Royals Series Preview: Baltimore Orioles

The Royals and Orioles are facing off in April, which seems to be a regular season schedule, but it has some actual meaning this time. Naturally, it’s the first time these teams are meeting up after their showdown in the ALDS, where, of course, the Royals were able to sweep them in two games at home with just three runs. No doubt, the Orioles will want to make a statement against the team that has both started and continued their playoff-winning drought dating back to 2014, but the Royals have their statements coming back home with a 2-4 record.

The Orioles are currently 3-4 with a run differential of +2; so far, they have shown a top-5 offense with a pitching staff that’s underwhelmingly in the middle of the pack.  After a surprisingly minimal off-season transaction-wise, this is about what was expected of the team.  Baltimore has committed to their farm system that has provided depth underneath depth on the hitting side, though that hasn’t been the case for their pitching.

Not listed above is Gunnar Henderson, who had to take a quick trip to the IL for an intercostal strain, but he just wrapped up his rehab assignment and is expected to make his season debut tonight.  Gunnar is toe-to-toe with Bobby as the potential best shortstop in the game, with the upside of a 50 HR season still on the table for him. It should be another dramatic competition for the starting shortstop honor at the All-Star Game.

Félix Bautista is the team’s closer and has been for about his entire young career, racking up 48 saves in his first two seasons. He missed all of 2024 with a torn UCL, and the Orioles suffered as a result, with their bullpen being 23rd in ERA without him. So far, he has one good outing and one not-so-good outing; the strikeout stuff is back and intact, but the control, including from Spring Training, hasn’t been great.

Pitching Matchups

Friday, April 4 @ 6:40 PM
Dean Kremer (1-0, 8.44 ERA) v Seth Lugo (0-0, 5.40 ERA) – Kremer is one of the longer-tenured Orioles on the roster and has been respectable, if not middle-of-the-road, since breaking out in 2022. You might call him extremely ordinary as a righty with a four-seamer, cutter, sinker, curveball, and a splitter he replaced the changeup with last year. He doesn’t throw particularly hard or locate particularly well, but he does limit hard contact respectably. The Royals saw him twice last year and gave him six runs over 11 innings. Seth Lugo will hope to put the command issues of his first start in the past and also pitch beyond the fifth inning. The Orioles gave him one of his rare bad starts last year, though he made up for it by shutting them down in the playoffs later.

Saturday, April 5 @ 3:10 PM
Tomoyuki Sugano (0-1, 4.50 ERA) v Michael Wacha (0-1, 2.25 ERA) – Sugano is a 35-year-old righty who pitched over 1,800 innings in Nippon Professional Baseball with a career ERA of 2.43. His last year was especially terrific with a 15-3 record and sub-2 ERA, but his strikeout-light approach might not translate to MLB so easily. His first and only start in America saw him throwing sinkers and four-seamers in the mid-90s with a splitter, cutter, sweeper, and curveball supporting them. Michael Wacha, like Lugo, will want to rebound from an underwhelming season debut that saw him walk four batters in four innings, though he at least managed to limit the damage.

Sunday, April 6 @ 1:10 PM
Cade Povich (0-0, 6.23 ERA) v Kris Bubic (1-0, 0.00 ERA) – “Small world” moment: Povich is one of the pieces Baltimore got back from trading Jorge López in that one random year he was an all-star reliever. His first year was rough and not much like his minor league career where he seemed to be a promising, strikeout-heavy starter. However, he recorded eight strikeouts in just four innings during his first start, so it’s possible that he’s taken the next step and could be the best starter the Royals face this weekend. His pitches (four-seam, curveball, sweeper, changeup, sinker) aren’t particularly great, but he makes them work through deceptive delivery. Kris Bubic can make this a real pitcher’s duel, as his first start fully lived up to the hype of his reformed self. If he has a similar performance against a much better lineup, the hype is going to be so much louder.

Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox