Royals @ White Sox Gamethread

The Royals and White Sox are two bad teams that are in very different places. The Royals are two seasons removed from a World Series, but just lost 75% of their on-field production from last season to free agency and have arguably the worst farm system in baseball.

The White Sox, on the other hand, haven’t had a winning season since 2012, haven’t reached the postseason since 2008 and have been stocked piling prospects, coming in at number three in MLB.com’s pre-season farm system rankings.

Regardless, both are projected to lose 90+ games in 2018 because neither is particularly good at preventing runs or scoring runs.

The two teams will meet today at Camelback Ranch, because I guess that’s a baseball field, and they will play a exhibition game.

Danny Duffy will take the mound for the Royals against the team that was his kryptonite in 2017, with 31 percent of his earned runs coming against the south siders. This isn’t how the world works, but if you subtract those 22 innings from Duffy’s ledger, he ERA drops from 3.81 to 3.12.

Again, not how the world works, but you get the point. Duffy was very bad against the White Sox last season, for whatever reason.

Duffy is making his second start of the season today, the first of which saw him struggling to find the strike zone. After retiring the first five batters he faced, Duffy walked Jose Pirela and Austin Hedges with two outs in the second. Christian Villanueva followed with a two-RBI double to spoil Duffy’s first outing.

Here are your lineups for this afternoon’s action.