Saturday Baseball Brings Us A Strong Pitching Matchup

Mariners vs. Royals, 4:10 ET

Weekend baseball hasn’t been the best baseball for me this year, but as we head into the summer months, I am hopeful that we can turn that around. After starting the year blazing and getting up close to 30 games over .500, I’m stumbling a bit. Although I have had a pretty decent week overall with three days of 2-0 plays. Today, we get a nice afternoon matchup between the Mariners and the Royals as they square off in Kansas City.

The Mariners are leading the AL West, but this isn’t a time to start celebrating. The fact that they are leading the division is more due to the incompetence of their peers and less about the overall success of Seattle. Texas is underperforming and a lot can be attributed to injury issues. Houston has been awful, but might start to come around a bit. The Angels and Athletics… well, they are not going to do anything anyway, so they are of no concern for the Mariners. Seattle has struggled on the road with their record hovering around, but below, .500. Their hitting has been an issue for quite some time now, and the team has a collective .220 batting average with fewer than 250 runs for the season, coming out to under four runs scored per game. Simply put, they are winning games because their pitching staff is good. In my opinion, their best one takes the mound today as Luis Castillo gets the ball. Castillo has a 5-6 record with a 2.99 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP. In May, he had five outings and allowed exactly two earned runs in each start with only one of them being fewer than six innings. Of the ten earned runs that he allowed in the month, five of them came from home runs. Royals hitters are just 18-for-93 against Castillo and only six of the hits have gone for extra bases. 

May 27, 2024; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Alec Marsh (48) delivers a pitch against the Minnesota Twins during the second inning at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Nick Wosika-USA TODAY Sports

I honestly can’t get over how good Kansas City has been to start this season. There is still a long way to go, and this could end up in a disaster for the team, but 10 games over .500 in June is very good for a franchise that had an over/under for win total of 74.5. They should coast over the total some time by late-July at this point. No matter what happens with the club this season, the future has to be considered bright. They somewhat remind me of the Orioles for the past few years. After a few years of irrelevance they have burst onto the scene and look like a powerhouse. That would be best case scenario for the Royals. Not only is the club hitting well, they are pitching well too. Alec Marsh is one of the guys that has put together a nice campaign with a 4-3 record and a 3.76 ERA and 1.15 WHIP. He has struggled a bit in his past two outings, allowing a total of 10 earned runs over the past 12 innings pitched. Priore to that he had allowed just 13 earned runs in 43 innings. He did pitch against the Mariners earlier in the season and went five innings, allowing just one earned run. 

I think this is likely to be a low-scoring game. Marsh hasn’t been good lately, but the Mariners offense shouldn’t scare anyone. Castillo is likely to turn in yet another quality start for Seattle. I am expecting this to be a very good opportunity for him to do it yet again, even with a surprisingly good Royals offense staring him down. I’ll back the under through five in this one. 

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