Month: October 2015 (Page 1 of 2)

Once again, I’m left wondering what to write about a baseball game.

How about this, for starters: Game Six of the ALCS was the craziest, most dramatic, and best baseball game I’ve ever watched my team play in. Keep in mind, I did not watch last year’s Wild Card game but rather listened to it. While we all know that game is the pinnacle in the history of the Kansas City Royals, Friday night’s pennant clinching win is right up there with it.[1]

Friday had almost everything. An early lead off an ace who has dominated the Royals over the years. A stellar defensive play by Mike Moustakas in the 5th that preserved the lead. An even better play by Ben Revere in the 7th that prevented the Royals from breaking the game open (although they still added a seemingly huge insurance run in the frame). A monumental managerial blunder by Ned Yost that opened the door for the Blue Jays. Jose Bautista taking full advantage of that opening with a two-run homer, his second blast of the night, to tie the game. A 45-minute rain delay in the middle of the 8th, during which I, and I think most Royals fans, sat and stewed over Yost’s decision and Ryan Madson’s meatball to Bautista. The Royals promptly scoring the go-ahead run after the game resumed on a as great a play as you will ever see. And then Wade Davis coming back, after an hour trying to keep his arm warm, putting a runner on third with no outs, adding a runner on second with one out, and somehow getting out of the mess without letting either runner come home to preserve the win.

Whew. So much went on. Both teams played wonderful baseball most of the night. There were no errors and half a dozen defensive gems. There was terrific pitching on both sides. There were three controversial calls, all of which went the Royals’ way. The topper, of course, was that the Royals clinched their second-straight American League championship in the process. They had come from 2–1 down against Houston, with six outs to their name in game four, down four runs, and won that series. Then they smacked around the team that smacked around the American League for the last ten weeks of the regular season. And despite questions and inconsistency amongst their starting pitchers, despite barely hitting through the first five innings of most games, they were the last team standing among the five that began the American League playoffs three weeks ago.

Another thing that makes it tough to write about that game is because so much great writing was done by professionals in the wee hours of Saturday morning. They all kind of blurred together as I read them, so I fear repeating what others have said. With that in mind, here’s a list of must-reads that you should check out if you have not already.

Posnanksi
Verducci
Passan
McCullough
Kilgore

Still, a few thoughts are in order from my perspective.

• I was a little wound up Friday. Our neighbors were having a Halloween party that night, which began at 7:00 our time. I walked the girls over, hung out a little, but did very little socializing. At 7:45 I found an excuse to duck out and get all my game-watching gear together.
• My thing this year has been chewing the hell out of sunflower seeds while watching games. My tongue may be developing a callus, which is kind of gross. Friday, even while taking a break during the rain delay, I nearly filled a large, red Dixie cup with my shells. Which is also kind of gross. I nearly had a disaster in the 9th when I set the cup down for a second and then tipped it over. Fortunately only a few seeds fell to the floor.
• I watched the first 7+ innings on our upstairs TV so I could be close if the girls needed anything. They came in and went to bed just before the rain delay. While I figured it made the most sense to watch the rest of the game in the basement, you would be correct in wondering if I didn’t have serious misgivings about switching TVs in the middle of a game. Turned out it worked ok.
• I was sure Salvador Perez got all of that pitch in the 7th and had put the Royals up 4–1 needing just six defensive outs to close the game. I was off of the couch, screaming at the TV, hands in the air. When Revere hauled it in, despite no one being in the room with me, I yelled, “He caught that?” That was such a great catch.
• While talking about things that are great, I don’t know if enough can be said about Lorenzo Cain’s romp from first-to-home to score the winning run. There was so much wonderfulness wrapped up in that play. Eric Hosmer getting a pitch he could connect with and keep fair. Cain not running with the pitch then never slowing down. Third base coach Mike Jirschele’s perfect read and perfect decision to send Cain. Both Joe Buck and the Fox cameras being surprised that Cain was roaring through third. And the fact the play wasn’t even close at home. Hell, even with a perfect throw, Cain is probably still easily safe. Buck takes a lot of grief, but his description of that play was perfect: “That was breathtaking.” Even though it only won a pennant, that was a play for the ages.
• I’m not a fan of little faith. I do consider myself a realist, though. I didn’t see any way Wade Davis could get out of the 9th without at least allowing the tying run to come home. I worried a simple base hit would score two and began stressing about Johnny Cueto handling the stress of starting Game Seven. But damn if Davis didn’t get it done. What a stressful 10 minutes or so, ending in absolute joy.
• Regarding Yost’s decision to pitch Madson in the 8th, it epitomized old-school thinking. Yost said he was worried about losing Davis before the rain hit. Which I will allow is a legitimate concern. But the Blue Jays also hammer Madson, and the top of the lineup was batting. There isn’t a clearer example of when to use your closer in an inning other than the ninth. Even if Davis could not have come back, which he ended up having to do anyway, if he gets through the inning 1–2–3, or even allows a runner or two and then retires Encarnacion and/or Colabello too, then you can ask Madson or Luke Hochevar to get through the bottom of the lineup in the 9th with a two-run lead. Just a maddening decision that put the win in jeopardy. So of course it worked out. Ned has gotten better in a lot of ways over the past few years. But that was a classic #Yosted decision.
• The game ended somewhere around midnight here in Indy. I watched all the network postgame stuff[2] Then I flipped over to Fox Sports KC and watched the local postgame coverage until well after 2:00. I had a couple more beers. I had a celebratory glass of whiskey. When I finally went upstairs, I found two kids sleeping on my side of the bed. Rather than try to transfer both of them in my slightly altered state, I just went and collapsed in the second bed in L’s room. Even then, I had trouble sleeping. I figure I got four hours of sleep, tops, and none of it uninterrupted. Saturday night I was wiped out. I went to bed right around 9:00 and slept until roughly 8:15 Sunday morning. That’s probably the longest I’ve slept in years without being sick.

