Kansas City » Dylan Bundy

Series Preview: Royals vs. Baltimore Orioles, August 31-September 2

David Lesky — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 15:00:46 +0000

If you’re a fan of futility, and really who isn’t, this weekend is the weekend you’ve been waiting for. The Royals welcome in the only team worse than them in all of baseball, the Baltimore Orioles, for a three-game set that could help to determine who gets the number one pick in next June’s draft. Both teams are on fire (for them) with Baltimore coming off as sweep of the Blue Jays and the Royals in the midst of a 4-1 homestand. The Orioles are a different looking team than the squad the Royals played back in May after trading away Manny Machado, Jonathan Schoop, Kevin Gausman, Brad Brach and Darren O’Day and simply releasing a few others, including Danny Valencia. Since they traded Machado, they’re hitting .271/.327/.441 and averaging five runs per game, which is weird. But since the deadline, they’re back to .258/.312/.411 and averaging 4.4 runs per game, so, you know, back closer to normal. They still can’t pitch, so at least that’s the same.

Orioles Vitals

Record	40-94, 5^th Place, AL East
Team TAv	.241
Team SP DRA	5.91
Team RP DRA	5.54
Team WARP Leader	Trey Mancini, 1.0 (Machado, Schoop and Gausman all higher, but gone)
Record vs. Royals	2-1

Royals vs. Orioles

Offense

Pitching

Orioles Projected Lineup

	AVG	OBP	SLG	TAv	WARP
Cedric Mullins	.305	.379	.492	.289	0.4
Jonathan Villar	.265	.327	.387	.257	0.6
Trey Mancini	.243	.305	.416	.247	1.0
Adam Jones	.285	.318	.432	.255	0.4
Chris Davis	.173	.249	.316	.207	-2.9
Renato Nunez	.256	.341	.385	.249	0.2
Tim Beckham	.219	.277	.355	.227	-0.3
Craig Gentry	.269	.321	.346	.234	-0.1
Caleb Joseph	.209	.253	.323	.213	-0.6

Projected Pitching Matchups

Friday – 7:15 pm

	G	IP	W	L	ERA	DRA	WARP
Andrew Cashner	25	141.0	4	12	4.79	6.35	-1.7
Brad Keller	36	105.1	6	5	3.33	5.42	-0.2

I saw what the Orioles were doing when they signed Cashner to a relatively modest deal this winter, but I didn’t like the move. He seemed prime for regression given his ridiculously low strikeout rate and his too high for it walk rate. He’s struck out more this year, but still not enough and he’s just been a little less fortunate on batted balls, so he’s allowed more hits, more runners and more runs. Plus, his home runs are up slightly, and when you have zero room for regression, you can’t regress anywhere. Still, on the whole, he’s probably been their best starter left standing, though Alex Cobb has been great of late. Cashner has been brutal in August with a 6.59 ERA in five starts. He’s struck out 12 and walked 12 in 28.2 innings. That’s…well not good. There’s not really a scenario where Cashner truly excels, but he’s especially bad a third time through the order, which he’s left in for quite often. He allows a .336/.424/.543 line when he’s facing the lineup a third time. Given his repertoire, I feel like Adalberto Mondesi staying hot is a safe bet here.

Keller didn’t really have it in his last start against the Indians, but against that good team, he still gutted it out through five and allowed just two runs while striking out five. After a bit of a performance dip heading into the break, he’s made seven starts and averaged six innings per start since. What’s really encouraging, and we’ve talked about this before, is that he’s striking out 21 percent of batters faced and is walking just eight percent. Neither is elite or anything, but he does seem to be getting better. He’s given up a few more home runs, but he’s still at a reasonable level there as well, so he’s working his way out of an Andrew Cashner 2017-type season and into a conversation as being able to sustain this. Keller didn’t pitch against the Orioles in May, so this is his first time facing them.

Saturday – 6:15 pm

	G	IP	W	L	ERA	DRA	WARP
Dylan Bundy	25	140.2	7	13	5.37	5.43	-0.2
Heath Fillmyer	12	51.1	2	1	4.21	6.83	-0.9

The last time the Royals saw Dylan Bundy, he faced seven batters and all seven scored. That was his third consecutive bad start after a quick start in his first five, and it hasn’t really gotten a whole lot better since. He did have a really good June, but since then he’s made nine starts with an ERA of 8.87 and allowed 16 home runs in 44.2 innings. He’s allowed 65 hits in that time! In those nine starts, he’s allowed at least five runs six times. It’s just been a rough go for Bundy. If there is a bright side for him, it’s that the season is almost over. Lefties have absolutely mauled him this year with a .316/.377/.550 line, so look for the Royals to load up in this one. The key against him (and all pitchers really but especially Bundy) is to get ahead in the count. When the hitter has the advantage, he allows a .336 average and .694 SLG. That’s crazy. And just to show how insane his start against the Royals was with four homers allowed in seven batters, here was the line – 1.000/1.000/3.400. That’s really amazing actually. Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez each have homers against him, but I’d look for some damage from the young guys like Mondesi, Ryan O’Hearn and Brett Phillips in this one.

