Game thread LXXII - Royals at Dodgers

Salvador Perez is missing from tonight’s lineup

This recent stretch of baseball has not been fun. Not even a little bit. OK, maybe a little bit. The handful of Royals wins over the past couple of weeks have been almost exclusively in the form of stunning comebacks. Those are always hilarious. But they have only won one game easily.

The good news is that this is about as tough as it gets, 10 games - plus tonight’s and tomorrow’s - against first-place teams, including two of the top three or four best teams in the game right now. Over that stretch, the Royals have gone 4-6 in that period, which doesn’t feel great but is honestly respectable given the level of the competition. All it will take for most people to consider this stretch “fine” is for the Royals to win either tonight’s game or tomorrow’s. Doing so would also guarantee that they still haven’t been swept on the season, even while playing their worst baseball so far in 2024 and missing several key contributors against the toughest competition out there. If they could win both of these games, suddenly they would have gone 6-6 in what could very well be the toughest stretch of games the Royals play all year.

But before they can even dream about winning the series with the Dodgers, they first have to even it up. And, unfortunately, they will be doing that without the assistance of team captain Salvador Perez who hurt his knee while reaching for a poor pitch during last night’s contest. The good news is that Perez is not immediately going on the Injured List, but the bad news is that the Royals were concerned enough to demote Anthony Veneziano and call up the only remaining catcher on their 40-man roster, Austin Nola instead.

This also seems like a good time to remind you that the Royals traded Logan Porter to the Giants for cash Friday, so Austin Nola is about as good as it gets for a third catcher in KC. If Salvy, who drove in all three runs last night before leaving the game, misses significant time, it could be a huge damper on the Royals' playoff aspirations.

Perhaps in the only particularly good news about tonight’s matchup, the Royals will be sending out their winningest pitcher in Seth Lugo. Lugo hasn’t been as good in his last couple of starts, but that would just make it all the sweeter if he can bounce back against the Dodgers. If he does, it will be something of a revenge game. As a member of the Padres, he made one start against them last year and gave up eight runs in 3.1 innings.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto is in his rookie season in the MLB after the Dodgers lured him from the Orix Buffaloes with a lucrative contract this past off-season. He’s been pretty good for LA, pitching to a 3.00 ERA in his 13 starts. He had his best start of the season last weekend against the Yankees when he pitched seven shut out innings with seven strikeouts. The Royals offense - missing Perez, Hunter Renfroe, and Michael Massey - will have its work cut out for it.

Lineups

That lineup might as well not exist after the first three batters.

Good luck, Seth. You’re going to need it.