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

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

2015 ALDS Part Three

Video Summary: Here.


After the Miracle at Minute Maid, Game 5, at Kauffman, should have been easy one for the Royals. But Game 7 also should have been an easy one, and we saw how that one turned out. Furthermore, the rest of the postseason hadn’t really given the Royals cause for much hope. The Cardinals had not survived Game 4. The Dodgers had forced Game 5 at home - only to lose. The Jays had managed to win their Game 5, but only after one of the most improbable innings in baseball history.

Making matters worse, the Royals had never really dominated the Astros this ALDS. They had lost two games, after all, and in the two games they did win, they had taken the lead in the 7th inning and in the 8th inning - two skin-of-their-teeth victories. The Astros could grab an early lead and then throw Dallas Keuchel into long relief, repeating Madison Bumgarner’s legendary performance from the year before.

The Royals had Johnny Cueto on the mound, and this was the start they had sold the farm for. They had given up some of their best young players to bring Cueto to Kansas City for one reason: to win in the playoffs. Now, in a winner-take-all game, was the time. But Cueto had struggled in KC. He had been uneven all through August and September, his ERA had spiked, his strikeouts had fallen, and his last start, Game 2, had been sloppy, giving up 4 runs and forcing KC to make its first comeback of the season. Now, in the second inning of Game 5, Mike Moustakas made a minor throwing error to put Houston’s first baserunner of the night - and then the next batter, Luis Valbuena, jumped Cueto and hit the ball into the night. 2-0, Houston. When Ben Zobrist struck out leading off the 4th, Kansas City’s chance to win the game had already fallen to 28%, and Dallas Keuchel was near.

The 2014 Royals were not a comeback team. They were an exciting team, for sure, with 4 extra-inning victories, 3 1-run wins, and a game where they scored the winning run in the 9th, but other than the dramatic wild card game, they never won a game where they trailed by more than one run.

Spoilers: the 2015 Royals were a comeback team.




After Zobrist struck out, Lorenzo Cain singled off Colin McHugh. Hosmer followed, and worked the count full. He fouled off one 3-2 pitch, then dropped the next one into centerfield. Cain was already dashing towards second. He stormed past the base and was well on his way to third when Carlos Gomez fielded the ball. As Gomez scooped it up, though, his cleats gave out from under him and he wound up plopping onto his rear. He quickly lofted the ball to Jose Altuve at second to hold Hosmer to one base.

Meanwhile, Cain had reached third and never stopped running. He was safe at home without a throw from Altuve and suddenly it was a 1-run game.

On the other side of the ball, Johnny Cueto had settled down. In fact, since Valbuena’s home run in the third, he hadn’t allowed a single man on base. He set down the side in order in the third...then again in the fourth...and through the top of the 5th he had retired 9 Astros in order. He did his trademark shimmy on the mound before each batter, his long dreadlocks floating around his head, then would scorch a ball past the batter to Perez’s waiting glove. This was the Cueto that the Royals had hoped for when they traded for him.




Colin McHugh, though, was struggling. Perez, leading off the 5th, worked the count full - then was hit by a pitch to take first base. Alex Gordon, following up, was able to work the count full as well - then smacked the ball into right field, where George Springer was playing shallow for reasons unknown to science. The ball bounded up and over the wall, a lucky break for the Astros as Perez was forced to hold at third.

The tying and go-ahead runs were in scoring position for Alex Rios, at the bottom of the Kansas City lineup.

Rios had had a rough year. He started out well, remember, in the first week of the season, hitting very strongly during the 7-game opening winning streak. An errant pitch had broken his hand, though, and caused him to miss weeks of the season. When he returned, he wasn’t quite the same hitter, often striking out in key situations, very rarely coming through. The 9th spot comes up least often in the game, so it’s where your weakest hitter sits (the Royals lineup was so strong, though, that Gordon, the #8 hitter, was as good as most teams’ 4 or 5 hitters), and the 9th had been where Rios lived through all the playoffs. Fans were frustrated with his lackadaisical play in right field and his seeming lack of concern at the plate. Rios didn’t seem to care that he was awful, he was just htere to collect his paycheck.

McHugh was out after the double to Gordon, so Rios faced Fiers, with the Royals trailing in an elimination game, with 12 outs left. On the 1-1 pitch, Alex Rios redeemed himself from all the criticisms he’d weathered over his difficult season. He chopped the ball hard towards third. Ten feet from the plate it hit and bounced. Luis Valbuena made a desperate stab at it - then the ball was past and over third base, inches fair as it flew into no man’s land in left field. Perez scored, Gordon was right behind him, and Rios had done something that had not happened in any of the Royals’ 13 postseason wins in the last two years: he had delivered a hit with the Royals trailing, and given them the lead. Afterwards, it turned out that Alex Rios could show emotion:




It just took the hit that decided the course of a playoff series.

Escobar followed up with a sacrifice bunt that moved Rios to third, bringing up Ben Zobrist. I haven’t talked about Zobrist much except in passing, but it’s worth noting that Zobrist had been spectacular since being traded to Kansas City. His regular season slash line was .284/.364/.453*, stellar for a second baseman, but in the playoffs he was hitting .303/.365/.515. There are countless moments where Zobrist came through with a key hit to score a run or keep a rally alive. His sacrifice fly in Game 2 had scored Escobar to give KC the lead. In the Miracle he had been the third man to single, loading the bases for Lorenzo Cain. And now, Z-man came through again, lofting a sacrifice fly to score Escobar and extend the lead to 4-2, Royals.

