It's Chevalier's Thread and He Can Do What He Wants To

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I mostly agree with you, william - I really don't like skipping the Craftsmanship boost since I'm usually starved for culture, and waiting a long time to chop with the first builder for a holy site is horribly inefficient.

The one issue with pasturing is that I don't have the tile in my borders yet, and I don't have the tech for animal husbandry. That will compete - again - with astrology. I'm thinking it's STILL worth delaying astrology to get the pasture up, though. That's worth extra culture and production right there, and there's still things I need to set up that keep me from starting work on the holy site right away in any case (and if I start slow-building it, my finish time is about the same as if I waited and chopped it, with a bunch of other stuff in the bargain). So right now I'm thinking mine-pasture-quarry??? (that stone will be harvested for a wonder at some point - either Artemis, the Pyramids, or possibly the Great Lighthouse as the three main wonders I want - but I'm not sure of the timeline, as long as it's more than 40 turns off the extra cog will pay for the builder). I could also spend 2 charges and then hike out to Zobrist to improve something there - the wheat helps growth, triggers the irrigation inspiration (which in turn unlocks those teas for me - not a great priority since I need a city over there to claim those), and triggers Craftsmanship.

Just to remind myself, the gameplan is to use Holy Sites + Campuses to trigger Arabia's strengths and try to build a powerful science civ with lots of faith splashing around to purchase things and accelerate the growth curve. Then we just use superior science to outtech our rivals for victory. Need to stay focused on that.

I do admit, comrades, that my micro this game ahs been erratic. I think I have a somewhat challenging start here and I should probably be paying more attention than I am. Just don't get me started on baseball, because, as you can see, I can talk about it for days.

[aetryn]

That's a beautifully written piece by Jayazerli. 

Maddison Bumgarner is a stud. In addition to everything written here, he is the rare pinnacle of national league baseball: a pitcher who doesn't embarrass himself in the batters box.

Please do continue doing the baseball story right! I'll certainly understand if you have to table it for a bit as the game heats up, but it's been a blast so far.

____

As for Civ, with a qualifier that I'm nobody's idea of an expert and I've never played R&F:

Pastures add +1 production, not food, so the improved plains sheep hill would be 2f3h. That (or the identical quarried grassland stone hill, if the tile picker grabs it instead) would be clearly the best available tile for you to work, so improving whichever of those the tile picker goes for seems like an excellent choice. Which of those tiles is favored at the moment, and how long will it take to expand?


A mine (presumably on that bald grassland hill) isn't going to help you much for now, because you already have two 2f2h grass forest hills to work. However, the longer term benefit (post chops and/or apprenticeship) and the contribution towards craftsmanship makes it seem worthwhile. 

As you said, a fishing boat on the crabs is little more than a contribution towards the Craftsmanship and Celestial Navigation boosts. You won't work that tile for a long time.

I'm generally not a fan of passing up the craftsmanship boost by chopping with the first builder. That's an extra 16 culture you have to hard research (maybe 7 turns?) and the added opportunity cost of chopping pre-Magnus is pretty big as well. On the other hand, getting that first governor title without a chop is going to be tough: growing to pop 6 for the Early Empire boost is going to take a little while with your limited food, and there's little chance of boosting state workforce in a timely manner without a chop of some sort. You also have six chopables in the first two rings (four forests and two stone) and a bunch of natural production, so the opportunity cost of spending one early without Magnus is less of a problem. 

With all that said, I think the biggest problem with the galley->holy site chop plan is how long it's going to take to set it up. You're looking at having a builder sit around for ~10-15 turns, without boosting craftsmanship or using Magus for that chop. Going for the craftsmanship boost with this first builder, then chopping with the second seems like a better play. The priority of improvements should then be resource hills > mines > crabs. 

One other oddball possibility: what if you placed a mine or quarry at Escobar, then marched the builder over to Zobrist to mine one of those hills and harvest the wheat? That forgoes the Craftsmanship boost and requires pottery, but it improves more worked tiles and it would accelerate the boost for Early Empire (and thus, Magnus). I don't know if I like this option more than just booting craftsmanship, but I think it's worth some consideration.

The other consideration with harvesting the wheat this early is that you'd much rather harvest it when the city's natural growth potential (vs. housing) is exhausted, since harvested wheat ignores housing penalties.  On the other hand, if you can't use the later population anyway (because there's nothing useful for them to do) and the population now would make a big difference, it's probably worth giving up the post-housing growth.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 22

Back in action after Japper's float trip. I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day - it is one of my favorite holidays of the year, but then again, I'm an ardent patriot. This clip roughly captures my experience of every 4th of July. 

Anyway, turn 22 is getting exciting! We have more decisions to make:




Zobrist ar Raheem is founded. After some back and forth with myself, I opted for my original instincts and settled on the horses. This does mean I can't USE the horse tile, but in compensation I get a second wheat for quick growth (useful since I plan to harvest the other wheat), I get a much nice Campus adjacency, there's some wonderful second-ring hills. Zobrist B had a similar hill and a similar wheat, but didn't have as good campus sites, and it might have precluded another city to the east once I scout that area. 

I set Zobrist to work on a builder itself, to take advantage of Granada, and work the wheat to grow. We should pick up the foxes pretty soon, and that will be a nice tile.

In the south, the barb spear is chasing me:




I'm trying to get my builder to the stone to quarry it before the spear gets there, but I'm not sanguine about my chances. I have a second slinger out in 3 turns, and then it can pair up with my injured slinger to take down the spear and secure the island. Then we'll start a galley and try to get out on the water. 

Scoreboard shows that no one else has founded another city yet. Archduke has the largest population still, and no one has varied much in terms of tech or civics. I'll start including it in the end-of-turn screenshots to keep y'all better updated, I think. Might also start a Sullla-style spreadsheet, I do really admire Banzailizard's graphs in his thread.

---------------

Did you think the story of me, my grandfather, and the Royals was over? Could I let it end with that heartbreak? No! Besides, I haven't even mentioned Ben Zobrist yet - story can't end til he makes an appearance, for sure. 

“Sorry, Royals, But You Probably Won’t Be Back to the World Series.”
"Royals Face Steep Odds Returning to the World Series."
"How Likely Are the Royals to Return to the World Series?"

“The truth is that most World Series entrants fail to return within the next few years. It’s hard enough to make it to one World Series, let alone two in the span of five seasons. MLB’s current playoff structure ensures a high degree of randomness, with mechanisms in place to prevent the best teams from running the table. The Royals are most likely to fade away like so many other World Series teams have throughout baseball history.”

- How Likely Are the Royals to Return to the World Series?

Those were the headlines that greeted Royals fans as the long winter of 2014 began. Some tried to console themselves that the Royals had had a spectacular run, that they had redeemed the honor of the once hopeless franchise, and that their near-miss would resonate for a long time to come. But the fact remained: They had lost. They were also-rans. They had come close, so close, 90 feet-away-close, and they had failed. Teams could go decades without making the World Series - the Cubs failed to make it between 1945 and 2016. The Pirates not since 1979, the Brewers not since 1982. The Twins’ last trip was 1991, the A’s 1990 (same as the Reds), the Orioles not since 1983. The Nationals and the Mariners have never made a World Series in nearly 50 years. It could be decades for the Royals to have another shot - the 1984 Padres, the 2007 Rockies, the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, all had been long-suffering franchises that finally got a shot, only to lose and never return.
The Royals were even less likely than most. Most analysts agreed that the team had played above its head in 2014, and they had only managed to scrape a wild card spot with 89 wins. The team was losing James Shields, the anchor of their rotation. Nori Aoki, in right field, would have to be replaced as his contract expired. And Billy Butler, the long-tenured DH, was also leaving. Hosmer and Moustakas would probably continue to struggle at the plate, Omar Infante was clearly on the decline. And there was no way that the bullpen trio of Herrera/Davis/Holland could repeat their historically great 2014 performance, one of the best bullpens of all time. All signs indicated that the image of Gordon, forever 90 feet away, would burn in Royals’ fans consciousnesses for a long, long time.

The Royals were granted the title of “Least Stimulating Offseason” by Fangraphs. To replace Shields, Dayton Moore brought in erratic Pirates pitcher Edison Volquez. Chris Young, Luke Hochever, and Ryan Madson were all pitchers scraped up from the bargain bin that Moore was hoping for bounceback seasons from - lottery tickets, essentially. The new DH was to be Kendrys Morales, a struggling Cuban giant of a man with 3 screws in his right ankle (after he broke his foot stomping on home plate in celebration of a home run), possibly the slowest man in baseball and coming off an awful season with Seattle. In right field, they would try Alex Rios, another scrap heap acquisition.

