The Royals will try to do what they couldn’t do against

WhiteFanposts Fanshots Sections Royals Trade Rumors & Hot StoveRoyals Minor Leagues & ProspectsRoyals Review ClassicRoyals Review Users GuideThe 100 Greatest Royals Of All Time2019 Series Previews2019 Royals Opening DayWhite Sox Series Preview: Let’s get it startedNew http://www.bluejaysfanproshop.com/authentic-curtis-granderson-jersey ,25commentsThe Royals will try to do what they couldn’t do against the AAA Storm Chasers - win.EDTShareTweetShareShareWhite Sox Series Preview: Let’s get it startedRick Scuteri-USA TODAY SportsHey, uh, you guys see that it’s baseball season? Well I did! And so did the Royals, by golly! And they’re taking on the Chicago White Sox, the team that tried to sign Bryce Harper and Manny Machado and ended up with Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso. Hey, they got Ivan Nova too. Oh yeah, and they signed some guy named Eloy to a long-term deal before he ever had a big league at bat. And some relievers. So that about sums up their off-season coming off a 100-loss campaign that still didn’t get them the worst record in their division thanks to our friends, the Royals. White Sox vs. Royals - Tale of the Tape, 2018 StatsCategoryRoyalsWhite SoxCategoryRoyalsWhite SoxWhite Sox Projected Lineup - 2018 StatsPlayerPosPAAVGOBPSLGBB%K%wRC+fWARPlayerPosPAAVGOBPSLGBB%K%wRC+fWARWhite Sox Bench - 2018 StatsPlayerPosPAAVGOBPSLGBB%K%wRC+fWARPlayerPosPAAVGOBPSLGBB%K%wRC+fWARLineup/bench projection from RosterResource.comWhite Sox Key Relievers - 2018 StatsPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARProbable Pitching Matchups – 2018 StatsThursday, March 28th - 3:15pmPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARAfter an injury plagued season, Carlos Rodon will attempt to get back to where many thought he’d be when he had a strong debut season in 2015. Of course, as Royals fans know all too well, that season is getting farther and farther away and with just 32 starts in the last two years that were just average in the aggregate and another 28 in 2016 that were average, this might just be who he is. The big concern is the strikeouts disappeared in 2018, so if those don’t come back, he may very well far farther, as his xFIP above indicates he probably should have last year. His slider was still lethal last year and without a lot of right-handed thump in the Royals order, he has a good shot to start his season well.Brad Keller is a bit of a surprise Opening Day starter for the Royals Aaron Sanchez Jersey , but with Danny Duffy’s injury and no other strong candidates, the team’s best starter last season (both damning for the team and a compliment to him) gets the nod. Keller’s strong finish has to give Royals fans hope that he can at least be close to what he was in 2018. He finished his season going 5-1 in his final eight starts with a 2.25 ERA over 52 innings, but more importantly, he actually saw his velocity rise and his spin rate on his four-seamer rise in the last month of the season. Now we find out if it was for real.Saturday, March 30th - 1:15pmPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWAROf the two who came over in the big Adam Eaton trade to the Nationals, Reynaldo Lopez was considered the secondary piece with Lucas Giolito the headliner. But so far he’s been the better pitcher, though that’s not really great as he hasn’t been especially good. You’d expect a pitcher with his stuff to be racking up the strikeouts, but that hasn’t really happened for him, though he did improve a bit last season. He did get some more strikeouts in spring training with a 20.6% strikeout rate in spring training facing decent competition, but that’s mostly just noise at this point. With as hard as he throws and as good a stuff as he seems to have, it seems that he gets someone to predict a breakout for him, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve said this a few times on local radio spots now, but I’ll repeat it here. I believe Jakob Junis is going to be the Royals best starting pitcher this year. Why? It’s somewhere between a hunch and an educated guess, but I believe the better framing from Royals catchers this season is going to benefit him the most, stealing him some strikes on his slider and making it a pitch that hitters have an even harder time laying off. Junis spends a lot of time just outside to outside the strike zone, and that’s by design. Help him out just a little bit and he can go from average or so to at least above average pretty quickly. Sunday, March 31st - 1:15pmPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARPitcherGIPWLK%BB%ERAxFIPWARGiolito was supposed to break out last year, but then he magically didn’t when he couldn’t throw strikes like at all. He started bad and did improve as the season went on http://www.bluejaysfanproshop.com/authentic-curtis-granderson-jersey , but he struggled so much early that he couldn’t get back on track. Early indications from spring are that he might be ready for another breakout, but fool me once, well, you know the rest. The Royals should know pretty quick if this is new and improved Giolito or the same old, same old. Jorge Lopez won the Royals third starter job, which is really kind of like the fifth starter, on the strength of a solid spring. And while I believe he’s ultimately ticketed for the bullpen where I think he can actually be good, he’s at least earned the opportunity to see what he can do in the rotation. We saw the upside last year in his perfect game bid against Minnesota, but we also saw the downside in his final start of the year against the Tigers just two starts later when he got lit up for three homers in one inning of work. His fastball isn’t quite as fast as I think you’d expect, but his curve and slider are both plus pitches that should theoretically help play his fastball up. If they’re