Spring Training Game 7: Padres v. Royals

Anybody tired of Spring Training yet? Well, tough, because the Padres will ride into Surprise Stadium today to face the Royals in yet another exhibition of baseball games that don’t count.

After a fast start, the Royals have fallen to 8th in the Cactus League, losing three of their last four contests. If they want to capture that elusive Cactus League title, they’ll need stop surrendering runs at a rapid pace. Kansas City has scored at least eight runs in all three of their wins, but have surrendered at least nine runs in all three of their losses.

Luckily, there is still plenty of time to capture the crown.

Before we get started, here are a few interesting things to note:

• The battle for leadoff has come down to Adalberto Mondesi and Whit Merrifield. Our own Max Rieper wrote on the subject this morning. Mondesi wouldn’t be a prototypical lead off hitter, but the Royals have a history with that.
• Alex Gordon had a similar sprint speed to Russell Martin and Kurt Suzuki last season and still managed to be worth 7.2 range runs above average in left field, as Rustin Dodd noted in an article yesterday ($). Gordon is legitimately a slow runner at this point in his career but he is still putting up elite zone metrics. Long live Alex.
• Whit Merrifield’s name is way cooler on Google than on the Royals roster.

Here are the lineups for this afternoon’s action, with a slight change at DH for the Royals: