Kansas City Royals Survivor: The Rotation Edition

Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

Jeremy Guthrie

Here, we have everyone’s favorite pitcher, Jeremy Guthrie. Or, perhaps his is just my favorite member of the Royals pitching staff, since we share the same middle name. With an impressive Twitter game and his veteran experience, Guthrie really is one of the more popular Royals’ starters.

But even the popular kid has a bad day at school every once and while and Guthrie had one of the worst days at school with his historically bad start against the Yankees earlier this year. He gave up 11 runs off 9 hits in one inning, in case you “forgot”.

This year Guthrie has been very up and down, posting a 7-5 record with a 5.36 ERA. He has surpassed the century mark in innings with 100.2 innings this season in 18 starts, while striking out 53 batters in the process.

If Andy McCullough is correct (and he usually is), then it is very likely J-Guts gets moved over to a bullpen role. However you will notice, I don’t have him getting voted off the island in this game of Survivor. I do think Guthrie’s job security is in question if the Royals decide to put Medlen in the rotation simply because his stuff is better. But for many reasons that I will explain in the next slide, Guthrie is not quite the odd man out.

Next: The unexpected savior