The best part about starting the season a day later than almost everyone else is that we don’t have to wait through an off-day to get the taste of a dud out of our mouths. Sure, the Royals had a pretty awful offensive game paired with a mediocre pitching effort in last night’s match, but tonight’s could (and probably will) go better!
The Royals will have Michael Wacha on the mound. While Michael does not have the upside of Ragans, he also comes with far less variability. Per a Royals press release, Wacha has allowed three runs or fewer in 23 of 29 road starts over his career with KC. That’s pretty good! You can refine that even further using the FanGraphs splits tool to discover that he’s allowed two or fewer in 16 of those 29 starts, so more than half the time. The last time he faced Atlanta was in 2023 with the Padres, but he went six shutout innings with ten strikeouts and only one walk. It’s easy to feel confident the Royals will get a competent outing from Wacha today.
Atlanta will counter with Reynaldo López. López missed most of last year with an injury, so it’s hard to know what he’ll do tonight. Like last night’s starter, Chris Sale, he spent a large chunk of his earlier career in Chicago with the White Sox so he’s faced the Royals many times. But the most recent outing was in 2024 when he pitched six innings of one-run ball against the Royals B-Squad following their post-season clinch party the night before. In Spring Training, he made five starts to the tune of a 4.15 ERA. But his fastball velocity was way down. In 2024, he averaged 95.5 MPH, but this spring, he was down to 91.3. It’s safe to wonder if he’d even be in the rotation at all had Atlanta not suffered a bevy of injuries this March. Whatever concerns we’re all feeling about Carlos Estévez, at least we aren’t currently considering him our second-best starter.
Lineups
This lineup seems a bit more like what we should expect for most of the season. Kyle Isbel will make his season debut; Jac Caglianone got in as a pinch-hitter but will get his first start; Carter Jensen is still the DH but will bat fifth instead of ninth. I wonder if we could have expected Michael Massey to get the start over Jonathan India if he were healthy, but he’s not. Hopefully, he gets better soon, and hopefully, this version of the lineup does a bit more damage than what we saw last night.
Don’t forget tonight’s game is the first of 13 scheduled national games for the Royals. This one will be broadcast on Fox. Fingers crossed that competing with the Yankees/Giants broadcast that’s taking up more of the United States attention means that we won’t be subjected to John Smoltz tonight.
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