Needless to say, the Royals were not projected to have a great 2015. Vegas was the most kind, perhaps, setting the over/under at 83 wins. Fangraphs projected the Royals for 79 wins and a losing season. And PECOTA, the mother-of-all baseball statistical projection systems, gave the Royals a woeful 72 wins and 90 losses. In a preseason poll of 88 ESPN contributors, only three picked the Royals to win the division. Fox Sports assembled 12 experts, and none forecast a postseason berth. (Neither, for that matter, did The New York Times, which picked the Royals for third place, out of the playoffs.)

One thing that no projection system recognized, though, was the mental aspect of the game. No one was more aware of how close they’d been to winning it all than the Royals themselves. And no one, not even me, was hungrier to make it back and this time: win the last game.  Every player on the team spent the off-season running over the final game, worrying at it like a dog with a bone.

“It hurts a lot when you come that close,” Manager Ned Yost said. “I just kept thinking, well, in a week or 10 days I’ll realize what we accomplished and it’ll feel better. Then a week or 10 days came and it didn’t feel better, and I thought, well, maybe it’ll take a month. And it didn’t feel better after a month.”

“I always think about it — maybe I could have gotten an extra hit or made an extra catch or something,” said Cain, the Royals’ center fielder. “You always play it in your mind.”

The signs were there. On Opening Day, 2015, Mike Moustakas, the struggling #8 batter in the Royals’ lineup, the third baseman who never delivered on his promise, ripped a home run to opposite field - one of the most difficult hitting feats in the game. He had spent the offseason re-tooling his swing, determined to help the team. And it paid off. Now, he was one of the best hitters in baseball. The rest of the team got better at the plate, too. As strikeout rates spiked across the league, the Royals’ dropped - to the lowest in baseball. The formula for success remained the same: Put the ball in play. Get on base. And run like hell.

The Royals won that Opening Day game against the White Sox. And then the next one. And the next one after that.

Seven games into the season, the Royals were undefeated - and the best team in baseball.

[source for Cain and Yost quotes: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/sport...years.html]

[Banzailizard]

Turn 22

Scoreboard shows that no one else has founded another city yet. Archduke has the largest population still, and no one has varied much in terms of tech or civics. I'll start including it in the end-of-turn screenshots to keep y'all better updated, I think. Might also start a Sullla-style spreadsheet, I do really admire Banzailizard's graphs in his thread.

If you give me the data, I will give you graphs, though they are easy enough to put together.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turns 23-25

Two turns to update y'all on - sorry, this game is just moving so slowly! It's taken us a month to play 24 turns. And R&F has a much slower start than the base game anyway, increasing exponentially once you start unlocking governors (Magnus) in the '40s or so. Anyway, let's dive in.




Sailing is unlocked, and from the scores, I have a suspicion that I might be the first to grab it - others may have gone for builder techs first. In any case, we have a few turns left on our slinger, then I'm going to crank out a galley to get into the water. I want a natural wonder, I want a new continent, and I want city-states! 

I also move the builder onto the stone hill, ready to improve next turn:




However, the barb spear is continuing to pursue my slinger, and moves up adjacent on the next turn:




I don't feel confident about taking the hit with my slinger, and I don't want to lose the builder, so I decide to forgo the extra cog for a few turns and pull both units back onto the hill. We'll get our second slinger out, and then both will drop the spear. Then the warrior should be up, and the two units can push to clear the camp. After that, I should be okay to defog the rest of my island - there's a little more in the south, and most of the east, yet to uncover. 




Score also shows that I am first to a second city by a mile - three turns at least and no one has founded #2 yet. Guess everyone else went builder first. It's really hard to convince me to do that - the legacy of other 4X games, I think, I just can't shake my instincts to get the city out and growing ASAP. Probably a bad habit, I know, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks. 

Bottom half, not that it matters much this early:




Current plans:

1)Kill barbs, improve capital
2)Finish animal husbandry, start astrology
3)Finish foreign trade - wait for inspiration, or just hard resaerch it? We'll have a galley out soon, who can find a foreign continent. We can delay foreign trade and work on craftsmanship. Right now I'm leaning towards delay - there's enough to build that I don't need maritime industries right away, and the early culture is precious to me. Let the galley complete the civic for us, we can come back to it in time to start our second galley.
4)Build a second, er, builder.
5)Chop 1 of Escobar's 3 forests into a holy site via Maritime Trade galley. 

Civics wise, I wonder if it would be possible to finish Early Empire and grab Magnus before step #5. Might be, that is probably 15 turns away at least. I've got Zobrist working its growth tiles, both cities should hit size 6 okay. 

Then step 6 will be to get another settler out for the Cain site. We're not gonna wait for the Plaza -> Ancestral Hall, that's a ways away, but maybe settler #3 will get the boost.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

As for the Royals, I've hesitated a bit, because I'm not even sure how to tackle the 2015 season. There's so much I could say! 2015 was magical. It was wonderful. It was exhilarating. It was everything I thought baseball could be. It was fun, from start to finish. It was infuriating at times. And it was the first time I got a glimpse of what a winning team could look like. 

I guess there's some major themes to touch on, then. Let's do it topically:

1)the winning
2)the fighting
3)the defense and the All-Star controversy
4)the end of the season

Like I noted last time, the Royals started out 7-0. They were the last undefeated team in the league - and they never looked back. The baseball season is 162 games long, by far the longest in any sport that I know of, so you're going to lose a lot of games, no matter how good you are. But for a while, it seemed the Royals simply could not lose. The team that was supposed to win only 72 games was firing on all cylinders, and before April was over the Royals had shown the league that 2014's playoff run was no fluke. The AL Central Division had been widely predicted to be taken by the Indians (who indeed the next year would go to the World Series, and in 2017 set the modern record with a win streak of 22 games. Trivia note: the old win streak was by the Moneyball A's. The climax of the film, win #21, was against the hapless 2002 Royals. The team that ended Cleveland's 22-game win streak? The Royals), while the Tigers were still a threat after winning 4 straight division titles from 2011 to 2014 (and crushing the Royals every time they faced off - the Orioles sweeping them in the ALDS in 2014 was a big break for Kansas City). The Twins, too, had a core of young talent developing. Only the White Sox would probably not be competing, as they began a slow rebuild. By the end of April, though, the Royals were 14-7, and only half a game out of first behind the Tigers, who came to Kauffman that weekend for a critical early season series. 

The Royals took the first 2, but in the third game David Price (remember that name) shut down the Royals and led Detroit to victory, with the Tigers salvaging the series split in Game 4. The Royals were still in second, but they would NOT be going 6-13 against the Tigers like hte year before. The Royals weren't as hot in May, the record falling to 18-11 at one point, but in another series against hte Tigers KC took 2 out of 3 and pushed the division lead to 1.5 games. They swept the Cincinnati Reds despite a fine performance from their ace, Johnny Cueto (remember that name), took 2 out of 3 from the Yankees, then finished May with a duel against cross-state rivals the St. Louis Cardinals. The winner of the 4 game series would hold the best record in baseball. The Cardinals were on top at 27-14 with the 26-14 Royals and 27-15 Astros a half game back. The Royals again took 2 out of 3 and were sitting atop all of baseball, at 28-15, with the Cardinals, at 28-16 close behind, to end the month of May.

A June stumble saw the Royals lose 9 out of 11 games, and they soon found themselves in second place behind the hot Twins, at 30-23. But then the Twins came to town for a series - and the Royals never looked back. The Royals won the first game to tie for the division lead, and though no one knew it yet, the AL Central race was over: the "72-win" Royals held it for the rest of the season, and it wasn't even particularly close. The Tigers collapsed in the second half, the White Sox were rebuilding, and the Indians never delivered on their pre-season promise. The Twins lost their next 8 games, the Royals won 15 out of 20, and the rest of the season was a race for them to be the best team in the American League.
-----------
Baseball fans would probably call me out if I failed to mention the brawls in the month of April. While the Royals were establishing themselves as one of the best teams in baseball for real, there were 3 benches-clearing incidents - quite a lot. Lots of people proclaimed the Royals the new "bad boys" of baseball, and asserted that they were young, hotheaded, and picking fights for no reason. I'll give you the perspective from our side of the field.

In April, the Royals led all of baseball in players being hit by pitches - 14 in only 10 games. Their new right fielder, Alex Rios, had his hand broken by a pitch. In a game against the Angels, Mike Trout drilled a homer off of Ventura. When he came around to home, Ventura, who was covering the plate, exchanged words with him - which led to some traditional baseball nonsense as benches  cleared and both teams stood around trying to intimidate each other. 

