Welcome to the penultimate weekend of regular season baseball and the Royals’ final road series of the year. What a long, disappointing journey it’s been. I’m old enough to remember when the baseball season seemed like it would never end, and this one felt like it just started a couple of weeks ago.
Speaking of when I watched baseball as a youth… I had a habit back then of comparing the expected starting pitcher ERAs to determine who I thought was likely to win the series. If I still did that, today’s
matchup of Randy Dobnak (2.73 ERA) versus Paul Skenes (3.78 ERA) would be a slam dunk for KC in my mind. Sadly, I’ve since learned better. Ignorance is bliss, y’all.
Unbelievably, Dobnak Time is still running strong after a full 13 games and 11 starts. That’s 1/3 of a season! At this point, it doesn’t seem like DT will stop before the season does. That bodes super well for the hirsute 31-year-old. Even if the Royals inexplicably didn’t bring him back in some capacity for 2027, it now seems like he could probably wrangle a big league deal out of someone instead of having to exercise an upward mobility clause just to get on the 40-man roster in a tailspin.
Paul Skenes is having the worst season of his young career, and he still figures to be worth nearly 5 fWAR. If only we could all have such lackluster seasons. He’s had a couple of good starts in a row, but before that he got shelled by the lowly San Francisco Giants. A team I’ve been assured has little to no offensive capabilities. So maybe the Royals have a shot. Either way, this will be Skenes first ever appearance against the Royals. They managed to just dance around him each of the past two seasons, but the time has come for them to face the music.
Lineups
Jac Caglianone, who doesn’t have a hit after missing time with the most recent arm injury, gets the day off. But Maikel Garcia will play for the second straight day. John Rave and Nick Loftin will man the corners.
To be entirely honest, the Pirates only have like three hitters who scare me. And I haven’t even heard of a couple of them. But that doesn’t mean tonight’s game will be easy.
