The Royals lost their worst game of the season, perhaps their worst loss of the Picollo/Quatraro era, last night. It was not made better by Q’s flacid argument that essentially boiled down to, “It could have worked.”
Given that the Royals are playing one of the worst teams in baseball, they need to find a way to win this series. That means winning both this afternoon and tomorrow. It’s not that the season is over if they don’t, but it makes things needlessly harder.
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The good news is that Michael Wacha, who pitched an absolute gem to outduel Tarik Skubal his last time out, will be going for the Royals. It was easily his best start of the season; he went seven shutout innings, walking one and allowing one hit while striking out six. The Tigers have a much better lineup than the White Sox, even as it’s improved as the season has gone along. A similar performance today would go a long way to helping a beleaguered bullpen recover from four straight games that have required four or more innings from them.
The White Sox will counter with Adrian Houser. Houser signed a minor league deal with the Texas Rangers before the season started, but joined the White Sox organization less than a month ago on May 20. Since then, he’s made three starts, all of them of the quality variety. He hasn’t gone more than 6.1 innings and Baltimore got to him for three runs in his last outing, so maybe the Royals can put some of their advanced scouting to work and absolutely torch the guy.
It would be nice to see the Royals win a laugher after a few weeks of taking tough losses and scraping out nail-biting wins.
That’s not a prediction, I’m just saying that’s what I’d like to see.
Lineups
UPDATED LINEUP: 2B Jonathan India SS Bobby Witt Jr. 3B Maikel Garcia 1B Vinnie Pasquantino C Salvador Perez RF Jac Caglianone LF Drew Waters DH Michael Massey CF Kyle Isbel
— Kansas City Royals (@royals.com) 2025-06-07T16:35:53.252Z
White Sox lineup: Tauchman, Meidroth, Benintendi, Vargas, Teel, Quero, Robert Jr., Rojas, Elko
The original Royals’ lineup had Massey in left, Waters in right, and Caglianone DHing.
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Listen, I like Massey, and I don’t blame him for any of this. So let’s be nice to him. That said, his continued presence on the roster is sheer insanity by Picollo. While Quatraro doesn’t have control over that, he does have control over how often he pencils him into the lineup.
I guess to provide the other side of the argument, Massey is from Chicago and has traditionally played well at Rate Field. Also, given the rate at which the Royals have made moves this season, he’ll almost certainly be demoted to Omaha on Monday if he doesn’t look significantly better this weekend.
Kyle Teel is back in the White Sox’s lineup, this time at DH. He looked really good at the plate yesterday. As Blake Mitchell continues to rehab his hand injury in the Arizona Complex League, it feels worth pointing out that the Royals absolutely could have drafted Teel instead of him during the 2023 draft. And that isn’t hindsight speaking, that’s what people – including yours truly – were begging them to do even at the time. Blake Mitchell might still end up being a great player and make us all not too concerned about it, but 2025 would look a lot better with Teel and Caglianone both in the lineup.
Roster moves
We have made the following roster moves:
— Kansas City Royals (@royals.com) 2025-06-07T16:38:41.955Z
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After a tough stretch for the bullpen, the Royals did finally make a move to bolster it. Jonathan Bowlan was demoted after last night’s eighth-inning fiasco, and Trevor Richards was selected to the 40-man roster spot recently occupied by Thomas Hatch. Richards was last seen in the big leagues as a mediocre reliever for the Twins last year.
He pitched poorly in the Cubs organization for a bit this year, but after they cut him, he signed a minor league deal with the Royals on May 9. He’s pitched 10.2 innings with a much-reduced walk rate and a 1.69 ERA since joining Omaha. Still, I wouldn’t count on him being a huge contributor.
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