After the sweep at the hands of the Padres last weekend, the Mariners managed to get things back on track a bit with a series win over the White Sox. Seattle hasn’t won back-to-back series since going 5-1 on their road trip at the end of April. They’ve been mired in an unfortunate rut, unable to gain any momentum in the standings. Thankfully, they haven’t fallen too far back in the AL West race; on May 1 they were a game behind the A’s and they’ve only dropped a game and a half since then. Now, they’ll get an opportunity for a measure of revenge against the team that swept them at the start of the month.
Since sweeping the Mariners to start the month of May, the Royals have taken a nose dive in the standings. They’ve gone 5-11 since that series in Seattle and are now battling with the Tigers at the bottom of the AL Central standings. The offensive production has been particularly brutal; during this 16 game slump, they’ve scored just 3.4 runs per game and the last time they scored more than four runs in a single game was back on May 13. For a team that had designs on challenging for a division title or a Wild Card berth, they’ve been quickly pushed onto the fringe of the AL playoff picture.
During the month of May, the Royals have had exactly two batters with a wRC+ above league average. Bobby Witt Jr. has essentially been trying to carry the entire team on his back; his 160 wRC+ is among the league leaders this month and his 3.3 fWAR on the season leads all of baseball. The other hitter who has been contributing has been Jac Caglianone. He’s managed to get his strikeout rate under control which has helped him run a 113 wRC+ this month. Unfortunately, ugly performances from guys like Maikel Garica (62 wRC+ in May), Vinnie Pasquantino (72), and Salvador Perez (92) have been the big reason why Kansas City has struggled to score runs consistently this month.
Noah Cameron enjoyed a solid debut season last year with an ERA a hair below three and a FIP a hair above four. He wound up earning fourth place in the AL Rookie of the Year voting. A college draftee back in 2021, he quickly moved through Kansas City’s farm system as a polished, low-risk starter. He’s got an excellent changeup that has standout fade for someone with such a high arm slot. His fastball gets pretty good ride thanks to his arm angle, and his two breaking balls are pretty vertically oriented. He can command his entire repertoire fairly well which helps the average-ish raw stuff play up a bit.
Once upon a time, Stephen Kolek was a Mariners farm hand who was plucked away by the Padres in the 2023 Rule 5 draft. He had a decent debut season as a long reliever in San Diego’s bullpen in 2024 and then made the jump back to the rotation last year. He was traded to the Royals at the trade deadline and made five solid starts for Kansas City down the stretch. He was pushed out off the big league roster this spring but the injury to Cole Ragans has allowed him to make a couple of spot starts while the Royals’ ace is on the mend. Kolek doesn’t get many swings and misses. Instead, he relies on generating weak groundball contact with a sinker, changeup, and sweeper that dive off the table. When those batted balls are finding gloves, he can be effective enough to work through a lineup a couple of times.
From a previous series preview:
Seth Lugo throws the kitchen sink and the bathtub too for good measure. I have eight pitches listed in the table above, but I combined what Statcast calls his curveball and a “slow curve” into one line. And really, his sweeper-slurve is actually one pitch that he varies the speed and shape of based on the situation. That deep repertoire has served him well since making the transition to the starting rotation in 2023. He struggled with his normally excellent command last year, leading to a bunch of additional walks and home runs, but has seemed to have gotten over those issues to start this year. Despite mediocre raw stuff and advancing age, he’s been able to keep batters off balance because they often have no idea what pitch is coming next.
The Athletics managed to take three of four from the Angels this week, winning a pair of extra-innings contests on Wednesday and Thursday to secure the series win. The A’s head to San Diego this weekend to face the Padres. The Rangers managed to keep pace with the Mariners by winning their series in Colorado and have another easy opponent on the docket, the Angels. The Astros haven’t broken out of their doldrums yet, losing a series to the Twins earlier this week; they’ll head to Chicago to face the Cubs this weekend.
