Game CXVI Thread: Cardinals at Royals

We’re still doing this? OK.

Remember just a few short years ago when competitive Royals teams enticed enough Royals fans to come out to Kauffman stadium and finally outnumber the rowdy St. Louis fans for these kinds of series? It’s beginning to feel like a dream. And I’ve never been the guy with the city spirit where I particularly cared about the KC vs StL rivalry so I don’t know why I would share in that group delusion, but whatever. It also makes me wonder at the people who comment on the internet that the Royals can’t trade Whit Merrifield or Lucas Duda because they’re all that is getting butts in the seats. What butts in which seats, I ask you?

Anyway. Today will be Danny Duffy, erstwhile staff ace, against a guy I’ve literally never heard of in Jack Flaherty. This is Jack’s rookie season and his FanGraphs projections are for a perfectly league average starting pitcher. But he’s striking out more than 11 batters per 9 innings with a 3.27 ERA. I’m forced to assume that the Cardinals have a magical artifact which lets them take perfectly average players and turns them into superstars. I think Dayton might have tried to acquire a similar heirloom but his turns studs into duds, instead.

The Royals will probably lose this game. But now that I’ve said that maybe they won’t. But whoops, I said that so they probably will.

Lineups