It has been four long years since the Royals managed even a season split with their divisional foes the Detroit Tigers. In the past three seasons, Kansas City has won just 20 of the 54 games the two teams played. Extrapolated over a full season of play, that would be good for a 60-win season. Ugly stuff.
Coming off a season in which the Royals went just 5 - 13 and lost the last seven games of the match-up, the Royals will attempt to carry the modest momentum their 10 - 7 start has given them into Detroit. Toeing the rubber for the Tigers will be Max Scherzer , who holds an absurd line of 14.21 K/9, 1.89 BB/9, 2.84 ERA, 1.35 FIP, 1.91 xFIP, and has been worth 0.9 fWAR in just three starts. It would appear as though he has carried the dominance with which he closed the 2012 campaign into 2013.
The Royals will turn to Wade Davis--who has worked around his .348 BABIP-against by maintaining a strand-rate of 93.8%--in the hopes of keeping the game close while biding their time until they can get to the Tigers' suspect bullpen. Can Wade Davis and the Royals extend the Tigers skid to five games?