The Royals fell to the Cubs in the opener thanks to a terrific start from the Cubs’ newest acquisition, Kevin Gausman, but they get a chance at revenge against the Cubs’ newest acquisition, Clay Holmes, tonight.
I wrote about Holmes a bit last week when I pondered how the Royals could try to replace Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo if either or both were traded this year.
Clay Holmes is on the opposite side of the spectrum from most of the guys we’ve discussed so far. His 2.39 ERA is probably a performance
a bit beyond his skis. That said, if you can pay him like the 4.00 SIERA guy he’s actually been, it could work!
I stand by that; his results have outpaced his efforts. But that doesn’t mean he can’t keep it going against the Royals tonight. Only time will tell.
Holmes threw six different pitches for the Mets this year ahead of the trade, though he only threw two four-seamers all year. He gets a fair amount of chase, but very few whiffs on anything but his sweeper. He throws his sinker more than half the time and gets a lot of groundballs with it. The Cubs have a tremendous defense, so the Royals will want to figure out how to avoid that fate.
Seth Lugo will go for KC in a matchup of former Mets now wearing blue who never played with each other. Lugo’s last start, against Colorado, saw him tie his career high in walks while also getting hit around. It ruined a stretch of three straight quality starts. He’ll try to get back on the horse against the Cubs tonight.
Lineups
Isaac Collins, cleanup hitter. Josh Rojas, Designated Hitter. Salvador Perez, a day off while slashing .280/.296/.480/.776 over the last week when he couldn’t buy one while OPSing in the .400s earlier this year. All you can do is laugh. To be clear, these aren’t criticisms. Salvy should get a day off; he hasn’t had one in about a month. Collins is as good a cleanup hitter as you’re likely to find in the current roster construction. And the remaining options for DH would be Luke Maile, Tyler Tolbert, and Starling Marte. They’re not really any better than Rojas.
It really just drives home, again, how laughable it is to me that the Royals are going to compete next year because they have a core. Sure, yes, they have Bobby Witt Jr., Jac Caglianone, Carter Jensen, and Maikel Garcia, plus Noah Cameron, Seth Lugo, and Michael Wacha as a core. But they have barely any supporting cast, and finding enough guys to do that competently in a single offseason sounds like sheer lunacy to me. I hope I’m wrong. Until then, I’ll be regularly checking out Zion Rose, David Shields, and friends in Quad Cities.
