The Orioles and Royals open a three-game weekend series at Camden Yards with neither team where it expected to be when the season began. Kansas City arrives with a 38-56 record, while Baltimore has spent the summer looking for answers of its own.
That is why Royals Vs Orioles is drawing attention now. The matchup lands as the season nears its unofficial halfway point, and it pairs two AL clubs that were supposed to stay in the playoff race but have spent much of the year undercutting that idea. The Royals are second-worst in the AL and third-worst in MLB, and their minus-75 run differential says the record has not been a fluke.
Even so, the Royals have been better since the start of June. They are only three games under.500 over that stretch, with a minus-16 run differential, which is a much firmer picture than the one their overall record gives. Bobby Witt Jr. leads the club in batting average at.288, on-base percentage at.359, slugging at.464 and steals with 30, while Jac Caglianone has 14 home runs and Carter Jensen has 49 RBIs. Those numbers show enough offensive life to keep Kansas City from disappearing entirely, even if the big picture remains grim.
The harder problem is on the mound and on the injured list. The Royals rank 29th in ERA at 5.22, 28th in xERA at 4.98, 30th in FIP at 5.15 and 28th in xFIP at 4.84, while several regulars are missing. Vinnie Pasquantino has sat out a month with a broken hamate bone, Kyle Isbel is out with plantar fasciitis, Maikel Garcia will not play this weekend because of a muscle strain in his hand, and Jonathan India, Kris Bubic, Cole Ragans, Connor Seabold and Carlos Estévez are all unavailable. Daniel Lynch IV has offered a useful counterpoint with a 2.41 ERA, but his 4.14 xFIP,.214 BABIP and 7.71 strikeouts per nine innings suggest there is still some smoke around the good results.
Brandon Young gets the opener for the Orioles after a 7-2 start and a 3.38 ERA, though he was tagged for four runs over five innings on the Fourth of July. Luinder Avila is set to oppose him for the Royals, and his own line is less settled: 4-3 with a 5.05 ERA overall, a 5.04 ERA since he began starting games on June 1, even if five of his starts have lasted at least five innings and allowed only one run. The second game brings Kyle Bradish against Noah Cameron, who had a four-game run with a 9.00 ERA before holding up better last time out by allowing one run over five innings. That is the shape of this series: two teams still searching, one trying to prove its recent stretch is real, and both trying to avoid making an already disappointing first half feel worse by Sunday.
