The Royals Are As Disappointing As The Orioles. Here's How The O's Can Beat Them

The Kansas City Royals are as big a disappointment as the Baltimore Orioles, so man, what a gift from the Baseball Gods it is for them to meet in the final series of the first half.

The All-Star break can’t come quickly for either of these franchises. But at least one of them won a playoff series against the other in recent history and their franchise player from the 2019 draft actually produces like a franchise player and he’s under contract long term). So while the O’s are ahead of the Royals in the standings, big picture, they probably still trail.

The Orioles have been far better at home than on the road, but that doesn’t mean much, because Baltimore still ranks in the bottom 10 in winning percentage at home. One might think this provides an opportunity to try to end the first half with some modicum of momentum, then again for a team that hasn’t won four in a row all season and has been truly horrible since June 21, 2024.

Here's what to keep an eye on in this series:

Lacking Lefties

The Royals basically are the Orioles.

They can’t win one-game games, either (9-14). it’s not as disgusting as the O’s but it’s close. They also stink against lefties (not that they will be seeing many of them from the Orioles in this series), and might even be worse than Baltimore at 8-21). And they flat-out stink away from home (17-30).

The Royals are likely to throw middling lefty Noah Cameron, the kind who tend to give the Orioles fits, over the weekend, so I guess they have the advantage coming in. O’s lefty starter Trevor Rogers pitched Thursday and the only lefties they have in their pen are not good – Nick Raquet has been smashed when promoted from AAA and Grant Wolfram is a lefty who is better against righties than lefties (lefties are batting .315 off him!) and their most used lefty, Keegan Akin, is likely out for the season.

What a mirror image to be staring at after such a lost season.

Take A Damn Pitch

There was a time when the Royals pitching was their superpower. No longer.

They cannot throw strikes. They do not get swing and miss. No hunting first-pitch fastballs and hoping to ambush. Just be patient and they will put you on base. We will be tracking pitches per at bat in this series and if it doesn’t trend up it’s an indictment of their scouting and their coaching staff and their lineup.

And frankly all of them deserve ample blame already.

The Royals have an uncanny coupling of deficient pitching traits that has everything to do with their horrible season. They have the fourth-worst K-rate in MLB and the sixth-worst walk rate. Yeah, that’s problematic.

No reason whatsoever to help them out. Rookie skipper Craig Albernaz loves running Little League strategies like the contact play, make them take a pitch until they see a strike.

Try Blaze Leading Off

We are going to keep begging for this. Gunnar Henderson can’t buy a hit and he needs less not more and should be dropped down the lineup. Taylor Ward had most of the first half there and the offense is still stagnant. They put slow-footed Adley Rutschman there Thursday afternoon for goodness sake.

Anything but lean into the fact that no one in MLB is making more contact than Alexander since April 28 while getting on base 42% of the time. Oh and he actually can run and doesn’t get picked off as much as Henderson. If it was just about winning and sound strategy and not optics and propping up regressing players and trying to look smart, this would’ve happened by now.

Albernaz would rather quip about how he did move him up to sixth, like once.

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