Royals Series 4/19-4/21

[Moose Milligan]

The Orioles are in sweet and tangy bbq land to play the Fightin' Bob Hamelins for a three game set starting tonight.

Fri:  7:40 EST start:  Dean Kremer vs. Alec Marsh

Sat:  7:10 EST start:  Corbin Burnes vs. Cole Ragans

Sun:  2:10 EST start:  Cole Irvin vs. Seth Lugo

KC enters the series 1 game back of the Cleveland Thomes and they're 7-3 over their last 10.  Despite their recent history of ineptitude, they look to be improved this year in the poverty stricken AL Central and they can still give us a hard time.  Lefty Ragans is off to a good start which means we'll be down Ryan O'Hearn for Austin Hays as is Sunday starter Lugo.

Bobby Witt 2.0 has an OPS of .997 and already at 1.6 WAR, Old Man Perez is at .943 and Vinnie Boom Bats is .853.

 

[waroriole]

You have to respect that they made an effort in free agency. Signing Lugo and Wacha, Will Smith, Renfroe. Their pitching additions would fit in well on this team right now. Should be a good series. 

[spleen1015]

They're 2-5 against teams over .500. I find that hard to believe but that's what the MLB.com says.

They've also allowed the least amount of runs in all of MLB at 52. That's kind of nuts.

Gonna be a tough weekend but our boys are different these days. They didn't see much of Colton Fred Cowser Lynn in the first series, either.

Edited April 19 by spleen1015

[RZNJ]

@Moose Milligan  Vinnie Boom Bats.   Nice.  Rodney.
 

[Moose Milligan]

4 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

@Moose Milligan  Vinnie Boom Bats.   Nice.  Rodney.
 

Rodney’s the best. 

[Tony-OH]

The Orioles should just walk "OLd Man" Perez every time they can. For some reason he seems to own us the last few years.

The Royals pitching has been amazing this year so far but something has to break. They are not going to pitch to a 2.79 ERA all year.

The Orioles offense has been fairly hot overall so either the Royals are going to cool the bats, or the Orioles are going to bring the Royals pitching back to earth. 

Burnes vs Ragans on Saturday should be a heck of a pitching duel. Of course that means the game will end 9-8. 

 

[Mooreisbetter27]

Still hate the Royals.  But they're tough.  We were fortunate to take 2 out of 3 in our home.  Game 3 we were down 3-0 going into the bottom of the 8th and dropped 2 in the 8th and 2 in the 9th.  I would be very happy with taking 2 and ecstatic with a sweep.  Please nothing less!

[Rbiggs2525]

Not trying to throw hate on Bobby Witt Jr because I think he’s an elite talent. When does his baserunning become a detriment to the team? Last year he was thrown out 15 out of 64 attempts and this year 3 out of 7 attempt's. I was always under the impression you wanted to be in low 80 percent steal percentage. I heard a guess this week talk about him saying well he went what 30-50 last year. I thought to myself Gunnar could probably go 30-40 this year if he got thrown out 30 percent of the time.

[Just Regular]

Their 55 relief innings are a MLB low ytd as all the starters have done well.    I think they probably want to ride those horses as much as they can as one of my takeaways from the first series was how slow all the relievers throw.

Witt's a good MVP rabbit for Gunnar to chase, and he might bring up the question if a Club can still get a Prospect Promotion incentive bonus pick if the player is technically out of pre-Arb by virtue of having signed a LTC.

Here are the ERA starting numbers of the lowest-tier of AL SP in strikeout rate: 6-4-8-6-8-1-10-4-7-7-6-7.    Marsh and Lugo have two of the low numbers there.

Maikel Garcia has gone ice cold, a bit surprising as he looked All World against us.    They are just now getting perhaps intended starting 2B Michael Massey back from a spring injury (Adam Frazier all singles so far on the season).

Burnes-Ragans rematch should have our guy's dander up...we pulled it out against the bullpen but he was outpitched by a lot that night.    Doesn't matter now but it looks like Ragans has never thrown more than about 2200 pitches in a season, in case they end up needing him for more than 26.5 regular season weeks.

[dystopia]

Should win tonight. There’s no way they can get shut down by a pitcher of Marsh’s capabilities twice. 

[glenn__davis]

After his Cy Young performance against us, Marsh was very pedestrian in his next 2 starts.  Be nice to take tonight's game with Ragans pitching tomorrow.  2 out of 3 would be a great result.

[Moose Milligan]

I tried to do some @Just Regularkinda writing in the opener

[ShoelesJoe]

We stole two of the three games against KC when they came to Baltimore two weeks ago, and everybody knows it. My guess is they'll have a chip on their shoulder about that. They out-hit us and out-homered us in our own park, and an unlucky bounce here or there and we could have been swept. I know the Brewers blew us out two of three, but IMO the Royals are the best team we've face so far. I'm expecting to lose a couple in KC but wouldn't be surprised if we lost all three.  

[DirtyBird]

2 minutes ago, ShoelesJoe said:

We stole two of the three games against KC when they came to Baltimore two weeks ago, and everybody knows it. My guess is they'll have a chip on their shoulder about that. They out-hit us and out-homered us in our own park, and an unlucky bounce here or there and we could have been swept. I know the Brewers blew us out two of three, but IMO the Royals are the best team we've face so far. I'm expecting to lose a couple in KC but wouldn't be surprised if we lost all three.  

That's the spirit!

[Frobby]

Tonight’s game looks like the key to the series.   Marsh was brilliant against the O’s in Baltimore, but has been mediocre in his two subsequent appearances.  Kremer was so-so against the Royals, then had one excellent start followed by a complete stinker.   So what Kremer do we get tonight?   

KC has already played the pitiful White Sox 7 times, going 6-1.   They also put a 3-0 spanking on the Astros, who’ve been surprisingly bad.   They’ve lost series to the Twins, O’s and Mets but took a game in each.