It seems like every time I’m about to write off Fillmyer, he performs well. He handled the Indians pretty well on Saturday night last weekend, giving up just a run on three hits in six innings. Maybe more encouraging than the numbers were 10 swings and misses, which ties his career high that he had set against the Tigers and White Sox previously. He threw a career-high 105 pitches, so two extra days of rest may not hurt him for this one. The Orioles could be a sneaky tough matchup for him because if his slider is hanging, they still have enough power to make him pay and get some quick runs against him. But if it’s working, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him set a new swinging strike career high.

Sunday – 1:15 pm

	G	IP	W	L	ERA	DRA	WARP
David Hess	16	78.0	3	8	5.08	7.90	-2.3
Jorge Lopez	13	33.1	0	4	4.86	5.54	-0.2

Hess has pretty steadily climbed the minor league ladder for the Orioles since he was drafted in 2014 and has shown a couple decent things in the big leagues in spite of the rough numbers. The home run has bitten him more than it did in AA last year or AAA this year, but he’s still allowing less than a hit per inning, which is nice to see from him. That said, there just isn’t enough there stuff-wise to be successful, especially in an organization like the Orioles. He throws a 92-93 MPH fastball, which isn’t really impressive these days and he throws it a lot. His slider is probably his best strikeout pitch, and it’s similar to Fillmyer in that when it’s good, he’s quite good, but when it’s not, look out. Like Cashner, he’s a guy you can wait out as he really starts to tire at about 50 pitches and then when you get even deeper, he gets in some big trouble. He hasn’t exceeded 100 pitches yet, but he did get to 99 in his best start of the year his last time out against the Blue Jays.

So far, Lopez hasn’t done anything to make me believe he isn’t a reliever, but, again, this is the time to find out. His first time through the order in three starts, he’s allowed a .269 average and two runs. He’s walked just one in that time. His second and third time through, he’s allowed nine runs in three games and walked seven while striking out six. There’s no shame in being a reliever, but I’m pretty confident that’s what he is. That said, the Orioles do their share of flailing at the plate and Lopez has a great curveball when he’s on, so I would say this is an opportunity for him to gain some confidence if he can get that pitch working and recover from his rough outing against the Indians on Sunday.

I’d have to care to look more, but I have to assume this is the first time the Royals have had back to back weekends with all three starters coming into the game with a season ERA under 5 since like April or so. Maybe I’m wrong. It doesn’t matter. This is going to be a slap fight all weekend, but I think the Royals come out victorious in two of three given how bad the Orioles are and how bad they are especially on the road. Nothing would really surprise me this weekend other than good baseball.

Series Preview: Royals at Baltimore Orioles

David Lesky — Tue, 08 May 2018 12:41:32 +0000

Four years ago, the Royals and Baltimore Orioles played a series to determine who would go to the World Series. Now, both are fighting for the number one pick in the 2019 draft. Life comes at you fast, I guess. The two teams got to this point in slightly different ways, but here we are with both among the worst teams in baseball. For the Orioles, age and a suspect rotation have caught up to them, and their once-vaunted bullpen is no longer. Part of that is the absence of Zach Britton, who should be returning relatively soon, but some of it is just underperformance. All in all, this series shapes up to be a tickle fight for the ages.

Orioles Vitals

Record	8-26, 5^th Place, AL East
Team TAv	.223
Team SP DRA	6.40
Team RP DRA	4.14
Team WARP Leader	Manny Machado, 1.7
2017 Record vs. Royals	3-3

Royals vs. Orioles

Offense

Pitching

Orioles Projected Lineup

	AVG	OBP	SLG	TAv	WARP
Trey Mancini	.258	.329	.387	.252	0.2
Adam Jones	.245	.257	.417	.214	-0.6
Manny Machado	.346	.430	.623	.334	1.7
Chris Davis	.171	.264	.243	.188	-1.0
Jonathan Schoop	.230	.266	.344	.244	0.1
Mark Trumbo	.292	.292	.375	.213	-0.1
Pedro Alvarez	.205	.311	.500	.273	0.2
Chance Sisco	.203	.299	.305	.215	-0.2
Anthony Santander	.202	.245	.315	.185	-0.5

Pitching Matchups

Tuesday

	G	IP	W	L	ERA	DRA	WARP
Danny Duffy	7	38.1	0	4	5.63	7.20	-0.8
Dylan Bundy	7	40.2	1	4	3.76	2.94	1.0

It took a little while longer than expected, but Bundy has developed into a really good starting pitcher. The raw numbers are quite good and 48 strikeouts in those 40.2 innings is really impressive, but I am a little bit concerned about the number of hits he allows. Someone with his stuff probably shouldn’t give up more than a hit per inning. He’s been barreled up kind of an amazing 11.2 percent of the time, and a lot of that is on his fastball where he’s allowed a .319 average and .597 slugging percentage in 72 at-bats that have ended on it. His curve has also been a problem, but the sample is much smaller. He has a nasty slider, which he uses far more to righties and might be why they’ve hit just .202/.256/.440 against him this year. Lefties, on the other hand, have a .342/.395/.468 line against him, so while the righties have supplied the power, lefties have done plenty of damage. My guess is Jorge Soler looks plenty bad against Bundy at times in this one and the offense needs to run through the bats of Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon and Lucas Duda if the Royals are going to find success in this game.

