Wacha This Way

Another great start from Michael Wacha to go along with a couple of home runs gets the Royals a game one win against Cleveland.

Getting the first game of a series against anyone is so important, but it felt especially big against the Guardians. Last season, the Royals faced them four times and lost game one in three of them. In those three series, which spanned 10 of the 13 games between the two teams, they were 3-7. They went 2-1 in the one series where they took game one, a three-game set in Kansas City in July that started with the walkoff homer from Jonathan India off Emmanuel Clase.

And winning in Cleveland has proven difficult for the Royals in the recent past. They did go 4-2 in 2024, but dating back to 2016, that’s one of two seasons that the Royals had a winning record in Cleveland. They were 4-3 against them in 2020, which I still struggle with taking anything away from that year. In the last 10 years before last night, though, the Royals are 27-56 at Progressive Field. Look, they may drop the next two and they’re on a path to a similar result to what we’ve seen so often in the last decade. But it’s interesting to note that the last two winning seasons they’ve had in Cleveland in normal years are 2015 and 2024, both playoff seasons. Last night’s win required the bats to wake up and continue to find ways to score, but the story was Michael Wacha.