Good starting pitching, some timely hits and a one-two lockdown punch out of the bullpen. It's a straightforward plan of attack. It's one that the Royals were counting on to see them through the 2026 season. Yet all three ingredients have rarely been on the scene in a game at once.

Thus, Monday night's lid-lifter in St. Petersburg was the exception, not the norm. Perhaps that's why it felt so refreshing. Seven innings from starter Michael Wacha. A couple of key hits. And not quite six up and six down from John Schreiber and Alex Lange (there was a walk and caught stealing in there), but close enough. Mix it all together and you have a 2-1 victory against one of the best teams in the American League in the Tampa Bay Rays.

It shouldn't be lost that the Royals did just enough offensively to beat Rays starter Drew Rasmussen, who has emerged as one of the best starters in the league. In his three previous outings ahead of Monday, he had gone seven innings in each, allowing just a single run—a home run to Shohei Ohtani in a 1-0 loss!—while walking just one batter and striking out 29. So the fact that the Royals worked Rasmussen for two walks was something of an accomplishment.

The first walk did the most damage. It came leading off the second inning from Michael Massey, who did battle for eight pitches before accepting the free pass.

Granted, the pitches out of the zone weren't exactly challenging takes for Massey. I think it's notable that Rasmussen had difficulty with his control in the second inning, one frame after needing 20 pitches. That's because in the first, after a Carter Jensen ambush attempt, Maikel Garcia battled for nine pitches and Jac Caglianone fought for eight pitches. Even though nothing came from that—Garcia doubled off the roof and Caglianone grounded out—those two got Rasmussen to sweat a little early.

With Massey on first with nobody down, Lane Thomas got around on a cutter that didn't cut enough.

Massey scored all the way from first on an aggressive, but accurate, send. The play at the plate was close, but Massey had a bit of room to spare. Thomas was credited with a double and advanced to third on the throw home.

With the early lead in hand, the Royals now had a runner on third and nobody out, a chance to do some extra damage against Rasmussen.

If there's been a theme in this newsletter throughout the last season and a half, it's been about missed opportunities for this offense. And again, in this inning with an exceptional chance to hang a crooked number against one of the best pitchers in the game, the Royals failed to tack on a run. Yet, it was understandable as Rasmussen finally locked in and started to shove. He got John Rave swinging on a nasty changeup up and then Nick Loftin on an equally filthy change down and away. Both were nasty chase pitches. Both were irresistible. A third and final change to Isaac Collins ended the inning. At least he was able to get under it to loft it to center.

Frustrating? Yes! As usual. Sometimes, though, good pitching beats any kind of hitting. And in that situation, Rasmussen executed the heck out of the sequencing and then the kill pitch of the changeups.

Royals starter Michael Wacha was Michael Wacha...with a twist.

As we know, Wacha is normally a four-seam and changeup kind of guy. In his last outing on June 16, he flipped the script a bit and was a changeup and four-seam kind of guy, throwing his cambio a season-high 30 percent of the time. On Monday against the Rays, Wacha was a four-seam and sinker kind of guy. He offered his changeup just 13 percent of the time, a season low.

The Rays have generally hit the fastball well this season. Their team .269 batting average against the smoke is the 13th-best in the majors. Respectable. But their expected batting average on the fastball is just .241. That .028 discrepancy between actual and expected is the highest margin in the majors by quite a bit. That would suggest they aren't as good against the fastball as the surface data might have you think. To capitalize, Wacha mixed up his usual arsenal to lead more on the hard stuff while deploying his curve and, most importantly, his change, in key spots.

I think these graphs from Baseball Savant are incredibly interesting. Rays hitters probably approached the game looking for a healthy dose of offspeed stuff. Instead, it was mostly the heat.

Make no mistake, the change was its usual devastating offering, generating a chase 50 percent of the time. But the sinker was just as effective, getting a chase on 45 percent of swings. He didn't get a whiff on the sinker, but when hitters are making contact on pitches out of the zone, they're usually doing so on the pitcher's terms. Tampa's average exit velocity on Wacha's sinker was a paltry 73.2 mph. Only one of the seven balls put in play against the pitch went for a hit.

It was another pitching masterclass from the veteran.

The Royals plated their second run of the game in the fifth inning. Nick Loftin singled and swiped second. After an Isaac Collins walk, Carter Jensen laced a single back up the middle on a hanging cutter.