Then, in a game against the A's, A's player Brett Lowrie went for a low take-out slide of Escobar. A takeout slide is a play where the runner, who is certain to be out at second, dives at the opposing fielder, ostensibly in an effort to reach base safely, but everyone knows the real intent is to trip up the fielder and prevent the double play. It was absolutely not a situation that called for a take-out slide, but Lowrie did it anyway, and injured Escobar's leg. The next day, in retaliation, starter Yordano Ventura plunked Lowrie with a baseball (traditional baseball discipline is done via targeted hit-by-pitches). The umps immediately threw Ventura out of the game. The day after, A's pitcher Scott Kazmir hit Lorenzo Cain with a pitch, but remained in a game - but Ned Yost and Dave Eiland, the Royals' pitching coach, were tossed - then in the 8th, when Herrera threw a pitch inside to Lowrie, then another went behind the A's player, he was ejected, as was Alcides Escobar on the bench and acting manager Don Wakamatsu. With Yost, Eiland, and Wakamatsu out, I'm not even sure who was next in the Royals managerial line of succession. Herrera pointed to his said and said "think about it", which Royals fans interpreted to mean "why would I throw at you in a 1 run game" and everyone who wanted the Royals-as-bad-boys narrative read as "Beware: I can throw 100 at your head". After the game, Royals fans were informed that Kelvin Herrera is a disgrace to baseball, that Brett Lawrie was a disgrace to baseball, and finally that baseballs were a disgrace to baseball.

It still wasn't over. The Royals felt that they had a target on their back, behind the HPBs, the injuries to Escobar and to Rios, and the blatantly unfair suspension decisions following the A's debacle. It felt like the rest of baseball was testing them, to see if the AL pennant winners were for real, and so they pushed back, and defended themselves. In Chicago, Adam Eaton chirped at Ventura after hitting a comebacker to the mound. Ventura chirped back, and benches cleared again.  It appears to be standard baseball non-fisticuffs until Samardzija and Cain decided to reopen discussions about Opening Day (Samardzija had hit Cain with a pitch right after Moose's home run). Punches were thrown and Samardzjia and Sale were ejected for the White Sox while Ventura, Cain, and Volquez for the Royals. With one exception, that was the end of the Royals' bench-clearing incidents for the season. My perspective firmly rejects the narrative of the Royals as bad guys or even instigators in any of them, except the Angels incident, which was completely harmless. The A's and White Sox, though, absolutely deserved what they got. 

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Throughout the season, the Royals' strengths shined. The defense remained amazing - this nifty play kept the tying run off base in the 9th inning, Dyson made a catch that people compared to Willie Mays, Gordon leapt into the stands for a catch, and so on. The bullpen remained lights out - Wade Davis gave up his first run of the season in June, even if it wasn't a legitimate run. The offense was leaps and bounds better - the Royals led the league in least amount of strikeouts, they were no longer dead last in home runs, and their aggressive baserunning put lots of pressure on defenses. 

Now, the MLB All-Star game is a showcase exhibition of the best players in baseball. The league opened up positions to players to be voted in by fans, letting the fans choose who they most wanted to see. Now, Kansas City was in the midst of Royals fever, and so Royals fans took the natural course: they voted for their guys. Cain and Gordon were first and third for the outfield, respectively (Mike Trout was second). Rios, who had played 8 games and then broken his hand, though, was in 6th. Escobar, Moose, and Perez were all in first for shortstop, third base, and catcher, while Hosmer, Infante, and Morales were in second for first base, second base, and the DH. Remember, Kansas City is the smallest or second-smallest market in baseball. Our little Midwestern city on the plains can't compete with the likes of Chicago, or L.A., or New York. But those fans weren't voting, and Royals fans were.

After the second update, not much had changed. The cute little Royals and their flyover fans weren't going away. Instead, they were getting louder, emboldened by their own voting results. The rankings were exactly the same with 3 Royals starting, the 2nd place Royals getting closer to 1st, and Rios actually moving up from 6th to 5th. Then, after the 3rd update, the media firestorm really started in earnest. Royals had taken over 7 of the 9 starting spots. Omar Infante, who had been scraping along the league basement for offensive production of an everyday player was only 200K votes behind Jose Altuve for the 8th spot. Alex Rios, who had just returned from the DL moved up to 4th in the OF.

The 4th weekly update came out and the baseball world was beside itself. If All-Star balloting ended on June 15th instead of early July, the AL starters would have been 8 Kansas City Royals and Mike Trout. Now, the Royals were not just a disgrace to baseball but inciting anarchy, using Royals broadcasts like state-run tv to force voting, and even loosely linking the All-Star voting to the Cardinals hacking (really, Passan?)! In the article, he also drops in this nugget: "But it's between 60 and 65 million votes that have been canceled", which leads numerous awful media outlets to run with misleading articles or headlines, all with pictures or mentions of the Royals (ed note: I could link every word of the preceding sentence to a different bad article but they don't get free clicks for bad journalism). Except, as Max has to explain to people who cannot readpast a bad headline, 60M votes weren't just instantly cancelled- it was stated that's how many have been wiped out throughout the entire process using their standard voting safeguards. There's actually a quote in that Yahoo article where MLBAM said they scrubbed the first numbers very thoroughly because they were surprised and they /still/ came back legitimately with high Royals totals.

Journalists from nationally respected publications told us who we really should be voting for. Papers from large market cities like Los Angeles and Boston proposed taking away fan voting. After all, that's what they did the last time some uppity Midwestern city stuffed the ballot boxes instead of a major market voting in, say, an undeserving Derek Jeter past his prime like it had 3 of the last 5 years.

In the end, Grant Brisbee hit the nail on the head in his piece entitled: "The hilarious, Royals-stuffed All-Star ballot is exactly what MLB wants" and his prediction almost perfect: "But I could see the results getting sanitized... The final results will be something like this: A bunch of Royals in a lineup with Miguel Cabrera, Jose Altuve, Mike Trout, and Nelson Cruz." Yes, the MLB loved all this free publicity and didn't care if the Royals were the bad guy. A quote so good it's attributed to many people works here: "Say anything you want about me as long as you spell my name right".

That was the apex of the Royals voting. In the next two updates, 1B Miguel Cabrera would overtake Hosmer in the first, while Cruz would take over at DH and Donaldson at 3B in the second. When all of the votes were tallied, Altuve would pass Infante and we were left with Grant's scenario plus Donaldson also passing Moustakas. Still, that left four Royals starting the All-Star game with Perez at C, Escobar at SS, and Cain and Gordon in the OF. You'd have to go back to 1982 to find that many Royals even in the All-Star game. Wade Davis was voted to the All-Star game by his peers and Ned Yost added Kelvin Herrera, which meant six Royals, not including coaches. Mike Moustakas was on the ballot for the Final Vote and, of course, because voting was involved, he won a 7th spot for the Royals. The Cardinals also won the final vote "meaning the state of Missouri not only has the only two clubs playing at least .600 ball but also a combined 13 selections". In the end, everyone was fine with the results and the Royals were back to a feel good underdog story. 538 said the Royals got as many as they should have.

The AL, led by its Royals players, won the All-Star game, and with it, home field advantage for the World Series. 

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Coming out of the All-Star break, it was apparent that the Royals would make the playoffs. It was also clear they had two weaknesses: Starting pitching (as always), and second base, where Omar Infante's production had fallen off a cliff. So it was that Dayton Moore made the biggest play he ever had as a GM. He traded a package of prospects - including Brandon Finnegan! - to the Cincinnati Reds in return for ace pitcher Johnny Cueto. Then he flipped even more prospects to the A's for their infielder, Ben Zobrist. It was clear to everyone: the Royals intended to make it back to the World Series this year, and win it. 

North of the border, though, a new power was rising. The Toronto Blue Jays were mired at 50-51, 8 games out of first. But they had a league best run differential at +94, which suggested that they had been winning fewer games than their talent level should have - and then they upgraded, too. They brought in Troy Tulowitski from the Rockies, then grabbed ace David Price from the Tigers. At third base they had Josh Donaldson (remember him?), who was AL MVP that year. They had Jose Bautista in right field, who had more home runs than any other active player. For the rest of the season, the Blue Jays would win an absurd .705 of their games, winning 43 and losing only 18. 

