After a disappointing loss last night against the lowly Rangers where the Mariners seemed to have the game well in hand in the first, the team will try to reload against the pesky Royals to start the weekend series.
Jake painted a fairly rosy picture of the outlook in this series preview, noting that Kansas City has really failed to develop their young pitching, although Keller has been with the club for a while and is one of the few established pitching successes the department can really hang their hat on. Kansas City’s lineup is constructed similarly to the Mariners’, with some high-on-base players at the top followed by some big thumpers in the middle and then a highly touted prospect or two waiting to break out beyond that. The Royals, however, have been bedeviled by a painfully slow start from Whit Merrifield, rocking a -.2 fWAR and absolutely dragging my fantasy team into the ground, and a further cliff-fall from Carlos Santana, currently sporting a -7 wRC+.
This could all look very different in a few months when the Mariners visit the Royals in September—Witt Jr. is too talented to struggle for too long, Merrifield probably hasn’t completely fallen off a cliff in his age-33 season, and the Royals have gobs of upper-minors prospects who could be promoted at any moment (much to the relief of our Arkansas Travelers, probably)—so it would behoove Seattle to make hay and rack up some wins now against a decidedly more punchless Royals team, especially as they prepare for another lengthy road trip where they’ll have to face a pair of playoff teams in the Rays and Astros.
You can find the game in all the usual places, at 710 Seattle Sports on the radio and on ROOT Sports on TV, or streamed over fuboTV, or MLB.TV (out of area only). If you’re interested in checking out an Apple TV broadcast and have a second screen, the Rangers and A’s are playing tonight at 6:40, or you can tune into the earlier game between the Cardinals and Reds happening now.
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