*remember, batting average - hits per at bat/on base percentage - hits+walks per at bat/slugging percentage - total bases per at bat. Roughly, how often does he hit? How often does he walk? How much power does he have?

From this point on, momentum, if that exists in baseball, started to run all the Royals’ way. Cueto was on cruise control. He continued to mow down the Astros as they came up. The 6th inning was perfect. The 7th inning - perfect. By the time he finished hte 8th inning, Cueto had retired 19 batters in a row. Other than the Moose error and the mistake pitch to Valbuena, in fact, he had thrown a perfect game. He was the first pitcher to retire so many batters in a row in the playoffs since Roy Halladay’s no-hitter in 2010 (Halladay got 21).




By the bottom of the 8th, the Astros were desperate. They had only one more inning left to play, and they needed the game to be close to have any kind of chance at Wade Davis (who was basically perfect in the playoffs, with one exception which I’ll get to). They threw in Dallas Keuchel, the Cy Young-winning pitcher, on short rest in an effort to keep it a 4-2 ballgame and give them a chance to break through in the 9th.

Keuchel, though, was no Madison Bumgarner. Alcides Escobar greeted him with a double, Zobrist lined out, and then Keuchel walked Cain to get to the left-handed Eric Hosmer, who he got to pop out. That made it two outs, with two men on, when Kendrys Morales came to the plate. He fouled off one pitch, then took a ball. Swung and missed at a nasty curve, then took another ball.

And then Morales got a 2-2 curveball down at his ankles and golfed the ball to left-center field. At the instant the ball hit the bat I thought it was a double in the gap, but I didn’t think he had gotten all of it – and then, just before the camera angle changed to show the flight of the ball, we saw Morales literally skipping to first base. And that’s when we knew. The ball didn’t just clear the fence, it cleared the bleacher box entirely and banged into an advertisement between two fountains.




It was the Royals’ first three-run homer in a playoff game since George Brett took Goose Gossage into the upper deck at Yankee Stadium in 1980, which until this point was the most famous home run in Royals history.

It was glorious. It was a celebration. Morales rounded the bases and stomped on home plate (which had broken his foot a few years earlier). Giving the moment added resonance was that it came against Dallas Keuchel, who would win the Cy Young Award after the season, and who had throttled the Royals for seven inning of one-run ball in winning Game 3 of the series. Morales’ home run was for all intents and purposes a walkoff hit, because there was no doubt afterwards that the Royals were going to win. And to come in a winner-take-all game, 48 hours after the Royals’ grave had already been dug in Houston, gave this moment a sense of relief and release unlike any other in 2015. 

In the 9th, Wade Davis came out with the hammer and nails. There was no drama from the cyborg. The Astros were set down in order, easily, and the Kansas City Royals, three days after they had been all but eliminated in Houston, had kept the dream of redemption alive. They were moving on to the ALCS for a date with the Blue Jays.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm still just killing time until the game starts again. We're drawing near the end of our story, but things are starting to get intense, mostly because I fucking hate the Blue Jays. No video summary today, because I haven't finished making it yet. 

2015 ALCS Part 1

The American League Championship series came down, seemingly inevitably in retrospect, to the best two teams in the American League that year: The Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays had started the season slowly, struggling along at .500 at the All-Star Break halfway through the season, despite having the best run differential in the league. At the trade deadline, though, they had added sluggers Troy Tulowitski and Ben Revere to the lineup, then landed ace David Price to anchor their rotation.




In August, the new-and-improved Jays had met the Royals for a three game series that turned ugly. The Royals pitched inside to AL MVP Josh Donaldson to avoid giving him a chance to hit well. Some of the pitches missed and nearly clipped him - three times, in fact. Incensed, the Jays countered with a pitch that hit Escobar in the 8th inning. Both benches cleared, each club convinced the other had started things. The Jays went on to win that game, but the sniping and backbiting continued on Twitter after the game, as the two teams’ players continued to blame each other for the fracas.

A great contemporary write-up of the whole thing.

The Jays stormed through the league the final two months of the season following that heated August 2nd game, hot on the Royals’ heels. They finished the season going 43-18 - an astonishing .705 win percentage. If the new super-Jays team had played together all season, their record would have been 114 wins, just 4 short of the most in all of baseball history.

As a result, the Jays were widely considered the best team in the league, perhaps even in all of baseball. Their rotation was anchored by David Price, with Marcus Stroman and Marco Estrada solidly backing him. Veteran R. A. Dickey, in the league since 1996, 2012 Cy Young winner, 40 years old, playing in his first-ever postseason, held down the back-end of the rotation. In the bullpen was 20-year old closer Roberto Osuna, youngest active player in the majors and perfect in the postseason so far (Osuna was born the year before Dickey’s league debut, for reference).




