avoid a third straight defeat after dropping two of three at Seattle. The Giants managed just five hits during a 6-3 loss Sunday, and they have scored more than three runs twice while splitting their last six games.<\/p>\n
“It’s not ideal, but all we can do (Monday) is come out and put our best game forward,” San Francisco left-hander Robbie Ray said.<\/p>\n
Despite the Giants’ struggles, rookie Bryce Eldridge hit his 10th homer Sunday and is batting .320 with three homers, four RBIs and six walks in the last seven games.<\/p>\n
The Giants are scheduled to start Trevor McDonald (3-7, 5.02), who allowed a homer and two other hits over seven strong innings against Colorado on July 12. It was a needed bounce back for the right-hander, who yielded eight runs and 11 hits in 2 1\/3 innings versus Toronto in his previous start on July 7.<\/p>\n
“Come back (from the All-Star break) with some confidence and momentum,” McDonald said. “I’m looking forward to the second half (of the season).”<\/p>\n
This will be McDonald’s first appearance against the Royals.<\/p>\n
San Francisco’s Luis Arraez is 6-for-16 (.375) with two home runs versus Wacha. Giants teammate Willy Adames is 3-for-8 against him.<\/p>\n
Royals veteran Salvador Perez is batting .211 this season, but he’s two shy of tying George Brett’s franchise-record 317 career home runs. Perez has four homers in 72 career at-bats over 18 games versus San Francisco.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/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.newstribune.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Wacha has been the Kansas City Royals’ most consistent starting pitcher in 2026. Of late, however, he hasn’t looked like the All-Star he has been this season. The 35-year-old right-hander has been exceptional during his career against the San Francisco Giants, who visit the Royals on Monday night. Wacha (5-7, 3.77 ERA) ranks among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2508979,"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":[],"class_list":["post-2509808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Royals-Michael-Wacha-seeks-return-to-form-against-Giants.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509808","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=2509808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2509809,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2509808\/revisions\/2509809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2508979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2509808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2509808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2509808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}