GO ROYALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[grovester]

I think he had already mentally checked out after the top of the 8th.

[mean]

Yost said he asked to go out and pitch the 9th, but with Davis already warmed up he went ahead and put him on the mound.

[bobbyhawks]

I don't think either choice would have been a bad one. When Cueto is going like that and your closer is Wade Davis, you could basically flip a coin.

[mean]

I agree. I imagine they warmed up Davis assuming he was going to be closing a 4-2 game so figured they might as well use him after the Royals added 3 more. If they had scored those runs a few innings earlier they probably wouldn't have warmed Davis at all and Cueto would have pitched the 9th. That's my guess, anyway.

[pash]

.

[mean]

Yeah, I believe it is Volquez v Estrada, Ventura v Price, then Cueto v Someone.

[mean]

Toronto has shown that they can, with their backs against the wall in the postseason, pull through. Does anyone actually think they will this time?

[shinatoo]

No.

[brewcrew1000]

Toronto has shown that they can, with their backs against the wall in the postseason, pull through. Does anyone actually think they will this time?

They probably shouldn't have even won that game 5 last week. Andrus had 3 straight errors and totally blew that game in the 7th.

[mean]

Yeah, the Andrus errors were ridiculous. Not only that, they probably wouldn't have won game 3 of the ALCS if Cueto hadn't been a tremendous steaming pile of shit. Last night's emphatic win probably should have been the WS clincher but for Cueto's ongoing attempts to diminish the size of his next contract.

[flyingember]

The four top scoring games in the postseason are these

11-8 (Royals vs Blue Jays)
14-2 (Royals vs Blue Jays)
13-7 (Mets vs Dodgers)
9-6 (Royals vs Astros)

That's not what's bad. KC has the distinction of
having the highest difference in runs to win (12 run difference)
the highest number of runs in a single postseason game (14)
the greatest average number of runs per game accounting for the number of games played (6.4 runs per game where the average for all teams is 4.1 runs)

And the highest score to have lost a game.

[AllThingsKC]

And once again, the lack of a rolling roof has an impact on the Royals post season.

[mgh7676]

And once again, the lack of a rolling roof has an impact on the Royals post season.

+1 lack of a rolling roof!! But seriously, I hope I never spend a day indoors watching baseball at the K.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Of course with a rolling roof you wouldn't be indoors. Just under a roof without the walls.

Now for you numbers/stats guys, and girls. In looking at the Royals should this team be in the WS? How does this team, and last year's compare to the 85 team? 80 team? The teams of 1976/7/8?
Have to admit I have a sweet spot for those 70/80's teams and I didn't think this team, or last year's, was as good as those. But in the WS two years in a row does make one change one's mind.

[Highlander]

Of course with a rolling roof you wouldn't be indoors. Just under a roof without the walls.

Now for you numbers/stats guys, and girls. In looking at the Royals should this team be in the WS? How does this team, and last year's compare to the 85 team? 80 team? The teams of 1976/7/8?
Have to admit I have a sweet spot for those 70/80's teams and I didn't think this team, or last year's, was as good as those. But in the WS two years in a row does make one change one's mind.

The overall offensive line-up from top to bottom today is better than those teams but those teams had a smaller core of elite offensive players better than anyone on today's team: Brett first and foremost but also Hal McCrae and a few others. Brett's clutch hitting was often a game changer. Starting pitching was better back then and especially in 85 (starting pitching got us to the series that year) but the bullpen today is absolutely amazing, among the best if not the best ever assembled in baseball. Team defense is also probably improved over the 80's/90's teams.

[shinatoo]

This year the Royals are hitting .297 on fastballs 95+ MPH. Next closest is .275. It's a ludicrous number and the only thing that gives me hope against the Mets 3 headed monster.