The true threat of the Jays, though, was their position players. In right field they had Jose Bautista, hero of Game 5, who had hit more home runs than any player in baseball since 2012. In center was Kevin Pillar, an extremely skilled defender (almost - only almost - as good as Lorenzo Cain) with a weak bat but lots of speed on the basepaths. In left was Ben Revere, a solid hitter and defender. The infield was spearheaded by Josh Donaldson at third base, MVP of the whole league that year, who was itching for revenge on the Royals after losing the wild card game with the A’s the year before. Ryan Goins, at second, was the club’s weakest hitter but was another strong defender, and Chris Colabello at first had a powerful bat. Troy Tulowitski was one of the best shortstops in the majors, Russell Martin was nearly as good a catcher as Salvador Perez, and Edwin Encarnacion was one of the best DHs in the league. In summation, the Jays’ line up, starting with Revere and proceeding through Donaldson, Bautista, Encarnacion, Colabello, Martin, and Tulowitski, had fully 7 players hitting at least at league average and four hitting 50% better than average. It was one of the most frightening lineups ever put on the baseball field, and it had led to the Jays scoring more runs in 2015 than any team since the 1998 Yankees (who had won the World Series).




All in all, the Jays were given the edge by most previews, although they acknowledged that the series would be close:
Grantland: Jays in 6 
Sporting news: Jays in 6
Sports Illustrated divided but mostly Jays in 6.

Bottom line? The Jays were a scary, scary team. And the two teams cordially hated each other. They were the two best teams in their leagues without a doubt. They both were desperate to win. All in all, this was going to be an ALCS to remember.

Escobar got things started for the Royals in Game 1, swinging at the first pitch thrown, just as he had in every game in the ALDS. Most leadoff hitters like to take a couple of pitches, give their guys a chance to see what the enemy pitcher has, ease into the game. Not Escobar. The league’s worst leadoff hitter swung, and connected, and had a lead-off double. It was in vain in the first, as the next three batters made outs, but in the third, Escobar doubled again. And this time, it was with Alex Gordon standing on second - 1-0, Kansas City. Two batters later, Lorenzo Cain punched a ball into right, scoring Escobar to double the lead. Then, one inning later, Salvador Perez launched a solo ball into the seats. 3-0, Kansas City.




Meanwhile, Edison Volquez, the refurbished Pirates pitcher, had been skating in and out of danger with the powerful Toronto lineup. Twice he made it through the order unscathed, though, the unlikely pitcher shutting down the vaunted Jays’ offense. But the 6th inning was coming up.

Remember, the 6th inning had always been a trouble spot for the Royals. In the 7th, they could go to their bullpen and get one inning apiece from a series of elite relievers. But trying to stretch those relievers one extra inning dramatically reduced their effectiveness, so Ned Yost liked to try and keep his starter through 6, if possible. The trouble is, though, by that time the starter’s arm is worn down from the effort of nearly 100 pitches, which need to be fast or deceptive to get by major league hitters. Even worse, though, is the phenomenon of the third time through the batting order. See, batters need to get acquainted with a pitcher. The art of hitting is all about prediction - human reflexes can scarcely react to a ball being thrown 60 feet at 100 mph - and in order to predict a pitcher, you need to know his tendencies. What does his fastball look like? How does his breaking ball break? What windup does he use when he’s throwing a curve? What pitches does he like to throw when the count is 0 - 2, or 2-0, or 3-1? By the time a pitcher faces a batter a third time, they will have seen a dozen or so of his pitches personally, plus had plenty of time to observe their teammate’s at bats - and so the pitcher’s effectiveness drops dramatically the third time through the order and on. Even the greatest pitchers can struggle, and Volquez is not the greatest pitcher in the world.

But he might have more heart than any pitcher in baseball, and never did he show it more than this 6th inning of Game 1.

Ned Yost left Volquez in (stop me if you’ve heard this before), despite having one of the greatest bullpens of all time. Volquez took the mound, sweat pouring down his face, and faced the heart of the most dangerous lineup in decades. He walked Josh Donaldson on 9 pitches. Then he walked Jose Bautista on 9 pitches - and the tying run was at the plate. The bullpen belatedly, too late, started to stir. Volquez, though, had no knowledge of that - he just had the batter in front of him. He let out a deep breath, recovered - and then proceeded to strike out Encarnacion on 4 pitches. 1 out. He faced Chris Colabello - who on the 8th pitch blasted the ball into left field - only for Alex Gordon to already be there, making the catch. Volquez had now thrown 28 pitches in the inning, 103 in the game as a whole, and Kelvin Herrera was ready to come in. But Yost had faith in his starter. He stuck with Volquez.

Rany Jayazerli described the moment:

The power of belief manifested itself again, this time from the sellout crowd. A chant of “Eddie! Eddie!” started from somewhere behind home plate, and within seconds 40,000 Royals fans were yelling “EDDIE! EDDIE!,” trying to convert their auditory vibrations into kinetic energy for Volquez’s depleted right arm. Volquez fell behind Troy Tulowitzki 3-1. Then a called strike, then a foul. And then, on the 36th pitch of the inning, Volquez threw his fastball at 95.4 mph, with late movement that Tulowitzki had a great view of as it veered back into the zone for strike three. The Royals would tack on two insurance runs in the eighth, but the game was decided right there, when a tired starter who had no business being on the mound repaid the faith of 40,000 fans and one manager in full.

The Jays had missed their best chance. In the 8th, Eric Hosmer missed a home run by about a foot (the second time he’s done that - remember his triple in the Wild Card Game?), but the Royals tacked on two more runs in the inning anyway ot push the score to 5-0. The Jays, who had been shut out only 5 times in all 162 regular season games, flailed away at Luke Hochever in the 9th. He was flawless, and the top-scoring offense in baseball was shut out in Game 1 of the ALCS. 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

ALCS Part 2

I thought about splitting this post into two parts, because I kind of ran long - but I already split this post of from yesterday's , because that one ran long! So we'll just squeeze it all in. It's my thread, I can do what I want to (although it does feel kind of lonely in here the last few weeks). Anyway, let's wrap up Game 2 of the ALCS, then I think I can finish the series in just two more posts.