Duffy is planning to make yet another adjustment and return to the stretch, where he found so much success over the last couple seasons. His home run rate has skyrocketed this season after allowing four to Boston in his last start, and that’s going to have to change if his season is going to turn around. In addition to the home runs, his control and command have been a big problem with his highest walk total since 2015. The strikeouts are mostly there, so that’s not too much of a concern, but he’s put together the terrible combination of very hittable with a lack of control and that’s led to about a base runner and a half per inning. It’s just not a good combination. Duffy has had big-time success against the Orioles in his career, and that comes partially from really holding down Adam Jones (.087/.087/.087 in 24 PA) and Manny Machado (.176/.222/.294 in 18 PA). If he can do that again, he should be in good shape.

Wednesday

	G	IP	W	L	ERA	DRA	WARP
Eric Skoglund	5	26.1	1	2	6.84	7.85	-0.8
Andrew Cashner	7	38.2	1	4	4.89	6.70	-0.6

What a weird career Cashner has had. He’s been both underrated and overrated. He’s both underperformed and overperformed his peripherals. He’s been good. He’s been bad. He’s been a strikeout guy with iffy to control and a pitch to contact guy with very good control. Last season with Texas, he struck out just 86 batters in 166.2 innings and posted a 3.40 ERA, which is the third lowest of his career. That led him to Baltimore, who probably liked him because of his ground ball rate. He’s upped his strikeout rate to nearly one per inning, but his walk rate has already risen by the same amount. And to make matters worse, his ground ball rate has plummeted from 48.6 percent to 37.7 percent. He’s getting hit and he’s getting hit hard. He still relies heavily on that sinker along with his four-seam fastball with both around 92-94 MPH. The four-seam fastball has been great, but the sinker has been the cause of big problems with a .611 SLG against it. Cashner threw six shutout innings against the Royals last year while with Texas but took a no-decision.

Skoglund, off the best start of his career, looked a lot like the pitcher we’ve seen quite a bit of during his last start. He gave up five runs on eight hits over 4.2 innings, but there was a sign of maybe some good in that he struck out six batters, so maybe that’s something he can continue in this one. The Orioles have performed better against lefties than righties with a .236/.321/.399 line against them compared to .215/.277/.351 against righties, which makes some sense with a lot of their power coming from the right side. Basically, it comes down to Skoglund’s curve in this one. The Orioles, as a team, are hitting .158 against curveballs with a .287 SLG. This’ll be Skoglund’s first career start against the Orioles and at Camden Yards.

Thursday

	G	IP	W	L	ERA	DRA	WARP
Ian Kennedy	7	37.0	1	3	2.92	5.53	-0.1
Kevin Gausman	7	43.2	2	2	3.30	3.37	0.9

Gausman has been an enigma. He has great stuff but has been hit pretty hard the past couple seasons, last year especially. He made 34 starts, but only pitched 186.2 innings, partially because he couldn’t keep runners off base, allowing 10 hits per nine and more walks than ever before. This year, he’s limited the hits and the walks, but at the expense of strikeouts. It’s working to this point with a solid ERA and DRA, so the Orioles certainly aren’t complaining. Gausman works a lot with his fastball and it’s pretty good, averaging about 93 MPH with decent movement. He also mixes in a splitter and a slider, and the splitter accounts for a good amount of swings and misses with a 37.1 percent whiff rate and 31.4 percent strikeout rate, easily the highest of all his pitches on both counts. He’s faced the Royals once in his career, last year, and gave up five runs on nine hits in just 3.1 innings in the game Soler hit the missile to dead center (but it wasn’t against Gausman). He did allow a three-run blast to Moustakas, so look for Moose to try to recreate that magic.

Ian Kennedy continued down the path to a very good season in his last start against Detroit, lowering his ERA to 2.92 and while the DRA is still high, a lot of the peripherals are very encouraging. His strikeout rate is up a bit from 20 percent last year to 21.7 percent this year, and his walk rate has dropped a ton, from 9.3 percent last year to 6.8 percent this year. The one area where regression seems likely to hurt him in his strand rate where he’s left 81.5 percent of runners on base, though that never did come down in 2016, which was a very solid season for him, so maybe he can maintain it. I wouldn’t count on it, but maybe. Kennedy has made three starts in Baltimore in his career with one coming last year when he gave up four runs on eight hits in four innings. Somehow he didn’t allow a home run, though, so I guess that’s sort of a victory. While there isn’t much in the way of experience between Kennedy and really any Orioles hitters, he has limited Pedro Alvarez quite well. In 21 plate appearances. Kennedy’s curve might be a weapon in this one, for the reasons Skoglund’s could be, but if his changeup is on, it could be just as deadly as the Orioles are hitting .208 against changeups this year with a .309 SLG.

In all, these are two bad teams, but I think the Royals are a little better. Normally I’d say that’s two out of three for Kansas City, but they’re both in Baltimore and facing the Orioles two best starters this season, which tips the scales for me, so I think the Royals claim just one of three this week.