Year Two of the Matt Quatraro tenure. Time to take a step up this year. Active in free agency and trades this offseason. A new look pitching rotation and bullpen. Will the young players take the leap up offensively? Bobby Witt extension? New stadium? Will Vinny recover from injury? Salvy taking aim at the Royals record book? Will Cole Ragans turn into the best Royals starting pitcher since Greinke 1.0?
Free Agents/Trades Acquisitions
Seth Lugo, SP
Michael Wacha, SP
Kyle Wright, SP
Hunter Renfroe, OF/DH
Will Smith, RP
Chris Stratton, RP
Nick Anderson, RP
Adam Frazier, 2B
Garrett Hampson, INF/OF
Matt Sauer, RP [Reply]
Originally Posted by ROYC75:
I'm afraid those 2 7 game losing streaks will keep us out. Atlanta will be fired up to win, we somehow have to get at least 1 win there. If we lose the last game in Wash., we gotta have 2 games in Atlanta. This a fight with Seattle for the last WC spot, Detroit finishing with the White Sox is probably going to sink us!
Detroit is off the table. They are in, there is no way they don't win the series vs the White Sox. The race is between us and MN. We need one win in Atlanta and the Twins to lose one of 4 games. The Twins losing twice would also do the trick. I'd say it's about 70/30 that we make it in. If the Twins win tonight drop that to 60/40 and if they win and we lose tomorrow, it's a good ol' fashioned 50/50 [Reply]
Originally Posted by MAHOMO 4 LIFE!:
The Tigers ain’t losing in Chicago so we need to sweep Atlanta or else we will be playing Houston
If we make it, I’d much rather play Houston than Baltimore. We actually match up with them pretty well.
The big key is we need to win tomorrow or have Minny lose tonight and tomorrow so we can set our rotation for the series. Singer pitching tomorrow for us. Ideally, would like to save Lugo and Ragans for games 1 & 2 in Houston. [Reply]
The weird thing is the Sux seemed semi motivated right now to NOT get that 121st loss, so they actually played a decent series against the Angels and finished the sweep today, so I think their going to go into Detroit with a little motivation. Of course, that all goes away as soon as they lose one but who knows, maybe Friday they pull off a crazy win?
That said, if we manage to get in, I honestly don’t want to pass Detroit at this point. I’d rather get the last Wild Card and play Houston. We match up better with them. And then if we somehow managed to pull that series off, then we play Cleveland. I like that matchup better than any other potential matchup in the playoffs.
We need to be rooting HARD tonight for Miami and Baltimore. A Baltimore win means a motivated team heads to Minny and still has something to play for (AL East crown).
Originally Posted by MAHOMO 4 LIFE!:
The Tigers ain’t losing in Chicago so we need to sweep Atlanta or else we will be playing Houston
I'd rather be the 3rd wildcard. Houston on the road then Cleveland in the divisional. If you're the 2, it's Baltimore on the Road then the Yankees in divisional.
Originally Posted by Why Not?:
Detroit is off the table. They are in, there is no way they don't win the series vs the White Sox. The race is between us and MN. We need one win in Atlanta and the Twins to lose one of 4 games. The Twins losing twice would also do the trick. I'd say it's about 70/30 that we make it in. If the Twins win tonight drop that to 60/40 and if they win and we lose tomorrow, it's a good ol' fashioned 50/50
7 total games. 4 for the Twins. 3 for us.
We just need 2 good outcomes of those 7.
There’s a lot of ways that this works out for us. Only a handful of ways this works out for the Twins.
Sweeps are hard even against bad teams. I don’t see us getting swept. I don’t see the Twins sweeping Baltimore.
By pulling off the sweep of our own against Washington, I’ll be really surprised if disaster happens. Obviously, it’s possible but sounds unlikely. [Reply]
Atlanta finally announced their starting pitcher for tomorrow; Max Fried. Nothing yet for Saturday or Sunday. They're clearly taking it one game at a time at this point.
Originally Posted by GabyKeepsMeWarm:
Atlanta finally announced their starting pitcher for tomorrow; Max Fried. Nothing yet for Saturday or Sunday. They're clearly taking it one game at a time at this point.
Lucky us.
Correct. Look, Fried is good and I have zero faith in Singer on the road in a big spot but Sale is a different animal. With Sale you hope your guy can find a way to match his zeros for 7-8 innings and get to their pen late. Fried is good, but he ain’t that. [Reply]