Game thread CXXXII: Royals at Mariners

Can KC avoid the sweep?

The Royals may have lost a lot of games since their seven-game winning streak shortly out of the ASB, but they’ve still been eminently more watchable.

Until yesterday, at least.

The team will attempt to be more watchable, and maybe even win a game, as they wave goodbye to the Mariners for another year. The Mariners will miss the Royals a lot more than the Royals will miss the Mariners.

Alec Marsh will get the start for KC. The rookie has shown flashes of brilliance in his ten appearances for Kansas City, but has struggled overall. He’s striking out more than a batter per inning but he’s struggled both with his command and mightily with the home run ball, allowing five of the former and two-and-a-half of the latter per nine innings. He’ll need to bring both numbers down at least a little if he wants to stick in a big league rotation. Considering the Mariners had seven walks and seven home runs yesterday he’s either catching them at exactly the right time or exactly the wrong time.

If you thought the Royals had faced tough pitching in the first two games, the Mariners are sending their ace out, today. Luis Castillo will get the start. Kansas City was able to touch him up for four runs a couple of weeks ago, but he still got the win thanks to the incredibly hot hitting of his teammates, especially Julio Rodriguez. For what it’s worth, Castillo also followed that up with a seven-inning, nine-strikeout, no-walks, one-run start against the White Sox in between.

If the Royals are going to win today they’re going to need Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr. to wake their bats back up. Since missing time due to the upper body discomfort that has plagued him for a chunk of August, Garcia is slashing a measly .167/.261/.222/.483 over his past five games. Bobby is slashing .200/.273/.600/.873 over the same span, which is buoyed by his pair of home runs against Oakland. He has only two hits against the Mariners, though he did have a triple in the series opener.

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