Cleveland Guardians and Kansas City Royals showed up as a surprise game last season.
Now comes the challenging part: the meeting increased expectations.
The Guardians and Royals will each start to march back to the playoffs on Thursday afternoon, when Cleveland visits Kansas City in an opening day collision of American League Central Rivals.
The right-wing dealer Tanner Biblee (12-8, 3.47 era 2024) is planned to take the pile for guardians against left-hander Cole Ragans (11-9, 3.14 era). It will be the first opening day’s start for both jugs.
Both teams will come in this season with the same core as they revealed last season, when their breakout seasons each ended with an American league-play series loss to the vibrant New York Yankees.
Guardians went 92-69 and won Al Central before he fell to Yankees in five matches in the Al Championship series under Stephen Vogt, who won al manager for this year’s awards during his first season at the helm after targeting Cleveland to an improvement of 16 winnings from 2023.
Playoff -Kaj was the seventh in the last 12 seasons for Guardians, who has been looking for Franchiset’s first championship since 1948 – the longest title in baseball.
“Our goal will be the same: Win the World Series,” said Vogt this winter.
Guardians made their biggest seasonal movements on December 10, when they traded Gold Glove other basseman Andres Gimenez to Toronto Blue Jays and then picked up right -wing trader Luis Ortiz from Pittsburgh Pirates in a three -way agreement.
Ortiz opens the season as Guardians’ No. 3 start. Guardian’s rotation will be supported by a bull led by closer to Emmanuel Clas, who ended up in third place in Al Cy Young the vote after picking up a league-high 47 rescues and completed with a 0.61 era.
The lineup will again be anchored by Superstar third bass man Jose Ramirez, who continued to build a Hall of Fame case by beating .279 with 39 Homers, 118 RBI and a career high 41 stolen bases last season. Ramirez is expected to beat others this season, behind Steven Kwan, after making 152 starts in the No. 3 hole last year.
A long rebuild finally bore fruit last season for Royals, which received the second wild card by going 86-76-one 30-victory’s improvement during their 2023 finish. Kansas City swept Baltimore Orioles in a best-of-three Wild Card series before being eliminated by Yankees in a four-game al division series.
“I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” Ragans said. “More than other people put on us. We obviously want to win. That’s our final goal.”
Resurgency of Royals-Varn’s winning record was their first since 2015, when they won the World Series-Drives of a Breakout season of card stop Bobby Witt Jr. And an import -filled start rotation that was as durable as it was effective.
Witt, which Royals chose with the second election of the 2019 draft, led Majors with a .332 Slag average and went 30/30 -with 32 homers and 31 steals -for the second straight season on the way to finishing second in the Al MVP vote behind Yankes’ Aaron judge.
Ragans, acquired from Texas Rangers in July 2023, collaborated with free agent supplement Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha to go 40-26 with a 3.15 era over 84 starts.
Royals brought around Witt and their large three jugs during the winter by acquiring Jonathan India from Cincinnati Reds in exchange for Start Brady singer and signing Carlos Estevez for a two-year contract. India is expected to lead the lead before Witt, while Estevez pencil in as the closer before Lucas Erceg, which was 11-AV-13 in Save Opportunities after being acquired from athletics at last summer’s trade deadline.
Biblee is 2-0 with a 3.67 era in five career starts against Royals, including 2-0 with a 4.09 era in four starts last season. Ragans is 0-2 with a 5.93 era in three career starts against Guardians, including 0-1 with a 6.23 era in two starts last season.
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