Game thread LXX: A’s at Royals

Don’t look now but after ensuring they were well and truly eliminated from playoff contention the Royals have won six of their last eight games. It’s the middle-of-the-season resurgence that keeps foolish Royals fans ever hoping that next year might somehow be different. But at least it’s more fun to watch than what came before.

Hoping to keep things going in a positive direction tonight is Brad Keller. Keller rebounded from a series of poor starts last week with his best outing of the season by throwing seven shutout innings in his last start against these same Oakland A’s. I can only imagine that Pitching Coach Cal Eldred is just as confused by Keller’s resumption of quality pitching as he was by Keller’s struggles. It’s always harder to have a good start twice in a row against a team, but the A’s are one of the few teams as bad or worse than the Royals so maybe Keller can pull it off.

Oakland will counter with 28-year-old, rookie, lefty Jared Koenig. Koenig will be making his fourth start in the big leagues and his last outing was against KC. He earned his first career win against them on Sunday when he pitched 5.1 innings of shutout ball. He didn’t strike out any and did walk three, so it wasn’t exactly an astonishingly good performance, but we’ll see if lightning can strike twice for the king.

Lineups

Here’s hoping MLB will let me watch this one.