Video summary: Here.



David Price, Toronto’s rented ace, would start Game 2 for the Blue Jays. Price had been in the majors since 2008, and had consistently been one of the best pitchers in the game since making his debut. But one curious streak of ill-luck dogged him: He had never yet won a playoff game that he started. He had lost 6 straight, the second-longest streak in history (behind Randy Johnson’s 7). Price was philosophical about it. He had a note hung in his locker: “If you don’t like it, pitch better.”

He would do that today. Again it was Escobar leading off, and again Escobar swung, and again Escobar had a leadoff hit. But Price settled down after that - in fact, he became so comfortable that he retired 18 straight Royals in a row. Escobar’s leadoff hit was the only thing standing between David Price and a perfect game until the 7th inning.

Yordano Ventura, the kid who had thrown 7 scoreless innings in the World Series the year before, did his best to match Price. In the first, he retired the Jays in order. In the second, Encarnacion and Colabello hit back-to-back singles, but Ventura was bailed out by the stellar Royals’ defense.




He faltered in the 3rd, as back-to-back doubles gave the Jays the lead. Then, in the 6th - stop me if you’ve heard this before - Ned Yost stuck with his starter a little too long.

It started innocently enough. Josh Donaldson popped out foul to Salvador Perez - but the ball struck a wire on the way down and was nullified. A few pitches later, Donaldson singled. Bautista walked, then Encarnacion singled in Donaldson to double the lead, 2-0. Yost let Ventura stay in, and after striking out Chris Colabello, Ventura gave up a drive to right field off the bat of Troy Tulowitzki that Alex Rios futilely dove for, and now it was 3-0 with men on second and third and one out. And still Yost stuck with Ventura; only after he walked Russell Martin on seven pitches did Yost finally pull him. It looked like a manager’s stubbornness and a general manager’s one mistake – giving $11 million to Alex Rios – was going to cost the Royals an ALCS game.





But Luke Hochever - who had been the Royals’ #1 draft pick back in 2006 - stepped up. With the Jays threatening to put the game away, bases loaded, one out, Hochever coaxed an pop-up from Kevin Pillar that triggered the infield fly rule*, then got Ryan Goins to bounce out weakly to first, squelching the rally. The Jays led 3-0, and with David Price as brilliant as he was - he retired the Royals in order in the bottom half of the inning - that was all the lead they would need.

*if there are runners on base and a ball is popped up in the infield, it’s an automatic out. This is done to prevent canny fielders from deliberately dropping the foul in order to get an easy double or even triple play on the runners - if the runner on first tries for second and the ball is caught, the fielders can beat him back to first for the out. If he stays at first and the ball is dropped, then he’s easily beaten to second. This rule is not without controversy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-6ujbLknUc

But the Royals had just escaped from a 6-2 situation with six outs to go a few days before. Now, down only 3 runs, with fully 9 outs to go, they had a snowball’s chance in hell to win the game - and that was all the Royals needed.

I distinctly remember this game. I was listening on the radio as I drove up from St. Louis to Iowa City for a wedding. We pulled into the hotel parking lot just as the bottom of the sixth ended, and I turned the radio off in frustration. We were going to lose, at home, to the Blue Jays, and that would mean Toronto just had to win 3 of the next 5 games to take the series - with 3 games still to come at their home field. We never did have a great chance to beat Toronto, but if we were going to, we had to take this game. I got out of the car and went into the hotel room to change, figuring I’d check the score later, after dinner.

On a Saturday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, in Game 2 of the ALCS, Ben Zobrist led off the bottom of the 7th inning against David Price, who after allowing a single to lead off the game had retired 18 batters in a row. Zobrist skied the first pitch to right field and flung his bat to the ground. As Jayazerli writes,

The home crowd had been a nonfactor for most of the game, which is what happens when the opposing starter retires 18 straight batters. But in the middle of the seventh, the Royals dutifully trotted out their video of Royals fan Eric Stonestreet, who plays Cameron Tucker on Modern Family, on the gigantic Crown Vision video board, acting particularly Tuckerian in exhorting the crowd to GET UP ON YOUR FEET AND MAKE SOME NOY-OYSE!
 
Which was unexpectedly followed by a live camera shot of Stonestreet at the ballpark, taking in the game from the stands. The crowd followed his instructions to the letter.

Who says home field advantage doesn’t matter? If the Royals hadn’t retaken the league’s best record from the Blue Jays during the final weekend of the regular season, they wouldn’t have been at home for Game 2, when a raucous home crowd made it difficult for second baseman Ryan Goins and right fielder Jose Bautista to hear each other, and then one of our own (I’m convinced this happened) called out “I GOT IT!” and confused Goins, who let the ball drop.
The door had been opened a crack - just a crack. But it was enough. Zobrist was just the second baserunner the Royals had since Escobar had led off the game, but Cain didn’t let him go to waste - he rifled a fastball to the opposite field, and just like that the Royals had the tying run at the plate.