working, he’s working, but he’s going to need to find a way to get more swings and misses with the fastballs if they’re going to work.PredictionThere’s obviously talent on this White Sox roster, but they’re still lacking and didn’t get their targets on the free agent market. So it’s another season of hoping the young guys put it together and figure things out. If they do, this is a team that could just be a starting pitcher or two away. If they don’t, they’ll be playing at the bottom of the division with the Royals and Tigers again. I think the White Sox take two of three in this one to start the season, but do ultimately end up around 90 losses once again. Elsa/Getty ImagesThe more outs he racked up in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, the more Boston Red Sox left-hander David Price could have chipped away at his reputation as a postseason goat.Instead, the $217 million ace got only the first five outs of Boston's 6-2 loss to the New York Yankees.As in Russell Martin Jersey , Price was finished after just an inning and two-thirds Saturday. He was done in by a pair of booming home runs by Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. There was also an RBI double by Andrew McCutchen that was plenty booming in its own right.The latter pushed New York's lead to 3-0 with two outs in the second inning. Without further ado, Boston manager Alex Cora pointed Price in the direction of the showers. The boo birds came out in force at Fenway Park as he made his way off the field.For a time, it didn't seem like Price's poor start had necessarily doomed the Red Sox to a defeat. Their bullpen put up zeroes through the sixth, and a fourth-inning homer by Xander Bogaerts made the score 3-1.Nonetheless, Boston's doom arrived in the seventh. Eduardo Rodriguez put a couple runners on, and Sanchez brought them and himself home with a 479-foot moonshot over the Green Monster.After that, the Yankees had little trouble in turning the Red Sox's 1-0 series lead into a 1-1 tie. They can punch their ticket to a second straight American League Championship Series with wins in Games 3 (Monday) and 4 (Tuesday) at Yankee Stadium.There's plenty of credit to dole out on the New York side of things. The lion's share goes to Sanchez, who enjoyed the biggest game of his career. A good chunk is also reserved for Masahiro Tanaka, who allowed one run in five innings before turning things over to the excellent Yankees bullpen.As for Boston, most of the blame rests on Price.Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty ImagesIt doesn't take a powerful microscope to see why the Red Sox were willing to give Price a seven-year, $217 million contract following the 2015 season.He was a well-established ace who had just won his second American League ERA title. They were a team with a rotation that had ranked 24th in ERA in the previous season. Square peg, meet square hole.Still, Price came with questions regarding his ability to show up when the Red Sox were most in need of an ace.The former Tampa Bay Ray, Detroit Tiger and Toronto Blue Jay arrived in Boston with a 5.12 career postseason ERA. He also had a not-great 4.04 ERA in 30 career starts against the Yankees.The first two-and-a-half years of Price's tenure in Boston did not go well. He was up and down in 2016, and he spent most of 2017 injured and feuding with the local media. His health and mood improved in the first half of 2018, but his performance went back to wavering. His lowest valley was on July 1, when the Yankees torched him for five homers and eight runs at Yankee Stadium.In the second half of 2018, however Josh Donaldson Jersey , Pricefinally started pitching like the ace the Red Sox thought they had signed back in 2015.In 11 starts, he pitched to a 2.25 ERA with 68 strikeouts and only 16 walks in 68 innings. This happened despite an ongoing decline in his fastball velocity, which speaks to how he adjusted his approach."He's been unbelievable," catcher Sandy Leon told Alex Speier of the Boston Globe in September. "You've got a lot of options. You know he's going to execute a pitch 90 percent of the time. He's been doing an amazing job."In the wake of this stretch, it was possible to imagine Price putting the Yankees in their place in Game 2. Had he done so, he would have dealt a huge blow to the notion that he's no good in big games.After what actually happened, Price's big-game credentials look worse than ever. His career postseason ERA is up to 5.28. Per MLB.com's Bryan Hoch, even that figure looks good relative to his numbers against the Yankees during his time in Boston:Bryan Hoch BryanHochThe Price is wrong:7.95 ERA (53 ER / 60 IP) in 12 starts vs. the #Yankees since joining Boston prior to the 2016 season 10.90 ERA (21 ER / 17.1 IP) in five starts vs. NYY this seasonGranted, what these Yankees have done against Price isn't that surprising.Theirs is a right-heavy, slugger-laden lineup that destroyed (.832 OPS) lefty starters in the regular season. Their hitters also know the strike zone well. That presents a challenge for Price, who no longer has the stuff to survive when hitters force him from the edges of the strike zone into the fat part of it.Such was Price's downfall in Game 2. He did his best to stick to the edges of the zone, but too many of his misses were out over the plate. That's where Judge and McCutchen did their damage.Price will have a chance at redemption if the ALDS extends to a Game 5. And as bad as the idea may sound, the Red Sox wouldn't have much choice but to give it to him. The only viable alternative would be a bullpen day. Considering the battered and bruised state of the Red Sox bullpen, that'sbarely practical.As such, the best thing the Red Sox can do is win the next two games at Yankee Stadium and hope that the Price riddle is solved in the next round.Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.