[mean]

Yeah, I think Highlander pretty much nailed it. There were a few guys on the 80s WS teams that were more offensively elite than anyone on the current roster, but the overall depth of the lineup these days is very impressive. When Alex Gordon is hitting in the 8-hole and Alex Rios is 9th, I mean, that pretty much tells you everything you need to know. And in spite of the apparent general dislike among Royals fans for Alex Rios, it is undeniable that he started the year doing well and I think it's fair to presume he probably came back and played under 100% for most of the year due to a combination of lingering effects from the injury and the time off. However, he's been pretty freaking clutch in the playoffs. I have to think from what I've seen that an Alex Rios at 100% is more a middle of the order type of guy than a #9 on just about any other team.

And while the starting pitching of 2015 is undeniably less consistent than in the WS teams of yore, if you're lucky enough to get Good Ventura and Good Cueto they're pretty lights-out, and Volquez has been a rock, far better than anyone not in the Royals front office had any reason to expect. Can't say much bad about Young or Medlen either.

It's hard to argue that the Royals don't deserve to be in the WS. They were the best team in the AL virtually all year (if not actually all year, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure the Blue Jays were up a game or so for a while during the Great September Slump). The current team just has so few weaknesses. The worst thing you can say about them is that the starting pitching has been inconsistent, but that is often negated by the depth and elite talent in the bullpen.

[mean]

So, saber guys (I think there are a few around here)... what the heck is it that either isn't being measured or is being so dramatically undervalued about the Royals? Pretty much every stats-based projection and pundit had the Royals either barely making the WC, or, more often than not, finishing under .500 and missing the playoffs entirely. We can certainly attribute some of this to simple good luck, but it's clear that the Royals are a very good team yet again despite the fact that they were supposed to stink. Again. I'd be willing to say "late season fluke" if they had gone 78-83 like Fangraphs projected, but they came back this year and I think have pretty conclusively demonstrated that they are the real deal.

I'm tempted to think that home run power is overvalued and defensive eliteness undervalued, but I also can't shake the feeling that there's something else we either aren't measuring or are undervaluing. We're supposed to believe (as I understand it anyway) that hits occur essentially in a vacuum independent of the on-field situation, and runs essentially occur at random. But damed if those Royals don't consistently start knocking balls around the yard at the same time as though hits were contagious. Traditional saber guys seem to think that's just luck. I think it's got to have something to do with refusing to walk or strike out, two things which I don't exactly know how they factor into saber stats or pythag projections, but I'm starting to think there's something to it that, apparently, 100+ years of baseball statisticians haven't caught onto. It makes perfect sense that when the entire lineup adopts a "no walk, no strikeout" philosophy, it becomes more probable that they will string together a series of hits, because they're going to be making contact a high percentage of the time. Sometimes, naturally, that will mean hitting into outs, hitting into double plays, etc., but it also increases your chances of inducing errors and stringing sequences of hits together. This makes me think that walking is probably overvalued, too. Walking is useful, sure, but refusing to walk can potentially be even more valuable.

[aknowledgeableperson]

mean, I think you have come close to what I feel is the weakness in using just math. Math is fine if all you want to do is look at numbers but there is an "attitude" that one can not measure, at least not that I am aware of. Leadership. Never say quit. Approach to game. Team chemistry. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And sometimes it is how the players play the game. For those Royals team of the 70's and 80's many said at the time how Brett and McRae played the game was a factor. Look at Lorenzo Cain's game winning run home. How many players would slow down rounding second thinking they would be stopping at 3rd?

[mean]

I have no problem accepting that there are factors which can't be measured which can have an effect on the outcome of a game, or even a series, or perhaps even a season; but that the entire baseball world got it so horribly wrong twice in a row is suggestive more to me that there are one or several statistical weighting errors going on. I buy that team chemistry, attitude, and approach can get you somewhere, but I don't think I'm ready to buy that it will get you back-to-back World Series runs when nobody in the entire professional baseball prognostication industry thinks it is going to happen either time. I think it's far more likely that the baseball prognosticators are doing something wrong, believing their own dogmas about the value of taking a walk vs. the value of not taking a walk, maybe, or failing to account for the increased probability of setting up good sequences when you constantly put the ball in play.

Either way, BACK TO BACK WORLD SERIES!!!!!

Can't be too upset about that. Just... please win this one. I NEED A PARADE MAN