Just like in Houston, no one was trying to win the game on one swing. Instead, the Royals worked to keep the line moving - single followed single. There was no panic in the Kansas City dugout. They had been here before. Down three to zero, against probably the most formidable team they had ever faced, just 9 outs left to go? No problem. Hosmer followed Cain with a nifty piece of hitting, driving a change-up into left field that scored the Royals’ first run of the game and put the tying run at first. That brought Kendrys Morales to the plate, and the play that the whole inning turned on.

Remember, as I noted during the Miracle at Minute Maid, Kendrys Morales is a double-play machine. Eric Hosmer is not a fast guy. But what is the Royals’ philosophy? Do your job. Get on base. And run like hell. Hosmer took off for second during Morales’ at-bat. Here’s the thing: no one had stolen a base off of David Price all season. Two attempts had failed, making Price the first pitcher in 47 years - since Luis Tiant in 1968 - to throw 220+ innings without allowing a steal. It was utterly insane of the Royals to try it. But they did.




And on the same pitch, Kendrys Morales hit a sure-double play ball back up the middle. Goins, who was charging second base to cut-off Hosmer, carried on past the base, nearly blocking Tulowitski from making a play on the ball. Tulowitski fielded it and prepared to step on second - only to find Hosmer already there. Instead of a double-play, two outs and the bases empty with the Jays still leading, there was only one out and the tying run was at second. It was a subtle play, but a critical one. And it was only possible because the Royals’ aggressiveness on the basepaths led them to attempt what no one else had accomplished before: Stealing a base off David Price.

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In 2006, Dayton Moore’s first year as general manager, the Royals were the worst team in baseball. With three games left in the season, they had already lost 100 games. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were 61-98, but unless the Rays got swept in their final series of the season against Cleveland and the Royals swept their final opponent, the Detroit Tigers, the Royals would finish the season with the worst record in the major leagues.

And that’s exactly what happened. The shock isn’t that the Devil Rays got swept; the shock is that the Royals swept the Tigers. Shocking, because this was the season the Tigers completed the greatest three-year turnaround in baseball history – after setting an American League record with 119 losses in 2003, the Tigers were the toast of baseball in 2006, starting the season 76-36. They then sort of collapsed down the stretch, and came into the final series of the year tied for first place in the AL Central after leading the division by ten games in early August. But still: they were 95-64. The Royals were 59-100.

Shocking, because going into the final series, the Tigers had beaten the Royals 14 times in 15 games.

Shocking, because the series was in Detroit. And it’s not like the Tigers had nothing to play for – the division was up for grabs.

Somehow, and in characteristic “the Royals can’t even win for losing” fashion, the Royals swept the Tigers. On Friday, they trailed 5-2 after six innings, then scored single runs in the 7th, 8th, and 9th and tied the game when John Buck (!) and pinch-hitter Shane Costa (!!) singled with two outs in the 9th. The Royals then hit three homers in the 11th (!!!) and withstood a two-run comeback from the Tigers in the bottom of the inning.

On Saturday, the Royals scored seven runs in the top of the 1st (!!!!), and won, 9-6.

On Sunday, the Royals trailed 7-4 going to the 8th inning, but scored four runs on a rally the 2014-2015 Royals could admire: a hit batter, a walk, two singles, an error by third baseman Brandon Inge, a walk, and a single. In the bottom of the 8th, Matt Stairs – who the Royals had traded away earlier in the year – tried to do his old team a favor by homering to tie the game. In the bottom of the 11th, the Tigers loaded the bases with one out, but Inge struck out swinging and then Jimmy Gobble (I’m running out of exclamation marks!!!!!) came in to retire Curtis Granderson. The Royals scored two in the 12th and held on for the win. It was one of the most dramatic, random, and completely counterproductive sweeps in the history of baseball.

Why do I say that? Why am I telling you about a series that happened to a last-place Royals team a decade ago? Because by sweeping the Tigers that weekend, the Royals finished with a better record than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which meant that instead of getting the #1 pick in the 2007 draft, they had to settle for the #2 pick. If they had lost any of those three games, they would have drafted first overall. And it was clear – even in September, nine months before the draft – who that first pick would be: David Price.




Price was the kind of elite, nearly major league ready collegiate starting pitcher that comes along once a decade if that, not quite in Stephen Strasburg’s class – no one before or since has been in Strasburg’s class – but up there with any other college pitcher taken with the #1 pick.

Meanwhile, no one knew who the second pick would be – not in September, and not even in June, when the Royals were planning until 24 hours before the draft to take Josh Vitters (who went #3 to the Cubs instead) before settling on…Mike Moustakas. And then Moustakas nearly went to college instead, signing just minutes before the deadline – close enough that Joe Posnanski had another column ready to run in the Kansas City Star the next morning if Moustakas hadn’t signed. (And reportedly Moustakas signed against the recommendation of his advisor, one Scott Boras.)

The story had a happy ending for Tampa Bay. Price made his pro debut in 2008, the year they changed their name to the Rays, and the year they changed their fortunes from hapless losers to the best dollar-for-dollar team in the game. Price ripped through three minor league levels and was promoted in September, not making his major league debut until September 14th, but he was Brandon Finnegan before Brandon Finnegan was – moved to the bullpen for the playoffs, Price saved the Rays’ hides in the ALCS against Boston.

