I know the Guardians series didn’t end how any of us wanted it to, but the Royals still split a four-game series against a tough team. That’s a win. Especially if the Royals can win the series starting tonight, against the Tigers.
By all rights, the Tigers should be in a bit of freefall right now. Tarik Skubal is on the IL for a couple of months, Framber Valdez is suspended. Gleyber Torres joined multiple of the Tigers’ key contributors on the IL. With the series being played in Kansas City, the Royals
really should at least take this series, and ideally, they’ll sweep it. As of this moment, the Tigers still haven’t announced the starters for the next two games, so if they can defeat Keider Montero tonight, they should be in good shape to take advantage of a division rival in disarray.
Montero is no slouch, of course, so the Royals won’t have an easy time of it tonight, but the offense has been clicking for a couple of weeks now. So hopefully they can do at least as well as they did back on April 16 when they roughed him up for four runs in six innings. That was the gut-punch game that saw the Royals lose 10-9 after a huge comeback and the rain delay, and made fans wonder if the team would ever win again. But the Royals have won a lot since then. So don’t panic.
Montero likes his fastballs – leading with his four-seamer against lefties and sinker against righties. Righties pretty much only get sliders after that, while lefties will see a mix of changeups and knuckle curves. He doesn’t get much chase or whiff, but he’s in the zone a lot and doesn’t give up a ton of hard contact. The Royals will need to hunt their pitches in order to succeed.
Kris Bubic will go for KC. He hasn’t been quite as phenomenal early this year as he was last season, but he’s still been plenty good. That said, the worst start of his season was against Montero and these Tigers. So he’s going to need to tighten things up if the team is going to succeed. Checking his TJStats page, it looks like he really couldn’t rely on his sweeper at all in that game, and it made him far too hittable. Hopefully that won’t be an issue tonight.
Lineups
Q is using the same lineup he’s used for most of May, one that has averaged five runs a game. You’d hope that would be enough to win, most nights. There are several hitters here who are probably doing better than you think, thanks to the lackluster April bringing down their overall numbers. Maikel Garcia had a really rough first four games in the month of May, but he was 4-for-8 in the final two games of that Cleveland series with a double and a walk. Bobby Witt Jr. was 7-for-16 with a walk, a pair of homers, and a double in the series against Cleveland. If those two guys are going to get magma hot, the Royals should be able to keep scoring runs. It will come down to preventing them by the pitchers.
