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Probables
- Thursday, 7:10pm, FSN: Samuel Deduno vs. Jeremy Guthrie
- Friday, 7:10pm, FSN: P.J. Walters vs. James Shields
- Saturday, 3:10pm, FSN and MLB Network: Kyle Gibson vs. Wade Davis
- Sunday: 1:10pm. FSN: Kevin Correia vs. Ervin Santana
Royals Notes
- THIS IS THE YEAR isn't going so well. KC is five and a half games back, three games under .500, and needs to start surging at some point to give the fans at Kauffman Stadium some hope.
- Today in esoteric stats from the Elias Sports Bureau: Alex Gordon, who led off Wednesday's win over Atlanta with a home run and finished it with a walk-off RBI single, was the first player in the league to achieve that particular double this year, and the first Royal to do so since Gregg Jeffries in 1992.
- Kelvin Herrera will be throwing his near-100-mph fastball in Triple-A for awhile; the Royals sent him to Omaha this week to work on keeping the ball in the ballpark and throwing it over the plate. Herrera has struck out 33 in 27.2 innings, but also walked 15, and given up eight homers - the third-most for any reliever in the AL.
- Royals Home Run Update: Chris Davis of the Orioles has 28 home runs. As a team, the Royals have 42. (That's 26 fewer than the next team on the list, which is - you guessed it - the Twins.)
Twins Notes
- The Twins are one of two teams, along with the Mets, to get swept by the Marlins this year.
- If you're looking to get out to Target Field, you might want to do so on this eight-game homestand; Minnesota plays five of its next six series on the road after this.
- Aaron Hicks played five innings, as scheduled, at Rochester on Wednesday; he went 0-2, after going 3-4 in his first Triple-A appearance on Tuesday. In other words, he's hitting .500 at Triple-A. SOLD.
- Ryan Doumit has a sore right ankle from his home plate incident the other day, meaning that he can't catch for awhile. The Twins are taking a wait-and-see approach, which is hilarious, because it means that Doumit will DH once or twice more and then go on the DL next week rather than right now, and everybody in the world knows it except for the Twins and their medical staff, who believe that miracles can happen and all we have to do is be patient.
- Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano will both play in the Futures Game over the All-Star break - Buxton for the USA team, Sano for the World team. As a horrible pessimist of long standing, I look forward to Buxton and Sano colliding at third base during the game, leading to both missing the rest of 2013 on the disabled list.