Waiting for the rain

Royals 3, Giants 1

Watching Tyler Rogers come into a close game is like watching a puffy storm cloud roll in. You can feel the rain swelling up inside of it. You know it's going to come pouring out. Soon, probably. But it almost never does—and you can never quite figure out why.

On Monday, it finally rained. And were you really surprised, despite years of evidence that would suggest you should be?

Rogers looks like a guy who might sell you tires or run his own farmer's market stand. He throws the baseball sideways. It comes in around 83 mph, slower than many high school pitchers

And yet, night after night, he performs some kind of voodoo on the pitchers' mound. His career ERA is an impressive 2.84, and he's been even better this year. He makes professional hitters look silly on slow pitches over the plate. It's magic until it isn't. Until a hulking first baseman mashes a game-changing home run on a 73 mph slider.

Only in that moment does the facade break and the rain, finally, begins to fall.

Up next: Hayden Birdsong (1-0, 2.31 ERA) makes his first start of the year after taking Jordan Hicks’s spot in the rotation. Hicks didn’t look sharp in his first relief appearance. We’ll see how Birdsong handles coming into the first inning. First pitch at 6:45 pm.

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