And now the Royals are on to the World Series for the second-straight year. Which is amazing. All those years I just wanted the team to be competitive again, I never figured a World Series appearance would be a realistic expectation. And now two, in consecutive years? George Brett, Frank White, and Willie Wilson never did that. It’s just insane that this is happening again.

The Mets are frightening between their dominant starting pitching and their red hot bats. But the Royals are a fastball-hitting team, so they have a puncher’s chance at the plate. Hopefully the lengthy gap between Game Four of the NLCS and tomorrow’s Game One in KC will cool off the Mets’ bats. Hopefully Edinson Volquez can keep that velocity he found in the ALCS. Hopefully Yordano Ventura can find that perfect line between pitching angry and letting his emotions get the best of him. Hopefully Johnny Cueto can be closer to his Game Five ALDS appearance than his Game Three ALCS outing. Hopefully Chris Young can continue to dazzle and confound batters. Hopefully the bullpen remains stout. And hopefully the lineup continues to get big hits in big moments.

I don’t know if things can be more fun than they were Friday, but I’m looking forward to one more series before baseball goes away until spring.

The Royals host the Blue Jays in game one of the ALCS tonight. Just like we expected, right?

Well, maybe for most of the past two months. But last weekend, when the Royals trailed Houston 2–1 and Toronto trailed Texas 2–0 in their respective division series, an all-Texas AL final looked much more likely.

But the two best teams in the AL righted their ships, made big comebacks, and now we’ve got the series that has had a slow fuse burning on it since the teams last met in early August. You know, when tonight’s Kansas City starter Edinson Volquez kept throwing fastballs in the vicinity of Toronto third baseman Josh Donaldson’s head, when the benches cleared twice, and when Volquez said Donaldson was “crying like a little baby” after the game. Good times!

Before we dive into that, a few words about how the teams got here. After Monday’s comeback in Houston, the Royals cruised through game five. The final was 7–2, that’s an easy win, right? Not exactly. An infield error and a good swing on a minor mistake by Johnny Cueto put the Astros up 2–0 in the second. That lead held for two innings as the Royals bats continued to slumber. The Royals finally cut it to one in the 4th on a classic Royals play – Lorenzo Cain scoring from first on a shallow single by Eric Hosmer. They took the lead in the 5th when Alex Rios, of all people, hit a two-run double and scored two batters later.

From there on, it was the Johnny Baseball show. Cueto was all the Royals wanted him to be and more, retiring the last 19 batters he faced. There were some dazzling defensive plays behind him, but for the most part the Astros could not solve him. It was fabulous to watch.

Then the cherry on top, Kendrys Morales crushing a Dallas Keuchel pitch in the 8th to send Kaufman into a frenzy.

