Last in the division, hottest team in the room
Kansas City sit 18 games under .500 and bottom of the AL Central. They have also won six in a row, a season high, and they host Detroit on Saturday night looking for a seventh.
The Royals have piled up 36 runs during the streak, five of those wins coming at home. Friday brought solo home runs from Vinnie Pasquantino, Kyle Isbel and Carter Jensen, plus five scoreless innings from Noah Cameron, in a 5-2 win.
“It’s more just showing ourselves who we are,” shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said. “What we’ve done this year is not who we are, who we believe we are, so we just got to go out there and be ourselves and win games.”
Home has been the whole difference. Kansas City are 15-4 in their last 19 games at Kauffman Stadium.
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Wacha owns this matchup
Michael Wacha (6-8, 3.58 ERA) takes the ball. He gave up four runs on three homers over five innings against the Athletics on Monday and still collected his first winning decision since June 22.
Detroit brings out something else in him. Wacha is 3-3 with a 2.92 ERA in 12 career starts against the Tigers, and this season he has allowed two runs across 14 innings in two outings against them, both Royals wins and both quality starts.
Pasquantino is hitting .415 with two homers over his past 11 games. “Things have been clicking a little bit,” he told Royals.TV. “The environment has been great, we’ve been playing really well, and we just want to keep it going.”
Detroit cannot buy a run
The Tigers are one of seven clubs still alive for the final American League wild card, and they have picked a bad week to stall. Three straight losses, six defeats in seven, six runs total across the last three games. On Friday they drew seven walks and stranded 11 runners.
“You can’t dwell on it, because it’s going to compound if you keep dwelling on it,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. He has gone 3-for-53 with 15 strikeouts across his last 13 games.
Drew Anderson (4-4, 4.01) starts for Detroit, his fourth in a row since the trades of Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize pushed him into the rotation. He owns a 2.84 ERA over that stretch. Out of the bullpen against Kansas City this year he was hit hard, seven runs and nine hits in 3 1/3 innings, though Detroit won all three of those meetings.
Kevin McGonigle takes an eight-game road hitting streak into the night, batting .371 with eight RBIs, and he is 0-for-5 against Wacha this season.
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