Game 49: Twins at Royals

First Pitch: 6:15 PM CDT

TV: FSN

Radio: WCCO 830, TIBN

Know thine enemy (they're pretty cool, actually): Royals Review

Hope you all are enjoying your Memorial Day Celebrations, whether it comes in the form of excessive consumerism (yours truly is being ground up by that machine,) Family barbecues, or something more serious. Of course, holiday or no holiday, baseball continues to move along.

Today features the Twins finally playing the Royals. Seriously, we're like a quarter of the way through the season, and its the first time we play one of our division foes? Such an odd scheduling quirk.

Kansas City has been generally mediocre this year. They aren't a good team, but no one expected that. Even though they didn't commit to the tank this year like Chicago or Detroit, everyone knew they would need to rebuild. They are holding fourth place down, at nine games behind Cleveland. That would look better if Cleveland was a better team though.

The Twins are currently tied with Detroit for second place, at 3.5 games back. That's remarkable, really, because they are 21-27, and are coming in carrying a four-game losing streak. They've lost because they can't score. Seriously, they've put up six runs in the last 40 innings of baseball they've played. Not an ideal situation.On the flip side, Lance Lynn was pretty darn good in the last game the Twins did win. He's looking to play stopper tonight, so a repeat performance would be great.

Against the Tigers last week, Lynn pitched six-and-two-thirds innings, and didn't give up a run. He did give up five hits, and walk, while only striking out four; but a win is a win. We aren't going to talk about the rest of his season, because its been traumatic for Twins fans.

Jakob Junis is on the mound for the Royals. He's a 25-year old second year player. He's from Rock Falls, IL, which means nothing to most of you, but I find pretty cool, because there's actually a slim chance I played against him in high school. More importantly, He's having a pretty decent season, with a 3.52 ERA, and he has failed to complete at least five innings only once.

Last season the Twins hit pretty well against Junis. Notable are Byron Buxton at 2-4 with a dong, Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler at 2-5, and Eduardo Escobar at 1-2 with dinger of his own.