Kansas City was instantly tested by the new Jays team. They came to Toronto for a 4-game series, but Toronto easily won the first game. Then, in the second, KC's bullpen lost a rare extra-innings game (I don't have the stats handy, but obviously the Royals almost always won extra inning games). In the third, the Royals salvaged a win, coming back from being down 5-1 in the 6th. In the final game, tensions boiled over. Edinson Volquez held the Jays to a 2-run Chris Colabello home run through 6 but the Royals managed all of 2 hits against R.A. Dickey. In the 1st, Volquez hit Donaldson as there was some mention of him stealing signs earlier in the series. In his 3rd inning AB, a changeup goes up and in and Donaldson glares out at the mound. Donaldson does a bat flip on his walk while Volquez walks toward Donaldson. In the 7th, the game still in the balance, a pitch slips away from Madson and hits Tulowitki. Donaldson screams at the umpire that Madson should be ejected, even on what is clearly a mistake pitch. During Donaldson's AB, Madson throws one up and in which brings out the Toronto boo birds and manager John Gibbons. In the 8th, Aaron Sanchez throws two straight pitches at Escobar, the second hitting him. As Escobar starts walking to first, Sanchez says something and umpire Jim Wolf throws him out of the game, judging it to be the first intentional HBP after the warning. The benches clear but nothing comes of it except a new rivalry. The Jays win the game 5-2 and the series 3 out of 4. It was a fiery start to the last two months of the regular season.

The two teams battled all of August and September. The Royals remained steady and consistent, the same team they'd been all year. The Jays, though, were on fire. The Royals' advantage for best record in the AL fell from 10 games in August to 5 games at the start of September, then to 2 by the middle of the month. Then, going into the final weekend of the month, both clubs were tied. The team with the best record would have home field advantage in the playoffs - potentially decisive. The Royals dropped a game to the White Sox. The Jays did not. They had a 1.5 game lead with 5 left to play. 

September 30th marked the return of Alcides Escobar to the leadoff spot, moving better OBP players Ben Zobrist and Alex Gordon down in the lineup. The switch inexplicably coincided with better starting pitching and the team started winning again. It makes no sense for Escobar to bat first. You want your leadoff hitter to be your best hitter, because he is going to have more at-bats than anyone else on your team. Esky is NOT a great hitter. In fact, he's one of the worst hitters in the entire league. But nevertheless, when he leads off, the Royals win. EskyMagic is inexplicable. On October 1st, the Royals won the final game against the White Sox and the Blue Jays dropped their finale in Baltimore. Suddenly, the race for home field was back even with 3 games to go.


Both teams rallied late for wins on Friday night, the Royals scoring a pair in the 8th for a 3-1 win over the Twins. Toronto picked up 4 in the 6th and 3 in the 7th against the Rays to turn a 4-1 deficit into an 8-4 victory. Like Friday, the Royals and Twins were knotted at 1 after 6. This time the Royals pushed across 3 in the 7th to win 4-1. The Jays were cruising along 3-1 after 6 but the Jays closed it to 3-2 in the 7th and walked off on a 2-out, 2-run Tim Beckham single in the 9th. The Royals were one game up with one to play.

Going into game 162, the scenarios were simple for Kansas City: a Royals win or Jays loss and the Royal would clinch home field. The AL West was a bit trickier with Houston, Texas, and Anaheim vying for 2 spots and the Yankees not sure whether they would be hosting or traveling for the AL Wild Card game. Johnny Cueto pitched for the Royals while Mark Buehrle started on short rest for the Jays. Buehrle was supposed to pitch 2 innings and give way to the bullpen. This would give him 15 straight seasons of 200 IP, a feat only accomplished by HOF pitchers Warren Spahn, Don Sutton, and Gaylord Perry. Buehrle never made it out of the first, giving up 5 hits and a walk, but his 8 runs were all unearned due to a pair of Toronto errors. The Royals scored 3 in the 2nd and 2 in the 3rd en route to a 6-1 win. The Royals clinched home field advantage.

The Royals finished 95-67, one of the best seasons in the team's history. But last year they had won a pennant and ended up 90 feet short of a world championship. This year, nothing less than total victory would suffice. Anything less would be a disappointment. Their first challenge would be the Houston Astros - and it would push the Royals to the very brink.

[Grotsnot]

I'm normally a silent (and sporadic) lurker, but had to chime in with kudos for the awesome baseball stories. Never thought I'd be scrolling past Civ screenshots going "yeah yeah whatever get back to the baseball!" I have the Cubs in my DNA but I had the privilege of living in Kansas City from 2012-2016. The baseball always made me feel like I was back home: the fans' dedication & energy and, well, the team's track record. I still remember how insanely empty the office was the morning after the 2015 WS - y'all do your team proud out there.

And condolences about your grandfather, that was a real punch in the gut to read. I'm failing to come up with anything non-pithy to say; my grandma is the family's biggest Cubs fan, so yeah...

So the Royals will always be my #2 team. Almost a shame 2015 wasn't a Cubs-Royals WS (always said at the office that was the only series I'd ever root against the Royals) like it looked like it might've been, but I'm glad how things turned out. Got to be there for you guys in 2015 and back home for us the next year. Very grateful for sending Zobrist our way Hoping you hang onto *this* Zobrist, though

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm normally a silent (and sporadic) lurker, but had to chime in with kudos for the awesome baseball stories. Never thought I'd be scrolling past Civ screenshots going "yeah yeah whatever get back to the baseball!" I have the Cubs in my DNA but I had the privilege of living in Kansas City from 2012-2016. The baseball always made me feel like I was back home: the fans' dedication & energy and, well, the team's track record. I still remember how insanely empty the office was the morning after the 2015 WS - y'all do your team proud out there.

And condolences about your grandfather, that was a real punch in the gut to read. I'm failing to come up with anything non-pithy to say; my grandma is the family's biggest Cubs fan, so yeah...

So the Royals will always be my #2 team. Almost a shame 2015 wasn't a Cubs-Royals WS (always said at the office that was the only series I'd ever root against the Royals) like it looked like it might've been, but I'm glad how things turned out. Got to be there for you guys in 2015 and back home for us the next year. Very grateful for sending Zobrist our way Hoping you hang onto *this* Zobrist, though

I'm glad you're liking it! 

I decided to go ahead and try and finish the tale while we're on pause - there's not a lot else to talk about, except perhaps pantheon choices, but I'll get to that. For now, let's start talking aabout the ALDS. From here on out, I highly recommend taking the 10 minutes or so on the video summaries, they do a good job showing the action and capturing the excitement. You can, of course, always ignore me and stick to the text, but I really do think they enhance the experience.

Video Summary: Here.



The playoff field in 2015 was set: The Royals had won the AL Central, with 95 games. Close on their heels was Toronto, in the AL East, with 93 wins. The Texas Rangers had won the AL West with a paltry 88 wins and would face Toronto in the ALDS. The Royals would face whoever came out on top of the wild card game. The Yankees had home field advantage, with 87 wins, facing the Astros, with 86. However, it’s important not to underestimate the Astros.

Houson had just ended a 10-year playoff drought themselves. For much of 2011, 2012, and 2013, they had been the worst team in baseball - but the losses had let them draft a powerful core of young players that was just now coming into its own (indeed, in two years time the Astros would dominate the American League and win the World Series in 7 games). Rookie shortstop Carlos Correa was a monster both with the bat and in the field. Jose Altuve, second base, would be repeatedly in the conversation for AL MVP, and was a perennial all-star. The bullpen was solid, with formidable lefty Tony Sipp and dominant closer Luke Gregerson (who had given up the tying run to the Royals in the Wild Card Game the previous year). The secret weapon, though, was Dallas Keuchel. Sporting a wild man beard and a shaved head, the Astros starter was literally unbeatable at home - the Astros never lost a game that he started at Minute Maid Park in Houston. They had surged to dominate the AL West in the opening half of the season, competing with the Royals for best team in the league for a while. In fact, in the closing days of June, the Astros had swept the Royals in a 3-game series and taken over the best record in baseball, leading Buster Olney to claim, “The Astros are the dominant force in the American League right now, and after the events of the last two days, it's not really debatable.”

However, Houston had faded down the stretch, and ran into some bad luck - their runs scored versus runs allowed suggested they should have won 93 games, not 86. They were by all accounts a force to be reckoned with.

The Royals caught a break in that the Astros’ secret weapon, Keuchel, was deployed to win them the wild card over the Yankees. Keuchel shut the Yankees down easily, and the Astros cruised to a drama free-win. They would come to face Kansas City in the ALDS, looking to knock out the best team in baseball just as the scrappy Royals had done to the Angels the year before. Make no doubt about it: this would be one of the Royals’ most severe tests since Madison Bumgarner.

