Spring Training Game XX: Royals at Dodgers

The Dodgers lead all of baseball with 104 wins last season, 24 more than the Royals. The future NL champs swept the Royals their lone three-game series against Kansas City.

Neither team had much in common during 2017, but on November 1, they finally found some middle ground:

Both had lost a World Series game seven at home.

It wasn’t the first time the Dodgers had lost a game seven at home, but it was the first time since they moved to California. In fact, the last time that it had happened was just a year before the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Nonetheless, these two teams come into 2018 with wildly different expectations. The Royals are in rebuild mode, while the Dodgers look to do what Kansas City did back in 2015: Respond to a devastating World Series loss with a championship.

Here are the lineups for today’s action, as Jason Hammel takes the mound for the third time.