Kansas City Royals: Not much to praise in Opening Day effort
Opening Day for the Kansas City Royals took place on Thursday afternoon and it did not go very well for the boys in blue. The Royals lost 14-7 to the White Sox.
If Opening Day is any indication as to how this season will go, then that’s a “Yikes” you hear coming from all Kansas City Royals fans. The good news is that this is just one game. The bad news is that there wasn’t much good to come from Game 1 of the 2018 season.
Danny Duffy was awful, the bullpen was even worse, and the offense didn’t instill a whole lot of confidence despite putting up seven runs. Let’s start with the Duffman though. In a year where the Royals DESPERATELY need Duffy to step up and carry the team on his back, he went just four innings and gave up five runs.
Duffy looked solid through the first three innings, but we’ve seen that once he hits a wall, he rarely breaks through it successfully. His day was done after just four innings of work. It was a very disappointing start for Danny Duffy.
It’s one game. The Royals aren’t going to go 0-162.
If the game had stopped after the first inning, then the Royals would have looked like playoff contenders. The first four batters came around to score and Lucas Duda even crushed a home run. A 4-0 lead after one inning seemed like a great start to the season, but that was where the fun ended.
The offense went cold after that, but to be fair, it would have been hard for them to keep their team in the game when the pitching staff surrendered 14 runs off of 14 hits. One member of the White Sox is literally batting 3.000 after facing the Royals bullpen.
This is only Game 1 of 162, but it was about as worse a start as possible for the Royals. Not only was the game bad, but the weather sucked (I know the team can’t control that) and even with the explosive first inning, there was no juice throughout the stadium. Barely anyone was even at the game and there wasn’t much “pre-game festivities” to get the crowd psyched. It was a very disappointing Opening Day.
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There were a few nice tidbits from the game though. Rule 5 pitcher Brad Keller made his Major League debut and pitched a scoreless inning while notching a strikeout. He was one of nine pitchers that took the mound for the Royals and was one of three not to surrender a run.
Another good part was that the defense still looks pretty good. Alex Gordon had an amazing catch in center field in the fourth inning and right after, Alcides Escobar had a nice defensive play that resulted in an out. Were it not for those two plays, Duffy would have probably been pulled sooner.
Oh, also… Jorge Soler did stuff in right field! He didn’t dive for balls and he caught everything that came his way. Some of those catches weren’t sure things either. Soler getting more comfortable in the outfield is a must this season, especially with Jorge Bonifacio out for now 79 more games.
It’s easy to harp on this game and how bad it was for the Kansas City Royals, but I can’t stress this part enough: It’s one game. The Royals aren’t going to go 0-162. There will be wins, but not as many as we’ve been used to over the past few years.
Most of us expected a not-so-good season, but a 14-7 Opening Day loss to the White Sox of all teams probably didn’t help anyone feel better about how this season will go. It’s okay… Hopefully it’ll all be worth it in a few years.