Royals vs. Orioles Thursday gamethread

The Royals are bad, but the Orioles are really, really bad, with the worst record in baseball, even after yesterday’s win over the Royals. That seems hard to do considering the Orioles aren’t even tanking, they were supposed to contend in their last year of the Manny Machado administration, evidenced by their multi-year signing of pitcher Alex Cobb. Yet they have managed to be worse than tanking teams like the White Sox, Marlins, and Reds.

It should be no surprise, that attendance has cratered in Baltimore. The team is averaging just 17,728 fans per game, fewer fans than all but six clubs, and down almost 10,000 fans from what they averaged by this point last year. They’ve already had four games where less than 10,000 fans have showed up, and Tuesday’s contest against the Royals drew a hair over 10,000.

How many will turn out once they’ve traded away Machado and begun their rebuild in earnest? There could be more crabcakes than people in Camden Yards before long.

Here are tonight’s lineups for the series finale.