Orioles vs. Royals: Game 4 Score and Twitter Reaction from 2014 MLB Playoffs
Seven presidential terms. The entire run of The Oprah Winfrey Show. The public unveiling and widespread adoption of the Internet. A playoff appearance by literally every other team in Major League Baseball.
These are some of the things that happened since the Kansas City Royals last reached the World Series. Or, more accurately, some of the things between Royals World Series appearances.
Buoyed by a two-run first inning, more spectacular defense and a bullpen that held on late yet again, the Royals earned a 2-1 win over the Baltimore Orioles to complete their sweep of the American League Championship Series.
Kansas City will make its first World Series appearance since 1985 against either the San Francisco Giants or St. Louis Cardinals, who play later Wednesday night. The Giants currently have a 2-1 lead in their best-of-seven series. The Royals went a combined 6-1 against St. Louis and San Francisco during the regular season.
Though they will nonetheless likely enter the Fall Classic as an underdog against either National League team, that's par for the course for these Royals. They were down to their final at-bat twice against the Oakland Athletics but came back with clutch hits each time. They went to extra innings four times. All but two of their games were within two runs.
And yet, here they are as the only team in MLB history to win eight straight games to start a postseason.
Wednesday's Game 4 in many ways mirrored the Royals' entire run. There was good luck in the form of a throwing error by Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph, which allowed Alcides Escobar and Nori Aoki to score the game's opening runs on an Eric Hosmer fielder's choice.
There were spectacular defensive plays. Alex Gordon crashed off the wall in the fifth inning to grab a J.J. Hardy flyout. Omar Infante an inning later battled the sun to save the game-tying run from scoring on a Nelson Cruz liner. Finally, in the ninth, Escobar kept his foot on the bag to get a force out at second base and save the erratic Greg Holland from seemingly imploding.
"We've been doing it all year," third baseman Mike Moustakas told reporters Tuesday, via Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News. "We've been playing good defense, scoring timely runs and doing the little things that have gotten us to this point."
The "little things," as is traditional in October baseball, also came as part of a package that included one huge thing: great pitching.
Jason Vargas pitched 5.1 innings of two-hit ball, allowing a solo home run to Ryan Flaherty in the third inning and a meaningless single to Hardy in the second. With one out in the sixth, he ceded to Kelvin Herrera, whom Ned Yost stretched out again for 1.2 innings before Wade Davis and Greg Holland came in to slam the door shut.
Holland notched a save in all four games. All told, the Royals bullpen has pitched 28 innings and given up three runs over the last two series. A unit that tied for the best wins above replacement (per FanGraphs) during the regular season has done the same all October, ascending in the late innings as the teams around it wilt.
Yost knows how special his trio of rock-solid relievers are, as told to Tyler Kepner of The New York Times:
"For me, the whole focus is just get through the sixth inning tied or with the lead, so that we can get to those guys. If we have the lead, I feel like the game is over. If we're tied, I feel like they're going to hold us there until we score a run. All three of them have been dynamite all year long, and for a team to have three knockout relievers like we've got, it's pretty special.
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The Royals staff held on Wednesday despite another offensive no-show. Outside the rocky first inning, Orioles starter Miguel Gonzalez went 5.2 innings, giving up only those two runs (one earned) and allowing four hits. Baltimore's bullpen then held the game within one run, with the Royals' only threat coming via a Billy Butler double in the eighth.
After averaging 6.3 runs per game over its first six playoff games, Kansas City has scored four total in its last two. Given that the knock on this team was its inability to produce runs—its 94 wRC+ during the regular season was the lowest of any playoff team since the 2007 Arizona Diamondbacks, as Ben Lindbergh of Grantland noted—the Royals' run production will be something to watch going forward.
Lorenzo Cain, Hosmer and Butler went a combined 2-for-10 on the day, a sign that regression to the mean may be in order. Wednesday was the first hitless game of the series for Cain, who went 8-for-15 and scored five runs en route to being named ALCS MVP.
The sample is obviously small, but if the Royals have learned anything over these last eight games, magic can come from anywhere (or disappear) in the shortened October slate.
But it's unlikely anyone cares much about what's to come at the moment. The Royals have long been the American League's answer to the Pirates, a sad-sack franchise with no hope, a litany of prospect busts and ownership that refused to buy in.
While derided at the time, general manager Dayton Moore's all-in push with this team—the first in a long time for Kansas City—has paid off. James Shields is a legitimate ace, Davis became an integral part of baseball's best bullpen and Escobar and Cain have developed into legitimate everyday players.
Viewed as a hot-seat candidate before the season, Moore is now responsible for the first World Series since Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You" was atop the Billboard charts.
Now let's see what this team can do next.
Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter
