Series Preview: Seattle Mariners @ Kansas City Royals

Seattle: 54-51
Kansas City: 41-64

SUMMARY

The defense went up nearly 10 runs in a week. Thankfully that happened or man would our week have looked just terrible. The rotation got blown up and the offense and pen both also lost significant performance value.

Yuniesky Betancourt, since joining the Royals: .140/.158/.228, -8.3 bRAA, -1.1 UZR (-10.3 UZR/150), -0.7 WAR.

In 17 games.

Meanwhile, Willie Bloomquist, -0.1 WAR, Tug Hulett, -0.4 WAR and Jose Guillen, -1.7 WAR.

GAMES

Game 1: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs. Luke Hochevar
Game 2: Lucas French* vs. Kyle Davies
Game 3: Jason Vargas* vs. Bruce Chen*

Luke Hochevar (5.06 tRA) is the best starter we face this week. He has been a bit of a ground ball pitcher and has shown above average command and a good ability to miss bats. He has yet to turn the missed bats into an above average strike out rate, but once he does that, he should solidify himself as a solid upper mid-rotation starter. With Zack Greinke, Gil Meche and Brian Bannister, the Royals could field four legit quality pitchers in the rotation.

Kyle Davies (6.77 tRA) has huge issues with his control in the Majors, but has shown some improvement while in Triple-A. He has always managed to get hitters to chase just enough to hold onto a roughly Quad-A level of performance. As with Hochevar, Davies' tRA is inflated thanks to a big home run rate.

Bruce Chen (6.59 tRA) exhibits an average pitch profile, but his batted ball profile is heavily skewed away from keeping any balls on the ground. As such, he yields a lot of line drives and many of those non-ground balls land on the other side of the pesky wall that some moron erected in the outfield.