Luinder Avila is set to start for the Royals on June 12 against the Houston Astros, a Royals game that could help Kansas City begin the kind of run it needs to climb out of an early-season hole. Tatsuya Imai will start for Houston in the final series of the Royals’ Texas homestand, with the opener carrying more weight than a normal mid-June night in Kansas City.
The Royals needed to go 4-2 on the homestand to keep working back from their early-season losing, and a win Thursday would give them a shot at starting a sweep of Houston. Kansas City is also still chasing its first winning streak of three or more games in a month, which is why this matchup has drawn attention beyond the usual pitching card.
Avila has given the Royals a useful look with a 1.80 ERA, but the numbers around him are still hard to trust. His 8-7 strikeout-walk ratio points to a pitcher surviving on efficiency more than overpowering stuff, and he has not consistently worked into the sixth inning. That leaves the Royals with a starter who has shown he can keep runs off the board, but not yet one who has proved he can do it deep enough into games to steady a rotation spot over time.
Imai has been trending the other way. He has pitched much better in his last three outings after a rough start and was part of a combined no-hitter against the Rangers on May 25, when he handled the first six innings and walked four while striking out two. He leans on a slider and a four-seam fastball, with his fastball averaging 94.8 mph, and he has mixed in a sinker about 9.8% of the time. He has only thrown 14 splitters, 14 changeups and six curveballs all year, which makes the fastball-slider combination the key to what Kansas City has to solve.
The Royals will again have to find production without treating Salvador Perez like the middle-order force he usually is. He was batting lower than fifth because of a.245 on-base percentage and a.135 isolated power, while Jac Caglianone carried an.808 OPS and Bobby Witt Jr. was at.799 OPS. Isaac Collins was set to hit ninth, a reminder that Kansas City’s lineup still has to piece together runs even when the matchup on paper looks manageable.
For the Royals, the June 12 game is less about one night than about whether the homestand can turn into something that changes the direction of the month. For Avila, it is another test of whether a promising ERA can hold up when the innings start to matter.
