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Kansas City Royals: Starting pitching has been complete disaster

By Leigh Oleszczak

CLEVELAND, OH - AUGUST 27: Starting pitcher Eric Skoglund #69 of the Kansas City Royals leaves the game during the second inning after giving up five runs against the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field on August 27, 2017 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
CLEVELAND, OH - AUGUST 27: Starting pitcher Eric Skoglund #69 of the Kansas City Royals leaves the game during the second inning after giving up five runs against the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field on August 27, 2017 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images) /
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The Kansas City Royals are barely staying around .500 at this point in the season and a lot of the recent struggles have come from a result of the horrid starting pitching.

At the beginning of the season, the Kansas City Royals were getting phenomenal starts from their starting pitchers. Danny Duffy, Jason Hammel, Nate Karns, Ian Kennedy, and especially Jason Vargas were posing as one of the best rotations in all of Major League Baseball.

Too bad the Royals’ offense didn’t get the memo then. It was common early on this season for the Royals to lose games 1-0 or 3-2 or by a very close margin. The starters were doing their jobs, but the offense was not.

Now, however, the starting pitching has completely turned upside down. It’s bad enough that the Royals are down two of their original starters in Duffy and Karns, but throw in that Kennedy and Vargas have been downright awful, and you’ll soon realize why this rotation is so bad.

A good chunk of the blame for this team’s failures lands on the starting rotation.

With two starters out of the rotation, the Royals have had to turn to names like Eric Skoglund, Onelki Garcia, and Andres Machado during this time. Skoglund had that one good start against Detroit early in the season, but since then has been awful. Garcia and Machado were both horrendous in their appearances against the Twins.

The Royals simply haven’t had the depth for their rotation, and as a result, their bullpen has suffered as well. The relievers have had to bail starters out sooner than expected and that’s been taxing on the pen.

It’s been rare for the Royals to limit their opponents from scoring and that’s just not something that good teams have to worry about. Not only is the pitching bad in Kansas City, but the offense isn’t good enough to make up for the lack of depth in the rotation. These Royals just don’t have the tools to make a deep postseason run… or even to the postseason at all.

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What’s killed this team the most are the bad starts from guys like Kennedy and Vargas. Now it’s worth noting that Vargas had an incredible first half of the season, but Kennedy has been bad nearly all season long. He’s certainly not worth what the Kansas City Royals are paying him.

Dayton Moore made a move a few months ago, which was bringing in Trevor Cahill to be the fifth starter in the Royals rotation. Cahill was so bad as a starter that he was moved to the bullpen and has continued to be a disaster in that role.

Very little has gone the Kansas City Royals’ way this season, but recently, a good chunk of the blame for this team’s failures lands on the starting rotation and their lack of getting guys out. The Royals need Duffy and Karns to get healthy this offseason desperately or next year could be brutal.

On the bright side, however, Jake Junis has been a delight to watch. He’ll be an easy candidate to consider for a spot in the rotation next year and hopefully he’ll continue to impress. In other words, it’s not all bad, but the starting pitching is sometimes painful to watch.

Can the starting rotation make it to the finish line that is the regular season? Will their efforts be good enough to get the boys in blue to the playoffs? Only time will tell, but it’s looking less and less likely that this will be a participant in the October festivities this year.

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