Zack Greinke is an Angel, Hanley Ramirez is a Dodger and Anibal Sanchez now plays for Detroit. Meanwhile, Jeff Francoeur is still a Royal, ditto for Yuniesky Betancourt and Jonathan Broxton. Bruce Chen is still a Royal as well and he pitches this afternoon for the spiraling downward Kansas City squad.
Chen, 7-8 with a plus five earned run average, has given up 25 earned runs in his last 24.1 innings and has dropped from crafty and creative to just another question mark in what has become an even bigger mess of a rotation than many of us imagined it would be back in April.
The Royals, who have been held to one run in a game five times in the thirteen contests since the All-Star Break (including the first two games of this series), will try to solve Kevin Millwood. The thirty-seven year old, who I'm pretty sure we all scoffed at acquiring at least twice (as did every other team in the game) has a 4.13 ERA this season in 19 starts. Kansas City lit Millwood up for seven runs last week, so there's hope. It is probably noteworthy that Millwood rebounded from that outing by holding the Yankees to just three runs over seven innings in his next start.
I'm writing this early for posting this afternoon, so I will be delighted if anyone I named above is traded before you read this. If not, than I sense the Mayans may have been right.
Sidenote - The overflow thread may be a little late (assuming anyone has the energy to comment on this 'game' this afternoon), so persevere my friends, persevere.