The Astros got started right away. Opening Day starter Yordano Ventura quickly ran into trouble in the first, giving up two singles and a walk to load the bases before the first out of the ALDS was recorded. Two ground balls scored two runs on two outs, and before the Royals knew it they were trailing, at home, to the “dominant force in the AL.” They tried to fight back with a Kendrys Morales home run, but in the second and third the Astros piled on more - soon it was 3-2, Houston. Rain came in and forced Ventura out of the game, and reliever Chris Young entered an hour later or so, after the delay, where he was solid. The Royals could not close the gap, though, and before anyone knew it, the Astros had come riding into town and won Game 1 of the ALDS against the Royals, 5-2.

Things looked desperate. The Astros suddenly had home field advantage, needing to win 2 of the next 4 games to take the series - and in Game 3, they would certainly be starting the unbeatable Keuchel at home. In other words, Game 2 had the Royals already staring at elimination. A loss today would mean they would need a straight sweep, including beating Keuchel at home, to continue their dream of redeeming 2014.

They sent Johnny Cueto, the man they had sold the farm for, to the mound. But something odd had been happening with Cueto since coming to Kansas City in July: The former ace was no longer, well, an ace. His starts had been rocky and inconsistent, getting lit up one day, pitching brilliantly the next. He had not gotten the results he used to in Cincinnati, when he had effortlessly mowed down batter after batter. Now, he gave up a run in the first, then in the second again he had loaded the bases with nobody out. A bloop single later and it was 3-0, Houston. The Royals were looking like they were about to get run right out of the ALDS. In the bottom of the second, Salvador Perez homered to cut the deficit to 3-1, but he was answered in the 4th by a Colby Rasmus homer to give Astros a 3 run lead once again. And there it stayed until the 6th inning.

The Royals were 11 outs away from going down 2-0 in the series and almost certainly were going to be swept by the wild card team, just as they had done the year before, when Cain doubled with one out in the 6th. The center fielder held at second for Hosmer, but the lefty first baseman looked utterly outmatched by reliever Oliver Perez. Perez quickly got ahead 0-2 as Hosmer lunged at pitches nowhere near his bat. Then he tried to put Hosmer away.

Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than to be good.

Hosmer stabbed his bat across the strike zone at the pitch, which was way outside. His rear thrust backwards as he bent almsot double in an effort to put the bat on the ball. It was, without a doubt, one of the ugliest swings you will ever see.

But it connected. The ball blooped into left field, Cain had a huge lead, and it was a 4-3 ballgame. Everything in Perez’s and Hosmer’s track records before that pitch suggested that what had happened was damn near impossible, as Jeff Pasan pointed out after the game.  But it had happened, and the Royals were within 1 run.

Morales followed up with a ground ball through the shift, putting runners at first and third, and then Moose walked to load the bases. Needing a double play or a strikeout to escape danger, the Astros - well, they didn’t get it. With Salvador Perez at the plate, Oliver Perez through a wild pitch that nearly got away from the catcher. Ball one. He threw another pitch - outside. Ball 2. He threw a third - missed outside again. Ball 3. And finally, he threw a pitch that darted inside, past Perez’s knuckles - but Salvy never swung. 4 pitches, 4 balls, and the game was tied.

It was the first bases-loaded walk in Salvador Perez’s career. It could not have come at a more crucial time. (Fangraphs later did an excellent job breaking down how such an unlikely event happened).

The Royals had all the momentum, but you guys know what momentum means in baseball: Diddly. Alex Gordon struck out, and then Alex Rios did as well, leaving 3 men on base and the game still tied. With the Royals’ bullpen, KC had the upper hand, but they desperately needed a win here just to stave off elimination.

But in the bottom of hte 7th, Alcides Escobar ambushed the first pitch, as he always did, and managed ot hit into the gap in the outfield. The outfielders misplayed it and Escobar careened itno third in what was generously ruled a triple. The next batter, Ben Zobrist, followed up right away with a single to score Escobar and give Kansas City its first lead of the series. With 6 outs to go, the KC bullpen came in and shut down the Astros for the 8th.

In the 9th, Wade Davis got one out, then walked Preston Tucker. Carlos Gomez immediately came in to pinch run. He took a lead off first - and then Wade Davis suddenly fired over to Hosmer. Gomez  dove desperately for the bag, and it was so close the umpire called him safe...but on replay, he was obviously, unmistakeably out.

In fairness to Gomez, this was a hell of a play, as much a credit to Hosmer’s pick as it was to Davis’ throw. Gomez didn’t appear to do anything wrong; he didn’t take off for second base or get caught leaning or anything, and not only was he called safe by the umpire, immediately afterwards the announcers were completely dismissive of even the possibility that he was out. (Matt Vasgersian’s call: “Very close over there…perhaps not as close as the fans would lead you to believe.”) But this is where replay shines – Gomez was clearly and unmistakably out on video review, and after a brief conference, the umpires overturned the ruling on the field. Now instead of singles-machine Jose Altuve potentially batting with the tying run in scoring position, he batted with two outs and no one on base, and grounded out to end the game.

How unlikely was it? It was the first time Wade Davis had picked off a runner since 2013 – when he was still a starting pitcher.

How embarrassing was it for Gomez? It was the first time a runner had been picked off in the 9th inning of a one-run playoff game since Herb Washington was nailed by Mike Marshall in Game 2 of the 1974 World Series.

For the second year in a row, the Royals won ALDS Game 2 with perfect defense against a pinch runner. The series was tied up 1-1 and the Royals were headed to Houston. They were not out of danger yet - not by any means. Houston had dominated all but 3 innings of the series, and the Royals had scraped out one win by the skin of their teeth after the Astros had cruised to victory in Game 1 - and now Houston had two games at home. Keuchel was almost a guaranteed Houston win, which meant that Game 4 would give the Astros the chance to finish off the Royals at home and move onto their first-ever ALCS.

The next two games, in short, would determine the fate of the entire Royals’ season. Teaser image for next time:

 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

2015 ALDS, Part 2

Video summary (again, recommended): Here.



Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS were in Houston, with the Royals needing to win at least one to stay alive and push the series to 5 games. The trouble was, Edison Volquez was not nearly as good a pitcher as Dallas Keuchel, who would win the AL Cy Young award that year (the Cy Young is the award given to the best pitcher in baseball that season, as voted on by players and managers, I believe). Keuchel had not lost a game at home in the entire season.

The Royals would try their damndest, though. Maybe it was the comeback win in Game 2, but the team was starting to fire on all cylinders and look like the juggernaught they’d been all year. The defense, as always, was spectacular, like this play from Alex Gordon.

In 2011, Alex Gordon’s first full year as a left fielder, it was perhaps understandable that he nailed 20 baserunners: opponents did not yet realize that his combination of arm strength and accuracy gave him one of the best arms ever seen in left field. Less understandable were the 17 baserunner kills he had in 2012…and even less understandable were the 17 baserunner kills he had in 2013. Gordon became the first left fielder in at least 60 years – which is as far back as we have outfield data split up by position – to throw out 17 or more baserunners in three consecutive seasons.

Finally, in 2014, after Gordon had thrown out a runner on the bases practically once a week for three years, the evidence became too overwhelming for opposing teams to ignore: YOU SHOULD NOT RUN ON ALEX GORDON. He only threw out eight baserunners in 2014 – still an excellent number for a left fielder – and in 2015 he only threw out four baserunners in 101 games. It’s hard to throw out a baserunner when the third base coach puts his hands in his pockets the second the ball is hit to left field. Basically the only way for Gordon to throw out a runner now is if the runner forgets, if only for a moment, that Alex Gordon is in left field.

In Game 3 of the ALDS, leading off the bottom of the third inning in a tie game, Chris Carter forgot who was playing left field. You can tell the exact moment when he forgot – he slows down as he approaches first base, but then suddenly accelerates, probably because the ball he drove into the left field corner hit one of the scoreboard plates and died, forcing Gordon to move up to field the ball. Gordon hits Ben Zobrist on the fly from the warning track, and Carter was out by five feet.

In the top of the fourth, the very next inning, Lorenzo Cain battled Keuchel for ten pitches, fouling off 5 pitches with 2 strikes. Now, Keuchel is a groundball pitcher, and very stingy with the home run - he had given up only 28 at home in all of 2014 and 2015, and Minute Maid is a notoriously small ballpark*, but he fouled up here. On the 11th pitch of the at-bat, Cain slammed the ball deep to left. Kansas City led 1-0 going into the 5th inning.

*Not all baseball stadiums are identical - every major league park has its own characteristics, from the short right porch at Yankee Stadium to the Big Green Monster at Fenway. The Royals’ own Kauffman Stadium is the largest in the American League, with an enormous outfield. It puts a premium on defensive outfielders and speed on the basepaths, since you can’t hit a lot of home runs at Kauffman. It’s no coincidence that the Royals emphasized defense and speed).

