The Royals have lost 4 in a row and 8 of their last 9, they are the worst team in all of the Major Leagues. If you told me that on March 25th, I thought you were crazy. Yes, they have a lot of key players hurt currently, but they weren’t that good when they were fully healthy.
JJ Picollo seems to be blaming this disastrous season on injuries, and no changes seem like they are going to be made now or in the offseason. Again, to a certain extent, he is right, but we saw what the fully healthy team looked like most of April.
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Luinder Avila will try and stop the bleeding today. He has been up and down as a starter, with him being downright bad at home. His home stats are as follows: 6 appearances, 2 starts. 12.2 innings pitched, 24 hits allowed, 18 runs, 11 walks, 11 strikeouts. A 12.79 ERA in 12.2 innings. Personally, I think Avila should be getting closer reps for next season, but I’ll have an article out on that for a deeper dive soon.
Here are the Royals starters behind Avila for this afternoon’s contest. And yes, Josh Rojas is still on the team! I almost forgot he was. Oh, and Salvador Perez is back in there.
The Phillies got off to a horrendous start and fired their manager and now they are 11 games over .500. (Hm, interesting!) The back-to-back NL East champs are employing almost a carbon copy of last night’s winning lineup. Only the starting catcher is the difference.
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Righty Aaron Nola will start for Philly. Nola has been bad this season, with a 6.04 ERA in 85 innings over 17 starts. He has been better on the road, but that doesn’t say a whole lot, with his road ERA still being at 5.40.
Here is the starting lineup for Philly behind Nola.
First pitch is set for 2:00 p.m. CT. The game will be streamed on Peacock, as part of a special MLB thing.
Shoutout John Wathan for his pregame introduction into the Royals Hall of Fame. Hopefully they bring home a W for him.