The Royals have to feel a little fortunate to get through the series. They were six outs away from going home for the winter in game four. But then they did what they do, and they’re moving on. That Houston team is a lot of fun to watch. They are going to be really good for quite awhile. I’m glad the Royals delayed their glory days by at least one season. I’ll be rooting for the Astros if they are playing anyone but the Royals next October.

As good as that game was, it was completely overshadowed by what happened in Toronto a couple hours earlier. The Rangers take a late lead on a bizarre play that I had never seen before: a run came home when the catcher hit a Ranger player’s bat with his return throw after a pitch. Between the review and the Toronto fans pelting the field, there was a 20 minute delay. Then in the bottom of the inning, nine outs from advancing, the Rangers made three-straight errors, got a force out that kept the bases loaded, gave up a 90-foot bloop that tied the game, and then gave up an 976 foot home run that won it. On the home run, Jose Bautista did the mother of all bat flips. Oh, and since this is the Blue Jays we’re talking about, benches cleared a few times along the way.

A quick aside about the bat flip: In general I’m pro bat flip.[1] I find most criticism of them tired. But I admit to some occasional hypocritical thinking on them. I do not like the Blue Jays or Bautista. In the moment, I hated his bat flip. But later on, I realized to be consistent I had to give it a pass. I will say this, though: for a guy who chirps about how other people play the game a lot, Bautista needs to look in the mirror. You can’t be pissed about how other people celebrate and enjoy their success when you’re glaring at the pitcher and screaming while you throw your bat ten feet.

So the history between these two teams, and the emotions both are riding should make this series extra interesting. Throw in Donaldson and Bautista’s hypersensitivity about any pitcher attempting to control the inside of the plate, and I’d set the over/under on bench clearing “discussions” at 0.7/game for the series.

I think the whole key to the series are the Royals starting pitchers. If they can control the Toronto bats, avoid big innings, and stay in the game, the Royals can absolutely win this series. That doesn’t mean they have to be near-perfect like Cueto was Wednesday. But they do have to find a way to keep hard-hit balls in play rather than sailing over the walls. They have to pitch inside with control, so they don’t get tossed because they hit their second batter of the night. And they can’t get lost in the emotions of the series.

Last week I picked Toronto to win. If I was a betting man I’d still go with that. But I’m not, and I’m still filled with the good feelings from Monday and Wednesday. The Royals are the most experienced team left in the playoffs. They won’t panic if they get down 4–1 early. They’re the better defensive team. They have enough arms in the pen to provide relief if a starter has racked up a high pitch count in the middle innings trying to avoid the big blast. My heart says Royals in seven, with Cueto going 2–0, including the clinching win.

This time I got to watch.

Fifty-four weeks ago, when the Royals made their insane comeback against Oakland in the Wild Card game, we were in the final hours of our Time Without Cable.[1] Thus I was huddled up with my computer and a bluetooth speaker, listening to the Royals radio broadcast deep into the night.

Yesterday, I got to watch most of the Fox TV broadcast. I did have to listen to a couple innings as I picked the girls up from school. We got home just as Terrance Gore was attempting to steal third base in the top of the seventh. I was back on the couch in time to watch Carlos Correa hit his second home run of the game and then Colby Rasmus add an apparent insurance run on his homer.

The season was over. The Royals bats had been lifeless almost the entire series, no way were they waking up now. Houston fans were making a deafening roar. You could see in the Astros dugout that it was going to be a formality to get the last six outs and move on to the ALCS. I texted some friends wondering how many pitches the Royals would see in the last two innings. I suggested it would be less than 20.

It was a fine day to be wrong.

The Royals saw around 50 pitches in the top of the eighth alone as they launched a small-ball, small-market rally[2] that ended when they had scored five runs to take the lead. My body was numb from the rally and my tongue was numb after I polished off roughly half a bag of sunflower seeds through the inning. Moments later, I let out a mighty roar when Eric Hosmer obliterated a baseball and added two more runs to the Royals total in the top of the 9th. Upstairs, I could hear girls giggling at me, while outside birds scattered from the trees. I think a car alarm may have gone off in the neighbor’s garage. Somewhere, a dog barked. I was a little loud.

Wade Davis breezed through the 9th[3] and the series was headed back to Kansas City. The Royals dugout was both excited and business-like. They had been through this before. They knew there was another game to play. The Houston dugout looked utterly defeated.

