By Adam Gardner | May 11, 2026
I’m formally launching a petition for the Royals to only play games on Friday-Sunday because they are the weekend warriors.
Kansas City has gone 8-1 in Friday, Saturday and Sunday games since April 23, and just 3-5 in games Monday-Thursday. This is clearly very scientific data that is not influenced at all by small sample size.
OK, it is just sample size. The weekend before my specifically-chosen date was the weekend the Royals got smoked in New York by the Yankees. But it is sort of interesting that the team was just one game away from sweeping three-straight weekend series.
Detroit series
After a disappointing split with the Cleveland Guardians – KC won the first two games and then lost the final two games in a four game series – the Royals bounced back with a series win against the Tigers.
Kansas City continued to show the grit that’s routinely been on display the past couple weeks by overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the eighth inning to win the series opener, 4-3.
You could call that game the Kyle Isbel Comeback Spectacular because he singled home Michael Massey in the eighth, then scored the tying run. He finished things off in the ninth inning by driving home Nick Loftin for the winning run after the utility man doubled.
I haven’t always been the biggest Kyle Isbel fan but he’s really showing out so far this season. He’s had a WAR of 2.0, 2.0 and 1.6 the past three seasons, which is about a good reserve-level player according to the scale on baseball-reference.com. Through May 10 of this season, Isbel is at 0.5 WAR.
In that same time frame he’s never had an OPS+ over 85 (100 is considered league average). Isbel’s OPS+ right now is 106. If he can stay in that 100 range the entire season, he’ll be a great hitter for the bottom of the order.
Isbel is a good defensive center fielder because he has good speed and he takes great routes to the ball. I’ve teased in the past about how once a season he seems to have the ball slip out of his hand when he goes to make a throw, but he’s good in CF.
He’ll put the Royals in good position if he continues to play like this the rest of the season and we might be seeing his apex since he’s in his age 29 season.
Michael Wacha was impressive in the Royals 5-1 win in the second game against Detroit. He went 7 innings, struck out 6, and gave up 2 hits and 2 walks. Wacha has been the most consistent pitcher for the Royals lately and they’re going to need him to keep delivering for reasons I’ll get to in a moment.
The second game also had Bobby Witt Jr. doing Bobby Witt Jr. things. Not many people can record a home run when the ball only travels 17 feet in the air, but Witt isn’t a normal person. You can see Massey chose the more traditional route for a home run later in the game.
Witt slashed one down the right side and, with some help from Tigers right fielder Kerry Carpenter (who apparently had no desire to hustle as much as Witt did on the play), Witt went home-to-home in 14.13 seconds. That’s the fourth-fastest time since Statcast has tracked that starting in 2015. Only Byron Buxton (twice) and Pete Crow-Armstrong did it faster than Bobby.
Pitching issues
Noah Cameron made his scheduled start on Sunday after being skipped last time through the rotation due to lower back stiffness.
It’s good Cameron was able to make the start, but he only went 4 innings and gave up 3 runs, 3 walks and got just 4 strikeouts while throwing 95 pitches. His ERA now sits at 5.55 on the year. We’re officially on “Sophomore Slump” alert with Cameron.
During Cameron’s fantastic rookie season in 2025, his Pitching Run Value was in the 78th percentile according to Baseball Savant. His fastball run value last season was just in the 18th percentile, but his breaking ball value was in the 99th percentile.
There’s a big change this season, though. His fastball value has actually improved to the 28th percentile, but his breaking ball value is down to the 2nd percentile, bringing his overall pitching value to the 5th percentile.
Whether it’s that hitters had an offseason to watch film and come up with a new plan to attack Cameron, or if he’s just not executing his breaking pitches as well as last year, something has to change. Hitters barreled up just 6.3% of pitches in 2025, but are doing so on 13.3% of pitches this year. The runs aren’t a fluke this season – he’s getting hit harder.
KC needs Cameron to bounce back because Cole Ragans was placed on the Injured List with an elbow injury on Friday. Anne Rogers mentioned the Royals gave Ragans an injection to lubricate the elbow and it’s believed he’ll try throwing sometime soon to see how things feel. KC said they’re hopeful it’s a short IL stint, but we’ll see.
Stephen Kolek pitched well in his first start of the season and is expected to slide into Ragans spot. The Royals entered the season with starting pitching depth and knew it would be tested at some point because it’s a matter of “when” and not “if” when it comes to arm injuries.
All you can do is hope that Ragans just needs a little rest and will return as the pitcher that has ace-like stuff. And if we’re on the hope train, I hope Cameron finds his groove and Kolek can go ahead and keep slinging quality starts.
Good results through important stretch
I mentioned in my post on April 27 that the Royals had a key 16-game stretch in front of them. They had six road games against the AL West, then 10 games against AL Central opponents.
So far the Royals are 8-5 in that stretch of games and will play three against the White Sox in Chicago starting tonight.
Kansas City has Kolek, Seth Lugo and Kris Bubic lined up against the Sox and on paper I like the matchups. Lugo has gotten touched up a bit in his past two starts but is always a bounce-back candidate, and Bubic is the type of guy that can go 7 innings and strike out 9 guys.
The Royals are just 1.5 games behind the first place Guardians, who are 21-21. The AL Central continues to be pretty bleh which is good because the Royals have climbed back in it after the long losing streak in April.
At some point I’m going to have to decide whether or not I need to take the White Sox seriously as they sit a half-game in front of the Royals heading into this week’s series. Chicago has been awful the past few seasons but this is a new season and a new White Sox team.
I believe the Royals can take at least two games in this series as they continue to stack good results on top of good results in May. If Chicago wins the series, though, the AL Central could actually be a five-team race for several months.
From Kentucky, with love
I’ve trekked to southeastern Kentucky for the time being as I’m with the Benedictine College Softball Team in the opening round of the NAIA National Tournament.
The Ravens have been sent to the Williamsburg, Ky. site for the second time in three seasons. This also happens to be the only two times Ravens Softball has made the National Tournament. I’m excited to see the team play and hopefully win their way to the final site.
And, yeah, I’ll make a visit to The Bourbon Barn while I’m here because that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re in Kentucky and see a giant billboard for The Bourbon Barn.
Our Ravens Women’s Lacrosse Team is also in the National Tournament as they are the undefeated, No. 1 ranked, defending national champions. They begin tournament play today and hope to finish off a second-straight undefeated national championship season. Doing so would mean a 40-game winning streak.
It won’t be easy, but I have faith in our teams. Good luck to both sets of Ravens!