This is largely forgotten now, but the Rays were up 3 games to 1 in the series and had a 7-0 lead in the middle of the 7th inning in Game 5 – and the Red Sox scored four in the 7th, three in the 8th to tie, and walked it off in the bottom of the 9th, a miracle that would impress even the 2014-2015 Royals. The Red Sox then won Game 6. In Game 7, the Rays led 3-1 after seven innings, but an error, a single, and a walk loaded the bases with two outs before Joe Maddon turned in desperation to Price – his fifth pitcher of the inning – to face J.D. Drew. Price struck Drew out, and pitched a scoreless 9th inning to send Tampa Bay to the World Series.

That would have been enough, but then David Price turned into one of the best pitchers in baseball. He made four All-Star Games as a member of the Rays, won a Cy Young Award, and was a Cy Young runner-up.





The story had a happy ending for Detroit as well. Despite somehow losing out on the division and the #1 seed in the playoffs, the Tigers still qualified for the postseason as the wild card team, back before there was a play-in game. Detroit then won seven straight games to win the AL pennant – Minnesota lost in the first round – before being upset in five games in the World Series. And then, eight years later, they acquired Price from Tampa Bay. Price was his typically excellent self as a member of the Tigers, and in his one playoff start in 2014 allowed two runs in eight innings, although he got saddled with the loss anyway. And when they fell out of the race in 2015, the Tigers cashed Price in and got three prospects, including Daniel Norris, in return.

But, incredibly, the story had a happy ending for the Royals as well. Mike Moustakas turned into a top prospect, and then he turned into a promising major league, if not a star like Price was. In 2014, the Royals made it to the playoffs despite a terrible year from Moustakas. They almost certainly would have won the division with Price instead of Moustakas – particularly since the Tigers wouldn’t have been able to acquire him – but then they wouldn’t have won the Wild Card Game, which set them on an emotional trajectory all the way to the World Series, and they wouldn’t have benefitted from Moustakas’ five home runs in the playoffs.

And in 2015, Moustakas became the player the Royals thought he could be. He still wasn’t quite as good as Price during the regular season (Price had 6.0 bWAR to Moustakas’ 4.4), but he was plenty good enough for the Royals to finish with the best record in the AL. And in Game 2 of the ALCS, after David Price had utterly dominated the Royals for six innings, they had scored two runs and had the tying run on second base with one out when Moustakas stepped into the batter’s box. And on a 2-2 pitch, finally vindicating what happened nearly a decade earlier, Moustakas lined Price’s changeup over Ryan Goins’ head for a base hit.




Eric Hosmer didn’t hesitate and took off for third base on contact, but he was barely at third base when Jose Bautista fielded the ball. Mike Jirschele waved him home anyway, and he scored inches ahead of the throw, while Moose took second.

I guess the only team that the David Price Story didn’t have a happy ending for was the Blue Jays; they were about to lose yet another playoff game that David Price had started. 

Perez struck out on a very questionable pitch, but then Alex Gordon - the best #8 hitter in baseball - lined another single into right field. Moustakas scored, the Royals, who had not reached base a single time since the first inning, now led 4-3, and David Price was out of the game. Aaron Sanchez could not quite stem the bleeding, letting Alex Rios drive home another run, and the Royals added yet another in the 8th, pushing the score to 6-3, Kansas City.

As I stepped out of my room, dressed for dinner, my companions excitedly gathered around me. “Did you see the Royals!? They came back, again! They’re winning!” We made it to the restaurant just as the 9th was starting.

Wade Davis had just completed the greatest two-year stretch by a reliever in baseball history, but unlike Mariano Rivera or Dennis Eckersley at their peak, he walks enough batters to make things interesting from time to time. This game was a case in point: after Kevin Pillar singled to lead off the 9th, Cliff Pennington pinch-hit for Ryan Goins and drew a seven-pitch walk, bringing the tying run to the plate with no one out, and the top of the Blue Jays’ lineup coming up.

Ben Revere struck out, but that still left Davis to face Donaldson, the league MVP, and Jose Bautista, whose 227 home runs this decade is miles ahead of Melky Cabrera’s distant second-place 199. Davis faced Donaldson first - and struck him out on four pitches. Two outs, tying run at the plate, Bautista just needing another monster homer like his Game 5 masterpiece. He just needed Davis to hang a pitch. And on the first pitch, it looked like Davis had done just that - his fastball tailed, and crossed the plate, and Bautista thought he had his chance. He smashed the ball - but he had just slightly misjudged it. Instead of sailing over the wall, the ball was dropping into the outfield - and Paulo Orlando (who had come in as a defensive substitute for Rios) was already under it.

Kansas City was up, two games to none, and was now the favorite to take the series going forward.

[Grotsnot]

although it does feel kind of lonely in here the last few weeks

Well there's not much Civ to kibitz and it's harder to contribute to baseball storytime

I'll bite, though:

But Price settled down after that - in fact, he became so comfortable that he retired 18 straight Royals in a row.

With the Jays threatening to put the game away, bases loaded, one out, Hochever coaxed an pop-up from Kevin Pillar

How much control does a pitcher have over where the ball goes, anyway? Are pitches to certain parts of the zone meaningfully more likely to be fielded if hit? I'm assuming that wasn't 18 strike-outs so there's got to be something but I don't have any intuition for the kinematics of it.