It was a rare mistake from Rasmussen, but that's a tidy piece of hitting from Jensen to capitalize. It was the third time Jensen saw Rasmussen, but there's no time-through-the-order penalty against the right-hander. These were his splits entering the game on Monday:

Pick your PA. Doesn't matter. Rasmussen is a quality starter. Also, I should note that while that was Jensen's third PA of the game against Rasmussen, it was just the seventh pitch he saw. I noted his ambush attempt leading off the game. Jensen saw four pitches in his next PA and grounded out. This was an example of a guy who is gaining comfort at the plate. And it certainly helps that he's crazy locked in at the moment with a 13-game hitting streak.

Jensen also provided the defensive play of the game, cutting down pinch runner Victor Mesa Jr. on an attempted steal in the eighth. He's caught 11 in 30 attempts, a 37 percent success rate. That'll work.

That third part of the recipe—the bullpen—showed on Monday. John Schreiber issued that two-out walk in the eighth, but was bailed out on his very next pitch by that Jensen caught stealing. Alex Lange had the ninth and locked down the save on 15 pitches, including a beaut of a located sinker for a called third strike for the second out. Lange is now six for six in save opportunities. He rarely makes it look easy, but Monday's outing was about as straightforward as the saves come.

When one paragraph covers the bullpen, you know it was a fantastic night.

Central Issues

Can we talk for a moment about how stinky the AL is this year? With most teams bearing down on their 81st game of the season—the true halfway point—there are just three teams with a positive run differential. Three!

New York Yankees +110
Seattle Mariners +17
Tampa Bay Rays +7

Notice that none of the above teams make their home in the Central.

Dodgers 2
Twins 1

Shohei Ohtani slugged the second pitch of the game out of the yard for his 17th home run. Byron Buxton answered the bottom of the first with his 25th home run of the year. Freddie Freeman added a solo bomb, his 13th, in the sixth. Two solo home runs beat one solo home run, so the victory went to the Dodgers. Probably didn't help that the Twins collected just one hit after the first.

Yankees 3
Tigers 5

This isn't some sort of college basketball newsletter where I exhort you to cheer for the teams in the conference because it makes everyone look good if our common opponents all do well. Except I have to admit it made me happy to see the Tigers down the Yankees. Always good when a team in the Central turns the tables on the Evil Empire. Except the Tigers have surged ahead of the Royals in the standings and are threatening to leave us behind. I dunno...baseball can be confusing. Anyway, the Tigers tied the game in the third with a leadoff Zach McKinstry triple and a productive out. Then, with two outs in the frame they strung together a walk and three singles to add two more. A Kevin McGonigle double and Riley Greene home run added single tallies in the fourth and fifth innings to provide all the runs Detroit would need.

Guardians 5
White Sox 6

A wild one as Chicago was in control through the first two-thirds of the game, but Cleveland fought back and the last third was a see-saw battle. The Guardians tied the game with three in the seventh on singles from Kahlil Watson and Rhys Hoskins. The Sox reclaimed the lead on a Sam Antonacci single in the bottom of the frame. Then Cleveland stormed to a ninth inning lead with the go-ahead run coming after a challenge overturning an out call at the plate on a sacrifice fly. But it wasn't over! Chicago put two on in the ninth and with one out, Antonacci hit another single, this one bringing in two. The win took a moment as Cleveland challenged the game-winning run. Home plate challenges all around! With the win, the White Sox are in first place in the AL Central. I don't understand anything.

I expanded the standings from what I normally post so you can see the run differentials for the teams in the Central. That's what makes this season extra-frustrating. Alas.

Up Next

The four-game set continues on Tuesday before the Royals head to Chicago to see if they can make up some ground against the White Sox. That was not a sentence I thought I would be typing out in 2026.

Tue - RHP Luinder Avila (2-3, 5.50) vs. LHP Shane McClanahan (6-4, 3.33) at 5:40 p.m.
Wed - LHP Noah Cameron (4-4, 4.20) vs. RHP Griffin Jax (2-5, 3.67) at 5:40 p.m.
Thu - RHP Seth Lugo (3-4, 3.69) vs. LHP Ian Seymour (3-1, 4.98) at 11:10 a.m.