The question was quickly raised, how did this compare to the comeback a year ago? At first I was dismissive of the comparison. Sure, it was another elimination game, a moment when the end of the season was staved off in dramatic fashion. But the game a year ago had the tension of the Royals’ comeback stretching over two innings, then going on to extra innings, where they had to comeback one more time. Monday’s game seemed lost, but it also turned on a dime. With Davis coming in for the 8th with the lead, I was pretty sure the Royals had the win.

But the more I thought about it, and the more information that got shared on Twitter, I rethought that opinion. The Royals odds to win a year ago were slightly higher than they were yesterday when the 8th inning began. Last year was at home, with the KC crowd to help fuel the comebacks. This year it was in front of Houston’s frenzied fans. And, sure, Houston’s bullpen can be suspect. But there was a feeling in the stadium that the game was over. A feeling that was completely flipped over the course of the next 40 minutes.

I’m going to cop out and say they were both pretty fantastic and, like my kids, I can’t pick a favorite. Last year’s game has the added weight of being the moment that launched the Royals through the next three weeks of the post-season. Was yesterday’s as big of a boost, or will it be a game we remember fondly but singularly because Houston wins game five tomorrow? I guess we’ll know in about 36 hours.

Which means we have 36 hours left to savor another phenomenal moment in this chapter of Royals history. Hopefully they’re not done yet, and there are more pages to write.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, the Royals had just come off their epic – no EPIC – win over Oakland in the Wild Card series and were headed to Anaheim to take on the Angels, who had the best record in the American League. Would there be an emotional hangover from the Wild Card win? Could the Royals pitching staff silence the Angels bats? Could the Royals get on base enough to make their speed a factor? There were so many questions going into that series, all of which were answered emphatically.

This year it’s the Royals who enter the ALDS with home field advantage earned over a 162 game season. They face a young, upstart team that has tons of speed and plays fantastic defense.

But this series seems a lot more even than that Royals-Angels series looked on paper before it began. The biggest question I see as the series begins is which version of the Royals rotation will show up? The version that struggled through late August and the first half of September? If it is that one, they’re in serious trouble. Or will it be the rotation that seemed to find its footing in mid-September and closed the regular season strong? If so, combined with a better bullpen than Houston, I feel good about the Royals chances.

Last year I was nervous going into the Angels series. Nervous because I was worried the Royals wouldn’t be able to compete. Nervous because I didn’t want their first post-season series in 29 years to end in three or four games. Turned out those worries were needless, and that series was a hell of a lot of fun. And despite that nervousness, there was an underlying joy in the Royals finally making the playoffs.

This year I’m nervous because of the Royals’ September swoon. I’m nervous because Houston has a lefty ace in Dallas Keuchel that, even though he’s a completely different kind of pitcher, brings back nightmares of Madison Bumgarner last October. I’m nervous about Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez. I’m nervous that the series could come down to Kris Medlen or Chris Young needing to make a huge start to save the series. I’m nervous because all the pressure is on the Royals this year after their regular season.

The more I think about it, this feels a lot like March, where I’m more nervous about KU losing than excited about them winning. Perhaps not quite to that point; I’ve been making sure to enjoy what the Royals accomplished this year and despite my concerns, I’m approaching the ALDS with feelings of excitement and optimism. But being the favorite does change the size of the butterflies a little.

I hope the boys are ready.

Now for some predictions.

ALDS

Royals over Astros in four. I DO NOT want to have to face Keuchel in game five. All games are close and the Royals bullpen is the difference.

Blue Jays over Rangers. Two hottest teams in the league go at each other hard for five games. Lots of runs, maybe a few tense moments after bat flips are rewarded with high-and-tight heat.

NLDS

Cardinals over Cubs. Too bad for Chicago that Jake Arrieta can’t start all five games. I take experience over youth here. I went to lunch today with a friend who is a Cardinals fan. He’s convinced they’re going to lose.

Dodgers over Mets. Neither team is a paragon of health. Kershaw and Greinke are the difference.

ALCS

Blue Jays over Royals. 1985 is avenged! David Price steals a game at the K, and that tips the series Toronto’s way.

NLCS

Cardinals over Dodgers. The Cards continue their strange, October mastery of Kershaw.

World Series

Blue Jays over Cardinals in six. Toronto made some masterful moves around the trading deadline. They shocked the world in getting Troy Tulowitzki. They waited long enough to get David Price. They shored up their bullpen and outfield. Then they got starter Marcus Stroman back in September. All the while, they were absolutely sizzling hot for nearly three months. Those moves all pay off as Price is nearly unhittable and the hitters continue to mash.