I took a peek at SB Nation's Atlanta Braves blog, Talking Chop, to see what they had to say about the Royals and Braves opener on Friday night.
Not surprisingly, I found a section dedicated to all the connections between these two teams.
Expect to see a lot of familiar faces in this series. The Royals currently have 6 former Braves on the major-league roster (Bruce Chen, Kyle Davies, Anthony Lerew, Kyle Farnsworth, Brayan Pena, and Wilson Betemit), not to mention Ned Yost and Royals GM Dayton Moore, who formerly worked under John Scheurholtz in the Braves' front office.
More pertinent to Friday night's game, here's what they had to say about Brian Bannister, which I think is a good description of him:
Bannister is coming off one of the worst starts of the year by any pitcher. He gave up 11 runs (9 earned) on 10 hits and 2 walks in 3 innings against the Reds. Aside from that start, which raised his ERA by nearly a run, he's been decent. He's pretty much the definition of a 4th starter--he doesn't do anything spectacularly, but he's good enough (and smart enough) to keep his team in the game.
Check out the full, in-depth preview of the series (including game-by-game pitching matchups) at Talking Chop.