David Troy
Videos by OutKick
Royals vs. Cubs, 2:20 ET
Yesterday I only had one play in Major League Baseball in what was a very short slate. There were six games scheduled, and only five of them actually completed. The one game that I had was a play between the Brewers and Dodgers and luckily I took the first five so we got a push. The Dodgers ended up continuing their winning streak, but the Brewers got through five innings with the score being zero to zero. Let’s grab a win in the Cubs vs. Royals afternoon game.
The Royals are one of the worst teams in all of baseball. They are one of just two teams with fewer than 40 wins on the season and they will probably lose close to 110 games overall. I think the idea is to bottom out and rebuild through the farm system, but who knows? The Royals have been this way for a few seasons now. It worked once, maybe it will work again for them. They have some talent on the roster, of course, and I do think they have a few good players on their squad. Their pitching has been a weakness most of the season, but when you lose two out of every three games, it isn’t like the offense is performing all that well either. But, the offense does have 1010 hits and the Cubs, who have 23 more wins than the Royals have 1035 hits. The difference is that the Cubs have 110 more runs than the Royals. So, clearly, the Royals aren’t stringing together the hits. Tonight, they have Cole Ragans on the hill. He’s been fine for Kansas City this season. He was a reliever for Texas before coming over to the Royals. Since starting for them, he has allowed just five earned runs over 22.2 innings. He doesn’t have much experience against the Cubs hitters.
The Cubs are in the midst of a playoff race and they just came off of a dramatic victory over their crosstown rival White Sox. What happened? Christopher Morel hit a three run bomb in the bottom of the ninth to send Cubs fans home happy with a 4-3 victory. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing as they are dealing with an injury to Marcus Stroman. Luckily most of the other starters are stepping up for his absence. Tonight, they send out their offseason addition Jameson Taillon. He has really struggled in his first year with the Cubs as he has a 5.71 ERA and a 6.17 home ERA. He did look like he was turning things around in July and even the beginning of August, but he was absolutely rocked by the Blue Jays, a team that had seen a lot of him after all of his experience in the AL East. Taillon allowed eight earned runs over three innings against Toronto. Taillon has only faced Royals hitters in 10 at-bats and has allowed three hits to them.
I think the Cubs likely win this game. It is always hard to get behind a team after a big, emotional win, but they had the day off yesterday so maybe they can more easily put it behind them. The thing is if the Cubs win this game, it should be by multiple runs. Taillon is hard to back with how bad he has been, but hopefully, his last start was just a blip and he gets back to improving his season. I’m going to take the Cubs on the run line for the game at +114.
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