baseball | Bottlegate

Well here we are folks. As expected, the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants are set to kick off the 110th Major League Baseball World Series at Kauffman Stadium tonight. The Cinderella story vs the wily vets. The team with a moose vs the team with a panda. The team whose only World Series crown came in 1985 vs the team that’s won 2 of the last 4. The American League Wild Card winners vs the National League Wild Card winners. The Royals vs the Giants.

How in the fuck?

How They Got Here

This is the first time two Wild Card teams have made it to the World Series since 2002, when the Angels beat the Giants in seven games. They took two very different routes getting here.

The Royals flirted with .500 baseball out of the gate this year. They sat in the cellar of the AL Central on June 1st with a record of 26-30. By August 1st they had improved to 56-52 and second place in the division. They then went on to win 16 of their next 20 games, tying the Tigers atop the division by month’s end and solidifying themselves as legit playoff contenders. After winning the top Wild Card spot in the American League, they’ve won all eight postseason games they’ve played en route to the fall classic.

Ernie Johnson…baseball…woof

San Francisco’s season went in a similar fashion except like the exact opposite. They held the best record in baseball (38-20) at the beginning of June. Through July they had dropped to 60-50 and two games back of the Dodgers in the West. Following one hell of a collapse by the Milwaukee Brewers (their main competitors in the WC), the Giants secured a Wild Card spot and crawled into the playoffs with a whimper. They kicked the shit out of Pittsburgh (:-)) in the play-in game, won three 1-run games against Washington in the NLDS and took 4 of 5 from the Cardinals to set up their do-si-do with KC.

How They Match Up

Kansas City

If offense really does win games and defense really does win championships, well…

Kansas City has been playing unfathomable defense in October. Lorenzo Cain is the breakout star of the playoffs because of catches like that. Alex Gordon has been one of the best defensive outfielders in the game for years now. Eric Hosmer can pick it at first. Sally Perez has a cannon behind the dish. And fucking Mike Moustakas, Prince of the Indians Killers, is even getting in on the action. You know it’s your year when The Moose suddenly becomes productive in the playoffs.

And anybody who’s watched any Royals games all year knows you can pretty much turn it off if they have the lead after the 6th inning. Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland are flat out the best 7-8-9 combo in the bigs. Here are their playoff stats (click to enlarge):

Davis and Holland have appeared in all 8 games they’ve played, Herrera 7. 10 Ks, 1 ER each. Normally you want to work to get a starter out of the game as fast as possible to get to a team’s bullpen. With Kansas City? Not so much.

San Francisco

The Giants have had a bit tougher of a road to the World Series, losing one game each to Washington and St. Louis. The Washington series especially, where every game except their loss was decided by one run and every Nationals starting pitcher tossed a quality start against them. They have something the Royals don’t right now though and that’s an ace that is pitching like one. NLCS MVP Madison Bumgarner has been lights out throughout October and it doesn’t seem like he’ll slow down against a Royals lineup that counts on four lefties for a good amount of their production (Gordon, Hosmer, Moustakas, Nori Aoki). He also enjoys beer, but knows his limits.

Jake Peavy has been very good in the two games he’s started as well. And although they don’t get the press the Kansas City guys do, their bullpen has been just about as good as their Midwestern counterparts. Yusmeiro Petit, Santiago Casilla and Jeremy Affeldt have all gone at least six innings without surrendering an earned run. Former closer Sergio Romo has been solid as well, sans the walk-off homer he served up to Kolten Wong in Game 2 of the NLCS.

Offensively, the Giants undoubtedly sport the bigger stars. Buster Posey, Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval are all household names that have played and produced in October before. But experience is only part of the puzzle. Hosmer has been probably the hottest hitter in the entire playoffs, much more so than any of the Giants big names, and Cain is not far behind. If “Big Game James” Shields (who owns a 5.19 career ERA in the playoffs, aka big games) can go toe-to-toe with MadBum, it’ll be up to the young Royals hitters to outshine the guys who have been there before.

Storylines

-Royals superfan SungWoo Lee is back and ready to cheer his dick off.

-Royals RP Brandon Finnegan may become the first player in history to appear in the College World Series and the Major League Baseball World Series in the same calendar year.

-Radio stations in San Francisco have started to ban Lorde’s banger “Royals” from their airwaves, seemingly ignoring the fact that nobody is listening to their stations anyway because they’re just now refraining from playing that song.

-Fangraphs put together a list of the nastiest pitches you’ll see in the World Series. Spoiler Alert: they’re not starting pitchers and they don’t pitch for San Francisco

-After their victory in the ALDS, Hosmer and a couple other Royals took care of the tab for an entire bar near Kauffman Stadium for the last hour of the night. I love the Indians but if the Royals win this thing I’m gonna buy myself a baby blue T shirt & a plane ticket to Kansas City and see what happens.

-Steve Perry (former Journey front-man) is a Giants fan. Paul Rudd is a Royals fan. Boom, 70% of Fox’s broadcast banter.

–Nick Swisher will be a part of the Fox World Series broadcast crew. Stay tuned for the Bottlegate World Series drinking game, bro.

Prediction

I’m having trouble picturing how the Royals will lose one game, let alone four. MadBum may get them once, possibly twice, but other than that I don’t see the Giants being able to stop this freight train from Kansas City. Two things happen in the playoffs: runs come at a premium, and games go down to the wire. The Royals are swinging it well, can create runs with the stolen base (13 SB) and have the best 7-8-9 combo out of the bullpen in baseball. And like I said earlier, you don’t get four postseason home runs and possibly the best catch in playoff history from Mike Moustakas and lose the World Series. Royals in 5.

(Former Indian Jeremy Guthrie, who also happened to play for those O’s for five years)

From Hardball Talk:

“Phil Hughes has had a fantastic season for the Twins, potentially setting the all-time strikeout-to-walk ratio record, and entered his final start today needing to throw 8.1 innings to reach 210 for the year and trigger a $500,000 bonus in his contract.”

“Hughes has cruised through eight innings against the Diamondbacks, allowing just one run, but now it’s raining heavy in Minnesota and the tarp is on at Target Field.

Hughes needs one more out to get an extra $500,000.”

“UPDATE: After an hour-plus rain delay Hughes did not come back into the game, which means he’s officially one out short of reaching 210 innings for his $500,000 bonus.”

What a kick in the dick that is. The Twins took their fair share of flak this winter for throwing $24 million over three years at a pitcher coming off a 4-14 walk year. Yankees fans practically pushed him out the door that Ruth built. He comes to the AL Central, goes 15-10 with a 3.61 ERA and has the best singe-season strikeout-to-walk ratio of all time. Then today he’s absolutely dealing through eight innings, the smell of that fat stack of cash getting more and more pungent with every out. Just cruising. One more out to pay dirt.

You would hope the Twins would either let him throw an inning out of the bullpen at the end of this week, or just give him the damn bonus because of the year he’s had, but you never know with these professional sports teams. And I’ve seen Fargo, I don’t trust anything from the state of Minnesota.