Volquez faltered, though. A walk, a double, and a single scored 2 Houston runs to give the Astros the lead. In the next inning, Volquez gave up a leadoff double, recovered to grab two outs, then another single pushed the score to 3-1 Houston. A home run off Danny Duffy in the 8th and the score was 4-1 Houston. For the third straight game, the Astros led by 3 runs. This time, an Alex Gordon home run was all the Royals would get (in the 9th) and the Astros win game 3 4-2, putting them one win away from moving on to the ALCS.

Game 4, then, was life or death for the Royals. Defeat would mean their elimination and the end of the quest to regain the World Series. Victory, and they lived another day. The only more important games they had played before this were the Wild Card Game and Game 7.

Salvador Perez opened scoring for the Royals, hitting a 2-run homer in the top of the second. But the Astros quickly battled back - Carlos Gomez homered in the second, then Carlos Correa homered in the third to tie it. In the 5th, George Springer worked a 2-out walk off Ventura, and then Carlos Correa - who would be Rookie of the Year  - followed up with a double that scored Springer easily from first. 3-2, Houston.

And there the score stood when the fateful 7th inning started.

With one out, Salvador Perez got on base with a single. He had taken a foul ball to the face earlier in the game, he was slightly woozy, and the Royals desperately needed a run with their remaining 8 outs. So, Perez was lifted, the glass “break in case of stolen base” was broken, and Terrance Gore, the fastest man in baseball, who had never been caught stealing, came on. On the second pitch of Gordon’s at bat, Gore took off for second - and easily stole it. Gordon struck out. Seven outs to go. Two outs for Alex Rios - but the tying run was at second.

Gore, of course, wasn’t content at second. Again he took off for third - and he beat the throw by a mile. Gore slammed into the bag ahead of the throw, moving so quickly that he bounced for a bit as he struck, while third baseman Luis Valbuena struggled to hold onto the ball. The fastest man in baseball had another stolen base, and the tying run was 90 feet away. Except...

Houston called for a replay review.

The umpires conferred for a while.

Then Gore was out.

The umpires determined that, for a split second, Gore’s foot had came off the bag after his steal. Never mind that he beat the throw. Never mind that his cleat was caught in Valbuena’s pants, meaning he was pushed off the base. Never mind that Valbuena wasn’t even tagging him at the time - the only part of his body in contact with Gore was his wrist, not the glove with the ball as the rules call for. None of that mattered. Gore was out, the inning was over, and Kansas City was down to their final six outs of the season trailing by a single run. 

I’m still bitter about this play 3 years later. Gore was safe.

If momentum exists in baseball, the blown call shifted it all to Houston. The bottom of the 7th started. Ryan Madson took the mound. Greg Holland had gone down for surgery at the end of the regular season, and Wade Davis had taken over the closer’s role. That meant that the 7th was a little weaker than the 2014 Royals’ had been. Herrera, who had already worked the sixth, began the 7th by walking Altuve, who almost never walks. The next batter was Carlos Correa, who had already homered and doubled. Yost decided to lift the tired Herrera in favor of Ryan Madson.

A few pitches into the bat, Altuve took off for second - and at the same time, Madson hung a slider. Matt Vasgersian’s call: “There goes the runner - and THERE GOES CORREA, AGAIN!” The ball sailed off into the stands, carrying the Royals’ postseason hopes with it. 5-2, Houston. The very next batter, Colby Rasmus, followed up with another home run. The Royals were  down 6-2, with only six outs left before their season came to an end.

Watching at home, I punched a wall in disgust, holding back tears of frustration and anger. We’d come so far, only to fall on our faces in the very first test. My dad, across the state, turned off the television sadly, wearily, while my brother gave up watching the game and left for his shift at Mr. Goodcents Subs ‘n Pasta a few minutes early.

Back in Houston, after Correa and Rasmus went back-to-back, Madson allowed a single to Evan Gattis, and then a single to Carlos Gomez, on which pinch-runner Jake Marisnick advanced to third base, with Gomez moving up to second on the throw. And yet after allowing the last four batters to go homer-homer-single-single, Ryan Madson stayed in the game. Maybe Ned Yost was having one of his genius moments. Or maybe he was thinking about how to congratulate the Astros after the game, and forgot to pull Madson. Or maybe he just gave up.

At that moment, the Royals’ odds of winning the game were about 1.6% – translating to 1 in 60 – which means their odds of winning the World Series were about 1 in 500. The Royals had six outs left and trailed by four, but they were about to trail by five or six. They stood on the very brink. Madson stared into the abyss - and ever so slightly pulled back from plunging in.

Instead, Madson got Luis Valbuena to hit a shallow fly ball to left field, much too shallow for Marisnick to even think about tagging against Alex Gordon. Madson would then strike out Marwin Gonzalez on three pitches to get out of the inning. The Royals’ odds of winning the game had doubled to 3.2%, or to two snowballs’ chances in hell.

Houston fans were high-fiving themselves and congratulating each other. In Toronto, as they prepared to watch the Blue Jays tilt against the Rangers again, Jays fans were smug, pleased that their rivals the Royals were flaming out so early. Texas governor Greg Abbott congratulated the Astros on Twitter:

The game, of course, was not finished. True, the Royals had next to no chance. But you still had to play out the execution. In 112 years of baseball, in thousands of playoff games, there had been hundreds of teams that trailed by four runs in a elimination game with six outs left. Nearly all of them at lost.

But one of them - only one, in all those years - had not. One team had survived. One team, all but dead and buried, had grabbed a second chance at life.

That team was the 2014 Royals, in the wild card. Now the 2015 team would ahve to repeat that miracle.

The Royals had six outs left in their season. They needed to find a way to make those outs last as long as possible. They needed to work counts, foul off pitches, and either force the Astros to throw strikes or take four balls. They needed to rage against the dying of the light.

Instead, having just watched the Astros’ patient approach break the game open, Alex Rios came to the plate leading off the top of the 8th inning, with the Royals needing three baserunners just to bring the tying run to the plate, and swung at Will Harris’ first pitch.

He lined it to left field for a single.

Next up was Alcides Escobar, the top of the order. Harris shook off the single, and got two strikes on Esky.  Harris tried to finish Escobar off with a 2-2 curveball, and Esky managed a nifty piece of hitting to put the ball in play at all. He managed to poke the ball straight up the middle, inches off the ground until it made solid contact with the lip of the pitcher’s mound, getting a true bounce that took the ball straight up the middle and past the infield. If the ball hit the mound an inch to the left or right, it might have bounced right toward the shortstop or second baseman. On such small margins are rallies made and games won.

The smiles were fading from the Astros’ faces now, their looks growing more serious. On the Royals’ side, every man was intense, focus, concentrated. As Ben Zobrist came to the plate, his expression was grim. The dugout had talked, before the inning started. We are not losing this game. Just get on base. Keep the line moving. No hero swings. No homers. Just get on base, do your job, and let the guy behind you do his.

On the 1-1 pitch, Zobrist hit a ball to shallow center - and reached safely. Rios stood at third, Escobar at second, and now Zobrist at first. There were no outs, and Lorenzo Cain, representing the tying run, had come to bat.

Keep. The. Line. Moving. The Royals had begun the top of the 8th inning in Houston with three straight singles, and on a 1-1 pitch, Lorenzo Cain made it four with a sharp groundball – somewhere between a grounder and a line drive – right through what Tony Gwynn called the 5.5 hole. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of 40,000 fans panicking all at once. It was a 6-3 ballgame, and every fan in the ballpark was standing, now. Their cheers had faded. The Astros were as grim as the Royals, as they recognized that the game was not over, and they had a fight on their hands. Kansas City would not go quietly.

The morning before the game, Eric Hosmer had published his one and so far only piece in the Player’s Tribune: No Fluke.

He wrote: 

“When the season began this year, I knew we were a team that had several identities — that represented a lot of things: Comeback kids. A new generation. Playoff veterans. The defending AL Champs. But one identity stood out above the rest: No fluke.

And that, to me, is what has defined this team all season long — and has made it so special, and its objective so unique.

While every other contender right now is playing with the goal of proving that they belong this year — for us the stakes are even higher. For us, we feel like we aren’t just playing for this year … we’re playing for last year as well.

We’re playing to win the pennant. But we’re also playing to prove that last year’s pennant was real. We’re playing to prove that the “heartbreaking ending” to our season was only one of those things: That yeah, it was heartbreaking. But it wasn’t an ending at all.

It was a beginning.

They predicted that we would win 75 games this year. We won 95. And now we’re in a fight for our playoff lives.

In other words: We’re right where we want to be.

We weren’t a fluke.

