Overmatched and Outgunned

The Yankees are both better than the Royals and a bad matchup, which is not a combination that works out well.

Sometimes, a team is simply a bad matchup for another team. On the Royals end, we’ve seen that with the Twins and Red Sox in recent years. Sometimes a team is just better than another team. Until last season, we’ve seen that with a lot of teams facing the Royals. In fact, it’s so many that it might be easier to list who wasn’t simply better. But in the last two seasons, the Royals generally haven’t been outclassed all that often. The Yankees, though, are both a bad matchup for the Royals and simply a better team than them. And when you put those two things together, well, you get the first two games of this series.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a referendum on the Royals, but it certainly limits their ceiling if there’s a team in the American League playoff field that the Royals probably can’t beat without some serious luck going their way. Laugh all you want about the playoffs, but the Royals are still a contender. Sure that may change, but even with the injury news on Cole Ragans (I’ll get to that) and the recent struggles, it’d be tough to argue that they don’t have the pitching to get there. Note that I didn’t say they will get there, but that they can get there.

There isn’t much to say about the last two nights. On Tuesday, Noah Cameron faced a very tough matchup that went pretty predictably. He made two big mistakes that unfortunately both followed some smaller mistakes so they were compounded. Then a couple of hard-hit balls and a bloop barrage put the game completely out of reach. Last night was a little bit different, but the Royals were clearly the lesser team on the field again, though there was one sequence that still has me fuming a little bit, even the next day.