KC Royals: Pitching has to be better if this team wants to contend
The biggest question mark surrounding the KC Royals was their pitching, especially their starting rotation. The naysayers were proven right in Game No. 1.
The Kansas City Royals have only played in one game so far but from that one game, it wasn’t hard to tell that the pitching didn’t have it that day. While games like Thursday’s will occur frequently throughout the season, it can’t become a common occurrence if this team wants to come anywhere close to sniffing the postseason.
Brad Keller did not have a good game and a big key in if the Royals are true contenders or not this year is the development of Keller. He was fantastic last year and looked as though he could be a legitimate No. 1 option for this team, but this outing was just gross. He struggled to throw strikes and put the Royals down in a 5-0 hole early.
Keller is going to have bad days, as all pitchers do, and hopefully, he got this one out of the way for a while. Fans have faith in Keller this year and it’s important for him to bounce back in his next start.
The KC Royals need more from their pitching staff this year.
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This is going to be a weird year when it comes to pitching and we’ll unfortunately probably see situations like what transpired in Thursday’s game throughout the season all around the league. That’s what happens after guys didn’t get a full season a year ago.
The good news is that it wasn’t the entire pitching staff that struggled. Scott Barlow, Wade Davis, and Kyle Zimmer all came through when called upon, and while the Royals would obviously like to see more of their guys perform better, at least there were some positives from this group.
Zimmer was the first one out of the bullpen this season, spelling a struggling Brad Keller after the Royals’ No. 1 starter recorded just four outs. Zimmer finished out the inning without allowing any further damage, striking out two batters.
Barlow had the seventh inning and made sure it was scoreless. He recorded two outs in the eighth before getting into a jam and Greg Holland came in to relieve him. Fortunately for Barlow, Holland got a key strikeout to end the inning.
Lastly, Royals fans saw the return of Wade Davis, who re-joined his old team after four seasons elsewhere. WadeBot looked like he did the last time he pitched with the Royals, striking out the final two Rangers to end the game and give KC their first win of the season.
Pitching was always going to be the team’s biggest “issue” this year, again namely the rotation, but that can’t be the case if the Royals want to go anywhere. Keller needs to pitch more like a No. 1 option and maybe his biggest issue was throwing too hard. He had problems locating the strike zone (though to be fair, the umpire’s strike zone wasn’t very clear) and that has to change.
The bullpen did the best they could despite having to take over midway through the second inning. Carlos Hernandez might have a 6.00 ERA, but I’ll give him credit for going three innings and allowing the team more flexibility later on in the ballgame. The bullpen might have to carry this pitching staff throughout the season.
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Hopefully, the rotation can rebound from Keller’s rough start and we don’t see that replicated with Mike Minor‘s first start of the year on Saturday.