Game XLVIII: Royals at Indians

Note: Great news for the out-of-towners like myself: today’s game is on Fox Sports 1 and the MLB.tv Free Game of the Day.

Pop quiz? When was the last time this team was in anything but last place in the AL Central? Depressing answer: After beating the Giants on April 19th, the team got back to .500 at 7-7 and jump from 5th to 2nd in 1 night. The next day, they lost 1-0 in 13 innings and fell to 4th. And on April 21, the first loss of that disastrous Rangers series dropped them into 5th, where they've been ever since.

A win today would put the team 3.5 back of the Indians. The White Sox and Tigers are playing a doubleheader and if the White Sox lost both, the teams would be tied for 4th. If you really want to get a little optimistic: if the Royals win the next 2, they’ll be only 2.5 back of Cleveland while Detroit and Chicago will be either behind KC or even closer than then Indians.

Then again, as always with divisional games, losing means doubly bad things the other direction.

Jason Vargas toes the rubber today for the Royals. The bad news is that he’s given up 9 runs in 10 innings in his last 2 starts. The good news is that both were against the Yankees and he has a 1.01 ERA against the rest of the league (arbitrary endpoints warning). Meanwhile, Indians starter Danny Salazar has a 5.55 ERA on the season. He's striking out an insane 13.2 K/9 but he's balancing that out with a 2.1 HR/9 and 4.4 BB/9.

Here’s the game capsule:

Here are the lineups:

A series win against Cleveland would be really nice.