Young Heirs: Mariners at Royals Series Preview
The Mariners head to Kansas City to face the upstart Royals.
The last time the Mariners saw the Royals, the first-place Mariners were in the middle of a homestand where they’d just faced the A’s. They won the series 2-1, Bryan Woo made his 2024 debut, and Julio hit his second home run of the young season. Sounds familiar, right? The Mariners wound up winning that series 2-1, so hopefully that will be another thing that repeats this time around, although they won’t have the advantage of being at home this time.
In early May, the Royals were locked in essentially a three-way tie in the AL Central. Since then, the Twins have faded some, but the Guardians have surged ahead to the second-best win percentage in the American League, and the Royals have held serve. However, despite being over ten games over .500, the Royals are currently in a tough skid that’s seen them lose 7 of their last 10 games. They just dropped three of four to their division rival Minnesota, and then dropped a series to the Padres and split a series (with a weather delay) with the team they’re chasing, Cleveland. They badly need to take this series before they go on to a tough stretch: this series will be followed by a four-game series at home against the Yankees, and then they’ll hit the road to face the Dodgers. Since these two teams seem incapable of playing a normal game, this series has a very high PC (Potential Chaos) factor.
There are no major changes to the Royals lineup since the last time the Mariners saw them: it remains a boom-or-bust kind of affair, with Bobby Witt Jr. at the top of the lineup able to be counted on to regularly torment opposing pitchers and Salvador Pérez providing both the boom and the bust. Speedy leadoff man Maikel García and slugger Vinnie Pasquantino round out the Royals’ everyday top four, and then the rest of the lineup varies wildly as the Royals continue to throw fringy youngsters at the wall to see who will stick. They’ve continued to show patience with inconsistent recently-graduated prospects like MJ Melendez, Nelson Velazquez, Nick Loftin and Kyle Isbel, much to the consternation of fans, while supplementing them with veterans like Adam Frazier, Hunter Renfroe, and Garrett Hampson. It’s very patchwork but so far the top of the lineup–primarily Witt Jr. and Pérez– has been producing enough to cover for the bottom of the lineup’s inconsistencies.
Probable Pitchers
With Michael Wacha on the IL with a fractured toe, the Royals have called up Daniel Lynch to fill the hole in their rotation. Lynch was a member of that infamous 2018 first round draft class where Kansas City selected four starting pitchers. Like so many of the other members of his cohort, he’s really struggled to make much of an impact in the big leagues. He made his debut back in 2021 and has bounced between the majors and the minors for most of his career. His entire repertoire is pretty underwhelming and his below average strikeout rate is a reflection of that reality. He’s got okay command of his pitches which has led to brief spurts of success, but unless he completely revamps his arsenal, he’s nothing more than a taxi squad spot starter.
From a previous series preview:
One of the many former first round picks littering the Royals pitching staff, Alec Marsh made his major league debut last year. He bounced between the bullpen and the starting rotation throughout the year thanks to a 11.4% walk rate and an 18.4% home run rate, both of which pushed his ERA and FIP close to six. Command was never his strongest skill in the minors, but he’s managed to figure something out this year. His walk rate has dropped to 7.5% thanks to a six point increase in his zone rate. His strikeout rate has dipped a bit as he’s filled the strike zone and batters are making more contact off his pitches, but so far he’s managed to avoid allowing too many runs.
In his previous start against the Mariners, Marsh held them to just two runs in five innings pitched, allowing five hits and a walk with seven strikeouts.
You can pretty closely draw a line between the Royals acquisition of Cole Ragans last summer and their ascendant season this year. He’s finally given them the ace they so desperately wanted to develop through the draft and he’s quickly become one of the best pitchers in the American League. His bread and butter is a fastball that sits in the upper 90s and can touch triple digits. His secondary offerings are all above average to plus as well with his changeup and slider standing out in particular. He’s got a complete arsenal and a rival scout compared him to a left-handed Jacob deGrom a few months ago. That should give you a pretty good idea of his ceiling.
The Big Picture:
The last time the Mariners met the Royals, they had just climbed into first place thanks to the Rockies sweeping the Rangers, a sentence that still remains difficult to wrap one’s head around several weeks later. Since then, the Mariners have stretched their lead out to five games over the Rangers, buoyed by some solid in-division series that saw them take three of four from the Astros, sweep the Angels, and take a series against the A’s. Continuing the theme of echoes of the past time these two teams met, the Rangers just dropped a series to another lousy team in Detroit; they’ll try to take advantage of a scuffling Giants team this weekend. Sadly, one thing that is different from the last series preview is that the Astros - in fourth place in the division last time we wrote this preview, those were the days - have been playing better of late, and get a boost from their schedule: after taking a series from the weak Cardinals, they get their turn to beat up on the thoroughly hollowed-out Angels this weekend. The A’s will host the Blue Jays this weekend in a battle of cellar-dwellers in their division, albeit with two very different ways of getting there.