As the month of May comes to a close, the 30-27 Royals have scuffled in recent weeks, especially on offense. Their pitching has kept them in most games, though many times it feels like a one- or two-run deficit is enough for the opposing team to win.
Well, the pitching has been doing that without Cole Ragans or Seth Lugo, both Cy Young contenders last year. Tonight, the Royals get Seth Lugo back from a finger injury. While his strikeouts have been down and walks have been up this season, he is still preventing runs at the same rate as last year. I.e., his ERA is the same. Not sure that will last, but I choose to be optimistic about the pitchers on the team.
Lugo will need everything he’s got against the 37-20 Detroit Tigers. On the whole season, the only regular player who has been a net-negative at the plate is shortstop Trey Sweeney. One thing I like to do sometimes is go to a team’s FanGraphs page and get a sense of the length of their lineup. I sort the team’s page by plate appearances descending, which gives me a rough idea of playing time. By plate appearances, only one of the top 11 guys is a problem at the plate (aforementioned Trey Sweeney). Number 12 is Jace Jung, who is not on the MLB roster. Number 13 is also a guy not on the MLB roster.
The Tigers just don’t really have many black holes in the lineup, top-to-bottom. It’s tough to go up-and-down a lineup multiple times against that.
Doing the same thing with the Royals, only BWJ and Maikel have above-average batting lines. There are a bunch of below-average guys and black holes. But we know all this already.
It’ll be difficult for the Royals offense, again. The Tigers will send 2018 first overall pick Casey Mize to the bump. Mize is having a Lugo-esque season — low strikeouts, even lower walks, high strand rate, low BABIP, occasional dinger. He’s just doing the strikeouts/walks better than Lugo.
If Lugo’s on his game coming off the injured list, this ought to be a low-scoring affair. But it’s baseball…who knows, really? Maybe the Royals score 11 runs.
The game starts at 7:10pm US Central time at Kauffman Stadium. You can watch on FanDuel Sports Network Kansas City or listen on the Royals Radio Network.
Lineups:
Tigers lineup