Gamethread C - Royals at Cleveland

The Royals have won six out of eight games coming off the break, including sweeping a four-game set against the White Sox earlier this week. But they got beaten pretty badly by Cleveland last night when Mike Montgomery proved to be no Homer Bailey and Wily Peralta proved he had no place on a major league baseball club any longer. The Wily Peralta era of Kansas City era is over. The Josh Staumont era begins. The Royals have replaced one wild pitcher with another. The difference is that Staumont can get some swings and misses and is much younger. He should be more “interesting” at least.

Speaking of interesting it never fails to amaze me how much more interesting it is to watch a baseball team that looks like it has a prayer of winning. I’ve struggled all year long to have any interest in watching them play, outside a couple of debuts, because they just lost so often. I’m actually almost looking forward to tonight’s game. I’d be looking forward to it more if Billy Hamilton was playing for someone else so that I could watch Bubba Starling but I guess we can’t have everything.

Jakob Junis will look to build on his last outing, tonight. He struck out a career-high ten batters while pitching seven innings and allowing only single run in one of those wins against the White Sox. It would be great to see him put up two in a row.

Adam Plutko will pitch for tonight’s villains. Looking at the headshot I’ve included as tonight’s image of choice, his name, and his pitching style - he has struck out only 27 in 41.2 innings - I’m convinced he’s a fugitive in a time travel experiments from the ‘70s. I don’t remember ever hearing about him before tonight but all the internet resources say this is his third major league season. He even started against the Royals back on June 24 when he went four innings and allowed only a single run in an eventual win for his team. Wily Peralta featured as the losing pitcher in that game when he gave up a walk-off home run to Jason Kipnis, the only batter he faced, in the tenth inning.

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