The Royals...Won a Game?
In arguably their most complete game of the season, the Royals gave fans something to enjoy for one night.
The matchup of Luinder Avila vs. Chase Burns had some intrigue with a guy the Royals really like getting his first real shot in the rotation against a heralded young pitcher who has a sub-2.00 ERA through 11 starts this year. We didn’t get to see that because Burns was scratched with an illness. Instead, Lyon Richardson got the start as an opener. We know what happened. We can’t know what would have happened if Burns had started, though I think we all probably have a pretty decent idea. We may even find out later in the series if the Reds slot Burns back in, though if I were them, I’d use him against the Cardinals in a bigger game for them this weekend. Either way, it felt like something broke the Royals' way for the first time in a while.
Would you believe this is the first game the Royals have won that wasn’t on a weekend since May 5 against Cleveland? As I sat down to write this, I thought it felt different to write about a win in an individual game, knowing the Royals are out of it. The focus is just different when writing about a team with no real playoff hope. We haven’t dealt with that for the last two seasons. And then I realized that I haven’t written about an individual game that was a win for almost a month. Since I don’t really write on weekends and just capture the weekend as a whole on Mondays, the only wins we’ve seen for a while have been written about in the Weekend in Review. Boy, it’s been a bad stretch.
But if you’re looking to the future or at least signs of life for the future, this win was a good one. I’d put it up there with the blowout of the Angels from late April or maybe the first win of the Cleveland series as one of the most complete games they’ve played. It had a starting pitcher who hadn’t ever really done well in that role, putting together a good game. One of the young bats had a nice day. Another bat who could be important had a good day. And it felt like the team got all their frustration out on one swing in the first and looked like it exhaled for the first time in weeks. Let’s start with the young pitcher.