We’re the Kansas City Royals.

We’re here, now. And we’re going to be sticking around for a while.”

Now, Kansas City stood 6 outs and 3 runs from elimination. But they weren’t eliminated yet. And Hosmer did his part. For the fifth straight time, the Houston reliever tried to defeat a batter. For the 5th straight time, that batter singled. Hosmer’s ball just barely cleared Altuve’s head - if he stood a few inches taller this might have been a double play - and Escobar scampered home. Cain was into second with a slide, and the line kept moving, still. The Royals’ win probably, just 3% when Alex Rios came to the plate 15 minutes before, had climbed all the way to 45%. And now it was Kendrys Morales’ turn. Harris was out, at last, and Tony Sipp would take over for him.

Kendrys Morales, as we know, cannot run. He has 3 screws in his left ankle. He is built to do one thing: to hit the ball for power and drive it. He is the anti-Terrance Gore. Whenever he doesn’t hit for power, though, he is a double play machine. Everything was perfectly set for a rally-killing double play allowing Houston to escape.

And sure enough, Sipp’s 0-1 pitch was a 77 mph back-door curveball that Morales reached across the plate for, and hit a grounder straight back up the middle. If Sipp fields it, it’s probably a 1-2-3 double play and the Royals are still down 6-4. Instead it tipped off his glove, which slowed it down a little and directed it towards the shortstop side of the bag, in perfect position for Carlos Correa to turn a 6-4-3 double play. The Royals would score a run to make it 6-5, but there would be two outs and the tying run would be at third.

Correa is the closest thing we’ve seen to a young Alex Rodriguez since a young Alex Rodriguez. As a 20-year-old, he was called up in early June and in just 99 games he hit 22 home runs and stole 14 bases, hit .279/.345/.512, played good defense at shortstop and won Rookie of the Year honors. And he had almost single-handedly put the Royals on the brink of elimination.

In Game 3 of the 1985 ALCS, George Brett had what is widely considered to be the greatest individual game performance in Royals history. He homered in the 1st inning to open the scoring, doubled leading off the 3rd and scored on a pair of fly balls to give the Royals a 2-0 lead. After Toronto scored five runs in the 5th, the Royals trailed 5-3 when Brett batted with a man on board in the 6th and tied the game with a two-run homer. And then Brett led off the bottom of the 8th with a single and scored the winning run on Steve Balboni’s two-out single. Along the way he made one of the best defensive plays of his career to throw Damaso Garcia out at the plate in the 3rd inning.

In Game 4 of the 2015 ALDS, Carlos Correa basically had the George Brett game. Correa was hit by a pitch in the 1st inning but did not score. In the 3rd, with the Astros down 2-0, he homered with two outs. In the 5th, with the Astros still losing 2-1, Correa batted with a man on first and two outs and doubled into the right field corner to tie the game. In the 7th, with the Astros now holding a 3-2 lead, Correa homered with a man aboard. He even singled leading off the 9th inning. Like Brett, Correa went 4-for-4 with two home runs and a double. Correa’s WPA for the game was 0.497; Brett’s WPA was 0.485.

The only thing Correa was missing was the incredible defensive play.

But something happened to the ball that day, when Sipp stabbed at it. He missed, but he added just a little bit of spin. And when Carlos Correa ran in on the ball to back up Sipp and squelch the rally, the ball went just a little bit higher than he anticipated. And instead of a double play - the ball skipped past Correa and on into centerfield. Morales reached safely.

And the game was tied.

In their franchise’s history, the Royals have had 57 plate appearances with the bases loaded in the postseason. This is the only time the batter reached base on an error. And fifteen minutes after the Royals’ season appeared over, the game was tied, the go-ahead run was on third base with one out, and their Win Probability stood at 75%. The Miracle at Minute Maid wasn’t complete, but the miracle part of the Miracle at Minute Maid was.

Luke Gregerson came in.He struck out Moose, and then Drew Butera, the Royals’ backup catcher and perhaps the worst hitter in baseball, was at the plate (remember, Salvy had been lifted in the 7th).  But it’s not just that Butera can’t hit – it’s that no one even expects him to hit, it’s just accepted that he won’t hit. On at least one occasion during the season he hit an RBI single, and the reaction of the crowd – and Ryan Lefebvre! – was the kind of unexpected joy that you only hear when a pitcher drives in a run.

And Butera was facing Luke Gregerson, possessor of one of the best sliders in baseball, and you knew what was going to happen: Gregerson was going to throw slider after slider after slider until Butera struck out, and the Royals would miss a golden opportunity to drive in the go-ahead run in an elimination game without a base hit. After all, that’s what Gregerson had done the last time the Royals had been down by four runs in the 8th inning of an elimination game, the Wild Card Game, when – after giving up a single to Billy Butler and then a wild pitch had put the tying run at third base with one out – Gregerson had struck out the man Butera had replaced, Perez, on three pitches, and then struck out Omar Infante to end the rally.

And sure enough, Gregerson threw slider after slider after slider, most of them right on the outside corner, too close to the strike zone to take but almost impossible to hit with authority. And Butera…well, Butera kept fouling off slider after slider after slider, doing a tremendous job of staying alive. Seven, eight, nine pitches, and he was still alive, and the count was full. And finally, Gregerson threw a slider a little farther outside, and Butera started to swing, and…he held up. It was ball four. Butera had walked on 10 pitches, making this plate appearance the third-longest of his career. (Incredibly, the longest plate appearance of his career – a 12-pitch walk – had occurred in his previous game, the season finale against Minnesota on October 4th.)He didn’t score a run, but he kept the line moving. Instead of two outs for Alex Gordon, there was only one, and the tying run was at third.

Gordon came through. The 1-1 pitch was rolled slowly past first. Altuve dove for it and made the stop - but all he could do was get the ball to first to nab Gordon. Hosmer scored, and Kansas City had gone from down 6-2 at the start of the inning to up 7-6 a few batters later. And Wade Davis was waiting.

The oxygen had been sucked out of Minute Maid Park. The home crowd was dispirited, demoralized, defeated. The Astros players were weary, shocked at what had just happened. In the 8th, they went quietly. In the 9th, Eric Hosmer drove in the knife and twisted it deeper with a 2-run homer, but it didn’t matter much - Davis is as automatic with a 3-run lead as with a 1-run lead. Automatic he was. The Astros did not threaten again.

Final score, 9-6, Kansas City. The Royals were alive, and were coming back to Kansas City for a winner take all showdown with the Astros. They had done the impossible again - only the second team in history to rally from a 4-run deficit in an elimination game. In later years, the game would come to be known as The Miracle at Minute Maid. And the Miracle had redeemed the 2014 team, too: They had shown the world that they were indeed, no fluke.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

At this point, it would be useful to pause and examine the rest of the playoff picture in 2015, before finishing off the ALDS.

Over on the National League side, the Central Division had seen a fierce race for the division title. The Cardinals, the Cubs, and the Pirates all won more than 95 games - in  , they had the best three records in all of baseball (the Royals, atop the American League, were 4th). However, only one could win the division - the other two would be reduced to wild cards and the one-game playoff. The Cardinals came out on top in the end, with an even 100 victories. The Pirates finished second, with 98, just ahead of the Cubs, with 97. The best team outside the Central, the Los Angeles Dodgers, won only 92, and the New York Mets, winning the East, won only 90. The team with the best record would face the wild card winner (who had not won a division and thus would presumably be the weaker team) - which meant that the best three teams in all of baseball would be forced to face and annihilate each other in the first 2 playoff rounds. This was not a situation that the MLB playoff bracket had ever been designed for.




The Pittsburgh Pirates, who had had a 22-year playoff drought, nearly as long as the Royals, had finally made it to the playoffs in 2013, winning the wild card game, only to lose to the St. Louis Cardinals in the division series. The next year, 2014, they had again made the wild card - only to lose to Madison Bumgarner in the one-game playoff. Now, in 2015, they had won an astonishing 98 games, 3 more than the best team in the entire American League - and their reward was a one-game playoff against the Cubs in Pittsburgh, and the Cubs had Jake Arrieta, one of the best young pitchers in baseball. Sure enough, the Pirates were shut out and eliminated in the first round for the second year in a row.




The Cubs went on to face their bitter rivals, the Cardinals, in the division series - the first time the two clubs had ever met in the postseason. The Cardinals won the first game, but then were drubbed in three straight by the young, surging Cubs team. The Cubs were fired by the belief that they were the team of destiny that year - Back to the Future had predicted a Cubs World Series win in 2015.



