Prime Time ESPN Spot Good For Kansas City Royals

Major League Baseball is starting to recognize the Kansas City Royals are here to stay.

It has to be true because money talks. The league would not slot any teams on a Sunday night, prime time spot like they are the Royals and Detroit Tigers at 7 p.m., May 10, if it didn’t think the game would bring eye balls to television sets.

That’s TV 101.

This is the first prime time game for the Royals this season, and, according to baseballessential.com, only one of a handful over the past decade. Tim Boyle of inningseater.com has even go so far as to say this AL Central Division match-up is becoming the “new Yankees-Red Sox.”

I’m not sure I would go that far — yet.

The entertainment provided by that rivalry has been built over decades, but there is no doubt in 2015, Royals-Tigers is better TV than Yanks-Sox.

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Although the Yankes have the same record as Detroit at 19-12, the Red Sox are not holding up their end of the bargain, currently sitting last in the AL East at 13-17.

The Royals on the other hand are 19-11, and just one half game back from the Houston Astros for best record in the American League. Kansas City is also coming off a World Series appearance, and the Tigers are back-to-back-to-back-to-back division champions.

With the Royals’ half-game lead over Detroit, and both teams playing .500 ball the past 10 games, it seems like they are switching between first and second place nearly every day.

The Royals are third in MLB with a +46 run-differential, and while the Tigers are at just +6, they began the season 9-1, and have long been an entertaining offensive team, led by some guy named Miguel Cabrera.

While Detroit boasts former Cy Young winners (Justin Verlander; David Price), and MVP and Triple Crown winner (Cabrera) as well as a host of other all-stars, the Royals have talented guys who are now becoming household names.

Alex Gordon has been known in baseball circles for years, but when chatter last year began about a possible MVP win for the Lincoln, Nebraska native, it was usually met with a puzzled look, and he eventually ended up 12th.

Kansas City Royals’ fans however, know how much he means to the team, and he is as good of a left fielder as there is in the game.

Catcher Sal Perez is a two-time all-star (and the only player to figure out Madison Bumgarner in last year’s postseason), first baseman Eric Hosmer is on pace for an MVP season, Lorenzo Cain might be the only outfielder better than Gordon, and third baseman Mike Moustakas went from demoted last year, to postseason hero, to possibly putting an end to “The Shift” as we know it in Major League Baseball.

If you are a Royals’ fan reading, you already know all of this. In fact, you are probably mad the rest of the country doesn’t already.

They will, once Kansas City make the postseason again this year (whether it’s as division champ or wild card team), and battles all of baseball’s bests until the end.

What’s obvious though, is through its television scheduling, MLB is already proving it knows a little something about the Royals.

Next: Apologies and Elite Salvador Perez

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