Cleveland Indians vs. Kansas City Royals (8:10 pm ET, STO)
Kansas City Royals will sweat it out to level against Cleveland Indians (8:10 pm ET, STO), in Game 2 at Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri. Indians lead the 3 match series by 1-0. The Indians have 12-18 home, 6-10 away record and Royals have 11-22 away, 4-9 home record.
The Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals are the bottom two teams in the division again in 2010. Fausto Carmona of Indians will try to send Kansas City again to a seven straight losing streak.
In 2009, each club lost 97 games and this year it is no better. Kansas City’s woes only seem to be getting worse whereas with two back to back wins, the Indians have come out of the five-game losing streak. To lose more than 600 games since the start of 2004, the Royals (11-22) are the only team in the majors. With a 5.21 ERA, the Royals rank last in the AL. The problem that the Royals are facing is that they are making too many errors in their game play.
This has been Kyle Davies (2-1, 5.45 ERA) worst start of the year. In his first five outings, the right-hander had posted four quality starts. On Thursday when Royals lost to Texas in 13-12, he gave up nine runs in four-plus innings. Using three double plays to work around seven hits and four walks, Carmona (3-1, 3.86) had a more encouraging outing last week. He also held Toronto to two runs in 6 1/3 innings last Wednesday. The last three times Carmona has faced Kansas City, he has run into major problems. Walking 11 in 17 1/3 innings, he has 0-2 with a 7.79 ERA in that stretch.
On Tuesday, Indians struck out 10 times and this achievement was repeated seventh times in their last eight games. Austin Kearns had two hits and scored three runs whereas Russell Branyan had hit two home runs. This season due to back problems, Branyan has been limited to 40 at-bats. The homers from Branyan on Tuesday were his first two of the season.
