Primetime baseball on Monday evening comes from Kansas City as the Royals, already planning for next season take on the Oakland Athletics, who still believe they are in with a chance of catching the Texas Rangers.

Oakland Athletics (71-71) @ Kansas City Royals (58-84)

As we reach the mid-way point of September the Oakland Athletics find themselves 8 ½ games behind the Texas Rangers, who have struggled since the beginning of August. While the Athletics still think they have a chance of a playoff berth, their chance has probably already passed and sending out a rookie pitcher for his Major League debut tonight indicates as much.

Bobby Cramer has been given the call up following his impressive season in the minor leagues this season. Cramer is 15-5 in 27 starts in the minors with most of the starts coming at the AA level. He was most recently at the Sacremento River Cats in the Pacific Coats League where he had an ERA of 1.94 in seven starts. While the ERA is impressive, his WHIP of 1.24 and opponents average of .252 are more worrying especially as the quality of hitter will obviously be better at the top level.

Hochevar is 0-4 with an 11.37 ERA in his career against the Athletics.Place Your Bets
The Kansas City Royals send former first overall draft pick Luke Hochevar to the mound as they look to test out some of their young players for next season. Hochevar has not been especially effective this season going 5-4 with a 5.11 ERA and Oakland is an especially bad match-up for him historically. He is 0-4 with an 11.37 ERA in his career against the Athletics which doesn’t exactly instil confidence. This will be Hochevar’s first outing against the A’s this year and the Royal’s will certainly be pleased that the game is coming at home. The right hander has a 3.59 ERA at home and a 6.81 ERA on the road but incredibly is 1-3 at home and 4-1 away. The problem for any pitcher with the Royals is that their offensive is very hit and miss while the bullpen, outside of closer Soria, leaves a lot to be desired.

Given that the two teams don’t exactly have much to play for and that one pitcher is a rookie this is an extremely difficult game to take an opinion on. The A’s are available at 4/5 for the win while the Royals can be backed at 10/11 at Bluesq.