The Los Angeles Dodgers would face the Mets in the other division series. The Mets won Game 1 in LA (like the Astros had beaten the Royals in Kansas City), but the Dodgers recovered to win Game 2. Game 2 was marred by controversy - Dodger Chase Utley slid hard into second base to break up a double play (remember Brett Lawrie?), and in the process broke the leg of Mets’ shortstop Ruben Tejada. After the season, the rules were changed to disallow aggressive slides.  Game 3 saw the Mets blow out the Dodgers, 13-7, but (like the Astros) were unable to finish off the Dodgers in Game 4, as LA forced a deciding Game 5 at home.




The Dodgers took an early 2-1 lead in the first inning of Game 5, but then Daniel Murphy happened. The Mets second baseman was a poor defender, but a great hitter, and he was starting to explode in the postseason. He had homered in the losing effort in Game 4, and now in Game 5, in the fourth inning, he stole the tying run for the Mets. As Murphy was walking to second (following a walk to first baseman Lucas Duda), he noticed that the infield had shifted.

The infield shift is a defensive move in baseball rapidly growing in popularity. Scouts have noticed that hitters have certain tendencies, usually hitting balls in the same direction time and again - and in hundreds of at-bats each season, there’s a large body of data available on every hitter. So, the defenders will radically shift to face each batter according to his idiosyncrasies, and hits have begun to drop dramatically around the league.

As Murphy walked to second, he noticed that the third baseman was not at the bag - the shift had moved him all the way over to shallow right field (the opposite side of second) and he was lazily walking back to the bag - and the pitcher had the ball, meaning that it was okay to steal. And there was no one standing on third. So as Murphy reached second, he simply never stopped, breaking into a sudden sprint to third before the Dodgers realized what was happening. Mets catcher Travis D’Arnaud hit a sacrifice fly to score Murphy and tie the game.




A few innings later, Murphy homered for the second straight game to give the Mets the lead, 3-2. New York won the deciding Game 5 on the road and advanced to meet the Cubs in the National League Championship.

Meanwhile, the Royals’ bitter rival, the Toronto Blue Jays, had had their own near-death experience in the ALDS against the Texas Rangers. After Kansas City so memorably ended its 29-year playoff drought in 2014, the last remaining drought longer than 2 decades belonged to the Blue Jays, who had last been seen in the 1993 World Series (winning it on Joe Carter’s monumental walk-off homer - “Touch ‘em all, Joe! You’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life!”). In the second half of 2015, the Jays had been a juggernaut, winning more games in a shorter amount of time than any other team, scoring more runs by far than any other team, and coming within a whisker of catching the Royals for home field advantage. 

The Jays had dropped Game 1 at home to the Rangers, 5-3, in a game they never led. Then, in Game 2, with a 1-run lead in the 8th, their bullpen had allowed the Rangers to tie it. The game stretched on into the 10th, then the 11th, the 12th, the 13th - until finally, in the 14th, the Rangers scored two in the top to take the lead. They held on to win, 6-4, and suddenly Toronto was heading to Texas needing to win three straight games to avoid elimination, including two on the road.

The Jays would not go down easily, though, and their offensive remained the most explosive in the league. In the first game at Arlington, the Jays jumped all over the Ranger, with a 3-run home run from shortstop Troy Tulowitzki pushing the Jays’ score to 5 before the Rangers even scored a run. In Game Four, still facing elimination, still on the road, the Jays made it a laugher early, with three runs in the first, one in the second, and three more in the third making it 7-0 Jays. This was the game Blue Jays fans were watching while alternately rubbing their hands with glee as, a hundred miles down the road in Houston, the Royals fell behind 6-2 headed into the 8th…

In any case, the Jays routed the Rangers in Texas and the series returned to Toronto for Game 5.  An RBI single by Prince Fielder in the first and a homer by Shin-Soo Choo in the third gave the Rangers an early lead over Marcus Stroman and the Jays. The Jays fought back to tie it with an RBI double by José Bautista in the third and a home run by Edwin Encarnación in the sixth. So it came to the 7th inning, 2-2.

The 7th inning lasted 53 minutes. I can’t really top the Oral History that’s already been written: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-mlb-playoffs-blue-jays-rangers-alds-game-5-seventh-inning-oral-history/


Nevertheless, I will try.

It started innocently - Roughned Odor singled to start the inning, advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt, then to third on a groundout. Jays reliever Aaron Sanchez was just one out away from escaping with the tie intact, when the most bizarre play in the entire season happened: Shin-Soo Choo took a pitch at the plate. Russell Martin threw the ball back to the pitcher - and as he did so, the ball glanced off Choo’s bat and skittered away. The Jays were confused, the umpire was confused, the batter was confused - but not Odor, who alertly darted home on the play to score the go-ahead run. 3-2, Rangers, and now the Jays were only 9 outs from elimination.




Initially, home plate umpire Dale Scott ruled that it was a dead ball and Odor could not be allowed to score - you can see him motioning for time even as Odor is 2/3s of the way home. The run was voided, and the crowd at Rogers Centre, which had been growing restive as they realized that their season might end on such an absurd play, calmed, slightly.  Rangers manager Jeff Banister argued, pointing out that Choo was in the batter’s box and could not be accused of interference. The run was reinstated.

Chaos.

The crowd exploded in fury. Beer cans, food wrappers, rubbish of all sorts rained onto the field as the fans in the seats damn near rioted. The Blue Jays’ manager, John Gibbons, said that he was playing the game under protest. Angry chants, boos, and jeers poured down on the wretched umpires and the hapless players in the field. For a solid 18 minutes the game was delayed while the crowd worked out its rage at the injustice of it all.




At last, order was restored, sort of. The fans were upset and rowdy, but the anarchy had ceased and things looked like they were enough in order for play to proceed. Choo made an out and the bottom of the 7th started, 3-2, Rangers.

Russell Martin started things with an easy ground ball to Elvis Andres - who booted it. The Blue Jays catcher reached on an error. The next batter, outfielder Kevin Pillar, grounded to Mitch Moreland at first, who gloved it and fired to second for the force. But Moreland bounced the throw, tying up Andrus, who couldn’t corral it. Both runners were safe. Two batters, two straight errors, had put the tying run in scoring position and the go-ahead run at first.

Toronto second baseman Ryan Goins, who led the Jays with seven sacrifice bunts, came to the plate with the whole world aware he was about to drop one down. He did drop the bunt. Texas third baseman Adrian Beltre pounced in plenty of time, but his throw clanked off of Andrus’s glove for the Rangers’ third consecutive error. It was the first time a team had made three errors in one inning of a winner-take-all playoff game. The bases were loaded, and no one was out for the Jays.

The fourth batter of the inning which should already have ended was Ben Revere. Revere grounded to third, where Mitch Moreland fired a strike home to nab pinch-runner Dalton Pompey (perhaps the third fastest man in baseball, after the Royals’ Gore and Dyson). Pompey slid hard to take out the catcher and prevent the double play, just like Utley had a few days before. He was out and the Rangers still led, but the bases were still loaded.

With the right-handed Donaldson up, Banister replaced starter Cole Hamels with righty reliever Sam Dyson. On the third pitch of the at-bat, a 99 mph sinker, Donaldson lofted a weak pop to second that Odor didn’t catch. The ball was in shallow center - but Odor misplayed it. He was not charged an error purely through the vagaries of the scoring system. Odor recovered and got the force out at second, but the tying run scored, and two men were on base as Jose Bautista came to the plate.

Bautista fouled off the first pitch, then took the second. The count was 1-1, and on Dyson’s third pitch, the beefy outfielder connected. The ball leapt off the bat and rocketed into the night.


“There’s a drive!” the announcer shouted in excitement. “Deep to left! No doubt about it!” Bautista paused for a moment to admire his handiwork, then tossed his bat and jogged around the bases - his 3-run shot had given the Jays a 6-3 lead. The image of his batflip became the enduring photo of the Jays’ postseason, a go-ahead shot following on the heels of that wild 7th inning, for a team in their first playoff series since 1993.




The chaos was not over. The Rangers, annoyed by the bat flip (which was seen as needless showboating and an effort to embarrass them - poor sportsmanship), cleared their bench. The Jays cleared their dugout as well, and the two teams jostled each other in the field, each mass of men trying to stare the other down, while umpires desperately motioned for calm from the crowd - which was exploding in exuberance at the turn of events, celebrating their release from death a few minutes earlier.

Eventually, calm - more or less - was restored, and for the 8th Roberto Osuna, only 20 years old, came on for the save. The Rangers, perhaps crushed by the emotionally exhausting 7th inning, went quietly, and the Jays punched their ticket to the ALCS.

Next time, I'll wrap up the Royals' own Game 5 experience.