Royals' Game 3 Win Proves Not Even Ned Yost's Gambles Can Stop Their Bullpen

Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost didn't make it easy on his bullpen in Game 3 of the World Series. Were it a lesser bullpen, it might have snapped.

It's a good thing, then, that the Royals bullpen is anything but "lesser."

On Friday night at AT&T Park, the Royals downed the San Francisco Giants by a 3-2 final to take a 2-1 series lead. And just like it's been doing all October, Kansas City's bullpen saved the day.

Jeremy Guthrie started and pitched well through five innings, but the sixth inning saw him give up a single to Brandon Crawford and an RBI double to Mike Morse that cut Kansas City's 3-0 lead to a 3-1 lead.

With that, Yost went to his bullpen with nobody out in the sixth, a runner on second and the home crowd using all manner of noise to urge on a rally. If you've been following along this October, you know how the story goes.

Kelvin Herrera got the final three outs of the sixth and the first of the seventh, issuing only a couple of walks in the process. In becoming the first player to play in the College World Series and the Major League Baseball World Series in the same year, Brandon Finnegan got the last two outs of the seventh. 

After that, it was Wade Davis for a clean eighth and Greg Holland for a clean ninth. The final tally for the Royals bullpen: no hits and no runs on two walks and four strikeouts. The only run allowed on its watch was a Buster Posey ground ball off Herrera that brought home Morse.

On paper, that looks like your usual October performance for this Royals bullpen. The circumstances surrounding it were anything but typical, however, as it was the bullpen's job to save the Royals from Yost's most questionable managing since the American League Wild Card Game.

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Now, before we get into the latest and greatest in #Yosted, let's grant that the Royals skipper is doing a lot of things right these days.

After nearly killing Kansas City's first postseason since 1985 with a series of questionable bunts and pitching changes in the AL Wild Card Game against the Oakland A's, Yost quickly turned into a different manager. Bunts have been few and far between, and FanGraphs' Dave Cameron nailed it in praising Yost's bullpen management in the American League Championship Series.

More recently, Yost made a terrific decision ahead of Game 3. With Nori Aoki benched, he moved Alex Gordon to the No. 2 spot in the lineup. By putting the team's best hitter there, he optimized his lineup and was rewarded with a sixth-inning double that scored the Royals' second run and set up their third. 

Yost's in-game decisions, however, weren't so good. To recap:

• Though the Royals only had a 1-0 lead and were set for Guthrie's third trip through the Giants lineup in the following inning, Yost let Guthrie hit for himself leading off the top of the sixth instead of pinch-hitting Billy Butler or Josh Willingham.
• When Guthrie came out for the sixth, Yost didn't even get Herrera up in the bullpen until after Crawford's single. 
• When the pitcher's spot came up in the top of the seventh, Yost let Herrera hit for himself with Jarrod Dyson on first and two outs. An alternative idea would have been to play for an insurance run by sending up Butler or Willingham and giving Dyson the green light to run.
• After Herrera led off the bottom of the seventh by walking Hunter Pence, Yost kept him in to face Brandon Belt instead of calling on Finnegan for a left-on-left matchup. 

Yost's managing has indeed been better lately. But moves like these were a taste of the bad old Yost, and they could have had dire consequences. By not seizing chances to pad the team's lead and by putting his relievers in difficult positions, Yost was asking his bullpen to walk arguably too fine of a line.

And yet it all worked out.

The Royals got a couple of extra runs after not pinch-hitting for Guthrie in the sixth anyway, Herrera was able to defuse the sixth inning, and not playing for a run in the seventh ended up working out, thanks to his strikeout of Belt and then the flawless work of Finnegan, Davis and Holland.

Luck? Maybe a little, but not a lot. What it was, for the most part, was simply Yost's most talented relievers doing their thing.

Kansas City's bullpen now has a 1.68 ERA for the postseason, and the four guys who pitched in Game 3 are a big reason why. Per ESPN.com, here's what they've done this October:

Player	GP	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA
Wade Davis	10	11.1	5	1	0	2	14	0.79
Greg Holland	10	10.0	4	1	0	5	13	0.90
Kelvin Herrera	9	11.1	6	1	0	6	12	0.79
Brandon Finnegan	6	5.0	4	2	0	3	4	3.60
Total	35	37.2	19	5	0	16	43	1.21

For Herrera, Davis and Holland, this has been going on for a while. As terrific as they were all season, they were especially lethal in the second half as they combined for a 0.77 ERA. Finnegan may be the newbie of the group, but he now has a 2.25 ERA and 14 strikeouts in 12 major league innings.

Given what the four of them are doing, well, it's hard to disagree with what Giants skipper Bruce Bochy told Erik Boland of Newsday:

No need to tell Yost. As he made clear to Grantland's Jonah Keri, he knows what he has:

Outside of some mid-game craziness in the AL Wild Card Game, what Yost said is something that he's been proving every step of the way this postseason. If his guys have a lead after five, it's over.

What happened Friday night was perhaps the ultimate proof of that. Yost's decisions could have resulted in the Royals bullpen finally disappointing, but instead they resulted in it passing the ultimate test.

Is the main takeaway that Friday night is further proof that Yost just plain knows better than the rest of us?

Nah. The main takeaway is more like what Joe Sheehan of Sports Illustrated had to say:

Most managers aren't lucky enough to have relief pitchers who can do that. It so happens Yost is.

And as long as that remains the case, the Royals could be spraying the bubbly as soon as Sunday.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.

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