{"id":790820,"date":"2026-08-28T17:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T17:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/790820\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T17:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T17:51:15","slug":"series-preview-royals-at-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/790820\/","title":{"rendered":"Series Preview: Royals at Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Two streaking baseball teams face each other tonight in Cleveland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">9-1 in their past 10 games, the Royals are 60-75 with -81 run differential, 19th in team wRC+ at 98, tenth in baserunning runs above average at 3.1, sixth in Defense at -0.4, 19th in starting pitcher ERA at 4.34 (4.25 FIP), and 29th in bullpen ERA at 5.15 (5.20 FIP).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">8-2 in their past 10 games and owners of seven-game win streak, the Guardians are 68-66 with a -4 run differential, 23rd in team wRC+ at 94, eighth in baserunning runs above average at 5.1, seventh in defense at -0.6, seventh in starting pitcher ERA at 3.84 (4.05 FIP), and seventh in bullpen ERA at 3.72 (3.78 FIP).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Keys: Get into the bullpen as soon as you can and take advantage and don\u2019t let Witt or Caglianone beat you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Matchups:<br \/>Game One, Friday, 7:10PM ET: Wacha 3.49 ERA (4.18 FIP) vs. Bibee RHP 3.97 ERA (4.61 FIP)<br \/>Game Two, Saturday, 4:10PM ET: Lynch IV (opener) 2.93 ERA (3.48 FIP) vs. Griffin LHP 3.19 ERA (4.20 FIP)<br \/>Game Three, Sunday, 1:40PM ET: Lugo 4.61 ERA (4.00 FIP) vs. Messick LHP 2.50 ERA (3.08 FIP)<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Royals are led by Jac Caglianone 128 wRC+, Bobby Witt Jr. 127 wRC+, and Tyler Tolbert 123 wRC+.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Guardians are led by Chase DeLauter 130 wRC+, Nathaniel Lowe 116 wRC+, Steven Kwan 110 wRC+, Angel Genao 108 wRC+, Austin Hedges 105 wRC+, Jose Ramirez 102 wRC+, and Travis Bazzana 102 wRC+.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Guardians lead the season series 4-3 and need three wins in the remaining six games to secure the season win. Really need to find a way to minimize the damage that Witt and Caglianone can do and you can win this series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two streaking baseball teams face each other tonight in Cleveland. 9-1 in their past 10 games, the Royals&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2589,2565,538,4],"class_list":["post-790820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-cleveland-guardians-analysis","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-guardians","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117174408524945337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}