Kansas City Royals: Danny Duffy can’t let Opening Day bring him down
It was only one game for Danny Duffy this season, but the Kansas City Royals need him to step his game up. Otherwise, this will be a very long season.
The Kansas City Royals got demolished on Opening Day and five of the 14 runs that the Chicago White Sox scored were off of Danny Duffy. Now look, I know pitchers (and teams) have bad days and bad games, but Danny Duffy can’t let his Opening Day start weigh him down all season long.
Duffy was given an extension before the 2017 season and went on to pitch to under a four ERA, but landed on the disabled list twice. Part of why I was skeptical with keeping Duffy in Royal blue was due to his injury history.
He’s yet to start 30 games in his career and his highest innings total was 179.2 in 2016. If Duffy could stay healthy, that’d be a huge boost to this Royals rotation. The other end of it, however, is that Duffy obviously has to be productive.
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He only needed nine pitches to get through the first inning and made it through the second and third without any damage. It was the fourth inning where it fell a part for the Duffman and once it started unraveling, it wasn’t pretty.
Duffy gave up all five of his runs that inning and it took him forever to record the final out. He looked defeated and that’s something an ace can’t do. When looking at other teams in the league, Duffy would probably be the third starter, but he’s the ace with the Royals and he has to start pitching like it.
Only getting through four innings (and allowing five runs in the process) isn’t a good look for the Royals’ ace. The Royals rotation could be pretty good this year, but it’s definitely a question mark. Ian Kennedy is coming off a horrid 2017 campaign, Jason Hammel ended the season looking sharp, but it took him a bit, and Jakob Junis will look to build on a nice rookie season.
Nate Karns is already injured, which puts Eric Skoglund into the rotation as the five starter. Due to the uncertainty of the rotation, it’s up to Danny Duffy to carry the load and pitch like an ace. We’ve seen him do so before, but after struggling in both spring training and Opening Day, it’s okay to be a little concerned about the Duffman.
He simply has to be better or this Royals team will indeed be one of the worst teams in baseball this season.