----

Also, speaking of kibitzing, is it too late to join the dedlurk club? This has been the only active thread since I started reading up on this PBEM so it's the only spoiler thread I've read. Would be handy to be able to ask idiot noob questions without worrying about accidentally giving something away (or the appearance of doing so). But this delay period is probably the best chance I'll have to catch up on everybody, so I don't mind buzzing off if it's too late or there's too many in the clubhouse already

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I always say the more the merrier! The more grubby hands clutching at my steering wheel, the less likely I am to steer this shortbus off a cliff. Or something.

Anyway, great question.

I'm not exactly sure of the mechanics of how exactly they do it, but every pitcher has a different style. Some guys, like Chris Young, are extreme flyball pitchers - they don't strike batters out, but instead coax batters into popping up for outfielders to make easy catches. These kind of pitchers play well in the Royals' home Kauffman Stadium, with the biggest outfield in baseball, but do less well in places like the Astros' Minute Maid Park, which is derisively referred to as a juicebox sometimes because of its small size - flyballs can become home runs easily there. On the other side of the spectrum, you've got guys like Dallas Keuchel, who don't miss a lot of bats, but get players to ground out again and again - they pitch in such a way that balls just dribble off the bat and bounce through the infield.

Finally, there are pitchers who just miss bats entirely, and get very high strikeout rates, which are of course the best kind of pitchers to have - a strikeout is the best out to get, since there's no chance of any runner advancing or an error or something. But strikeouts are hard to get, and the most taxing on pitchers. Strikeout guys can be reliant on power, like Noah Syndergaard, who just blows batters away with his fastball, or deception guys like Will Harris, who can get the ball to move unpredictably and dodge past bats.

Further complicating matters - every hitter is different. They all have spots they're great at hitting - Josh Donaldson in 2015 could crush anything outside, which is why the Royals pitched him inside (and he got understandably upset because they kept hitting him). But they also have spots that they can't really hit. Salvador Perez can't hit high fastballs - so Madison Bumgarner threw him nothing but high fastballs in their iconic duel to decide the 2014 Series. Mike Trout in 2014 couldn't hit inside fastballs, which the Royals caught on to, and so they shut him down in that ALDS (because he's Mike Trout, though, he adjusted over the offseason and by 2015 Mike Trout's weakness to inside fastballs was gone. I don't think pitchers have found a new weakpoint for him yet).

It's the job of the catcher to know his pitcher, and to know the batter. The catcher manages the game and calls for pitches in each situation. When you watch the game, the catcher sets his glove where he wants the pitcher to throw - that's the pitcher's aim point. If he has to move his glove significantly, then the pitcher probably missed his spot. The catcher wants to call pitches where the current batter is weak, but also where he's not expecting a pitch, because it's all about deception. Thus, every at-bat is a complicated guessing game between the batter on the one hand and the pitcher/catcher battery on the other, influenced by the number of outs, the number of baserunners, the inning, and of course the current pitch count. The strategy of navigating this is the core of professional baseball, but it's an aspect of the game that's often invisible to most casual observers.

To finally answer your question: the pitcher has a LOT of influence over where the ball goes over the plate...but much less so over where it goes once it leaves the bat. I'm not at all sure how they manage that, or if they're capable of "I need this guy to ground to short right...NOW..." but some pitches are certainly more likely to be hit on the ground (maybe you need a double play, so you throw lots of cutters inside), some are more likely to be flies, and some will be line drives. Generally, the closer to the batter's fingers the ball hits the bat, the weaker the hit, and the more awkward the angle, the weaker the hit. If the batter swings slightly early, he'll pull the ball to the opposite field - left handed batters hit to left field, righties to right. If he starts to swing late, the ball will go to his usual field - a righty hitting to left field, or a lefty hitting to right. Fastballs produce a lot of hits like this, because the batter is trying to catch up to the ball. Finally, home runs happen when the batter can square up a ball and hit it right at the strongest part of his swing, with the broadest part of the bat. This happens when a ball slowly floats down the middle, often, though skilled batters can do it almost anywhere some of the time. Thus, curve balls that dont' curve, sliders that fail to slide, change-ups that don't change, all can "hang" in the middle and then get blasted out of the park. That just about exhausts my knowledge on pitching and hitting. <_<

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hey, we have a turn! 

Turn 26




Gotta remember what I was doing. Oh, right. Improving the capital, and barbs. 

Anyway, most of the southern barb camp is surging up towards me now. I have two slingers (one wounded), a builder that really wants to improve that hill stone, and a warrior nearby. Right now, I move the worker (escorted by the slinger) onto the hill stone. Next turn both barbs will move up, but I'll get a shot at the warrior first, and the slinger should be able to weather both attacks on the hill. Then the warrior will be in place to mop up.

Plan right now is to improve the stone for a 2/3 tile. I definitely want one charge on the sheep for a 3/2 tile, but the last one I'm not sure. Mining the hill just gives me another 2/2 tile, and I have plenty. But it DOES net Craftsmanship, which is a good chunk of culture. It's also the only tile other than the crabs that I CAN improve - everything else is forested and takes a chop first. 

However, the sheep tile isn't acquired yet. Which means I'd have to wait around for it. The crabs CAN be improved, gets me half of Celestial Navigation, and gets me Craftsmanship - but the crabs are a weak tile. But what else do I have to improve? The lack of good improvements around settles my mind from going settler first, but at the same time I'm not totally happy with Zobrist.

