baseball | Thursday, August 11, 2022 11:38 AM (Revised at: Thursday, August 11, 2022 11:45 AM)

Kansas City Royals vs Chicago White Sox Moneyline Best Bet: Dominant Cease Shuts Down Royals

Sam Cox

Kansas City Royals vs Chicago White Sox Moneyline Best Bet: Thursday, August 11th

The Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox wrap up their four-game series on Thursday night. Kansas City has taken two of the first three, but the 2015 World Series champions are heavy underdogs for the finale at Kauffmann Stadium. The White Sox have an 11-game advantage over the Royals in the loss column, and have Cy Young candidate Dylan Cease taking the ball.

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Kansas City Royals vs Chicago White Sox Preview
Kansas City Royals vs Chicago White Sox Best Bet

Kansas City Royals vs Chicago White Sox Preview

Thu, Aug 11. 19:10 (UK time)

Cease matches up with veteran starter Zack Greinke. The Royals are 9-9 in Greinke’s starts this season, but he allowed four earned runs on seven hits across 4.2 innings in his last start. Once one of the premier arms in the bigs, Greinke is a below-average pitcher in 2022. His mid-four ERA only tells part of the story, too, with his xERA up at 5.46. Greinke is not missing bats, nor is he forcing weak contact. That is a problem against a White Sox offence which has found some better offensive production of late, having got key hitters healthy. The ChiSox have a 108 wRC+ since mid-July.

Kansas City’s offence has been around league average over the same period, but they are facing one of the sport’s elite arms in Cease. The Royals took on the right hander earlier this season, and failed to score a run in 5.2 innings. Cease has only improved since then – he had a 0.76 ERA in July, and gave up a mere two hits to the Rangers last time out.

The one area that teams can trouble the former top prospect is walks. He’s in the 12th percentile in base on balls rate, but the Royals are not equipped to take advantage. Kansas City is in the bottom 10 in walk rate since mid-July and places only 19th for the season by that metric.

Cease doesn’t go deep into games all that often, partly because of the command issues. He has just one outing of more than six innings since the start of last month. Still, Chicago can be confident in their bullpen retaining a lead. The White Sox’s relief corps is seventh in xFIP since the beginning of June.

Kansas City Royals vs Chicago White Sox Best Bet

Even though the White Sox are only 7-7 against the Royals this season, they represent good value at 1.62 to win on Thursday’s evening. They have won nine of Cease’s last 10 starts.

Greinke has generally kept his team in games, but that’s not enough against a pitcher as dominant as Cease has been of late. Chicago has a massive advantage in the starting department, a better, deeper line up, and a stronger bullpen. We’re backing them to even the series.