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Yesterday's Royals performance looked more like a Royals performance from yesteryear - 2014 and 2015 to be exact - than any game they have yet played, this season. As much as many Royals fans keep trying to write off this team, they keep coming back from the brink of absolute disaster. After yesterday's second consecutive series victory over the racists from Cleveland, the Royals are now tied with the White Sox for both fourth place in the division and thirteenth place in the league.
Going to the mound today will be Royals' rookie Eric Skoglund who turned in a surprising 6.1 inning shutout performance in his major league debut. That start alone was worth 0.3 fWAR, which temporarily tied him with yesterday's starter Jason Hammel as the fourth best starting pitcher fWAR on the team - ahead of - in order - Jake Junis, Ian Kennedy, and Chris Young.
Cleveland counters with the eccentric Trevor Bauer - assuming he manages to avoid slicing his hand open with his drone tonight or tomorrow morning. Bauer is having a weird season, he currently carries a bloated 6.00 ERA and has yet to make it through a start without allowing at least 2 runs. He's also struck out 73 batters in only 57 innings so far. By game score his last start was his best where he allowed 3 runs across 7 innings while striking out 14. A very impressive accomplishment, especially considering he only got 15 swinging strikes the entire night. By contrast when Danny Duffy struck out his team record 16 Rays he got 34 swinging strikes in that game.
Lineups
The #Royals go for the sweep over the Indians in today's afternoon matchup. #RaisedRoyal pic.twitter.com/lgCWGSetiv
— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) June 4, 2017
Today's lineup. pic.twitter.com/O3fSPiaR1W
— #VoteTribe 5x a day (@Indians) June 4, 2017
If Dayton's dream of Kansas City reasserting their position in a playoff chase is to yet come true, it will require the Boys in Blue to pick up a few sweeps. Sweeping the racists out of KC would be an excellent way to start that.