If you look, Zobrist has lots of great SECOND-ring tiles in both directions - but its first ring is pretty weak, all 3-yield, and it's showing an astonishing 30 turns to expand to the foxes. I really need to get these numbers more intuitive to me, because I sort of assumed I'd be faster to grab a new tile. I'll have a builder there soon to farm the wheat and get Zobrist growing - down the road it'll be a great city. But it's a slow starter - I should have gone to Cain first, I think. 

Overall, I"m really not satisfied with how I've played my opening. To be fair, it's definitely the most challenging start I've had - lots of good long-term potential, but very little to work with in the short-term. Terrain around is not as beautiful as my PBEM8 terrain, but I've accepted I'll never get a start as wonderful as PBEM8's was. Anyway, from the score, other players have had equally challenging beginnings, and Cornflakes did note that he preferred mine to all the others. But I gotta start playing better. I've been unfocused, half-assing the game instead of concentrating on it like I did my other two. That changes today. Gonna start thinking things through and working towards my gameplan. 

Here's the score, for reference. We're STILL the only civ with City #2 - hopefully I can start to snowball from there.






More ALCS stuff later today? Maybe. I got a lot of work to catch up on, may need to wait a few days.

[williams482]

How much control does a pitcher have over where the ball goes, anyway? Are pitches to certain parts of the zone meaningfully more likely to be fielded if hit? I'm assuming that wasn't 18 strike-outs so there's got to be something but I don't have any intuition for the kinematics of it.

Chevalier already gave a bit of an overview, but I'll add a basic rule of thumb here. 

Pitches which move downward (such as sinkers, curve balls, and changeups) and are thrown in the lower half of the strike zone are more likely to be hit on the ground. Pitches which rise (fastballs, basically) and are thrown in the upper half of the strike zone are more likely to be hit in the air.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 27

I only have like ten minutes to type this report, but I took lots of photos, so some of them will have to speak for themselves. 




Spear moved off to the south, warrior approaches to attack. I pelt him for some damage while building the quarry and moving up my own warrior in support:








A look at Escobar with its new quarry:




15 turns to kick my heels until the pasture goes up. What to do with the final charge in the meantime? I'm leaning towards the subpar crabs, for the science and culture boost that the improvement will bring. I'd also like to grow Escobar to size 4 or 5 before building another settler, to work all those good tiles. 




Sad state of Zobrist. The builder in 13 turns will be a big help - a farm for growth (to be harvested later once I'm ready for the Holy Site at size 7 or so), and a pair of mines will help. 

Right now I'm thinking to follow up the builders with a warrior from each city, to give me a total of three f or moving on Grenada:




Note that it's totally invulnerable to ranged fire on land - those hills screen it perfectly, so my initial thought of building 2 more slingers, upgrading 4 archers, and using them plus a pair of warriors won't work. Instead, we'll need three warriors and potentially a galley, which should be more than enough. Do I divert the scouting galley to this operation, or build a second one? Need to study timelines more. I want to knock Grenada off as soon as I can, I don't much care about +2 production towards units in the capital, rather have the whole extra city. 




I settle Cain on the southern tile, with superior first ring yields to work - not gonna make the same mistake as at Zobrist. I also pin Hosmer, but honestly it's a shitty city and only good as a space-filler down the road. Hosmer deserves a better spot, possibly squeezing in on the southern part of the island. 

Score for reference. No one has a second city, still. Archduke leads via Civics, Tech, and Era Score. 

[williams482]

Plan right now is to improve the stone for a 2/3 tile. I definitely want one charge on the sheep for a 3/2 tile, but the last one I'm not sure. Mining the hill just gives me another 2/2 tile, and I have plenty. But it DOES net Craftsmanship, which is a good chunk of culture. It's also the only tile other than the crabs that I CAN improve - everything else is forested and takes a chop first. 

However, the sheep tile isn't acquired yet. Which means I'd have to wait around for it. The crabs CAN be improved, gets me half of Celestial Navigation, and gets me Craftsmanship - but the crabs are a weak tile. But what else do I have to improve? The lack of good improvements around settles my mind from going settler first, but at the same time I'm not totally happy with Zobrist.

If you look, Zobrist has lots of great SECOND-ring tiles in both directions - but its first ring is pretty weak, all 3-yield, and it's showing an astonishing 30 turns to expand to the foxes. I really need to get these numbers more intuitive to me, because I sort of assumed I'd be faster to grab a new tile. I'll have a builder there soon to farm the wheat and get Zobrist growing - down the road it'll be a great city. But it's a slow starter - I should have gone to Cain first, I think. 

Which civic(s) do you plan to research after Foreign Trade? If you have enough time before starting Craftsmanship, I think the best use of that charge would be a mine on one of the hills by Zobrist. That's the only tile you would improve and actually work, and the extra five or so turns to get the builder over there doesn't seem like a significant expense.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

How much control does a pitcher have over where the ball goes, anyway? Are pitches to certain parts of the zone meaningfully more likely to be fielded if hit? I'm assuming that wasn't 18 strike-outs so there's got to be something but I don't have any intuition for the kinematics of it.

Chevalier already gave a bit of an overview, but I'll add a basic rule of thumb here. 

Pitches which move downward (such as sinkers, curve balls, and changeups) and are thrown in the lower half of the strike zone are more likely to be hit on the ground. Pitches which rise (fastballs, basically) and are thrown in the upper half of the strike zone are more likely to be hit in the air.

Also worth noting that rising fastballs don't actually go up - they just fall less than other pitches, so the batter, it looks like it's rising. Just a minor physics note and not really important in any way.