Wow, is the home plate umpire phoning it in already? That wasn’t even close to a strike.
Cain is awesome. We Royals fans have known it for a few years now, the big stage is showing others as well. GO ROYALS!!!
I’m guessing that someone bet Scioscia that he couldn’t use his entire pitching staff in less than seven innings tonight. Postseason experience for everybody!
The Angels have now sent out their EIGHTH pitcher in what is turning into one of the weirdest elimination game implosions in baseball history. I’m not exactly sure what it gains at this point for them to keep doing this.
That Korean guy must be pretty happy about now.
Nice one, Royals. See you in Baltimore.
I really can’t lose in the AL now. Go Royals! But if the Os win, I’m okay with that, too.
Okay, who had a KC-Baltimore LCS back in April? Liar!!! 
I don’t feel quite that strongly, because i really want Baltimore to win, but if they lose to the Royals i’ll be far less disappointed than if they lost to the Angels. It will be great to see an AL team in the World Series that hasn’t been there for a long time.
Ideally, i’d like to see that Nats representing the NL, but down 2-0 to the Giants, that doesn’t seem especially likely.
Wow. Been waiting for this for a long time. Feels strange that the O’s have a legitimately good team; they could realistically win it all.
And the Royals, man. Even when Baltimore was godawful, they still routinely kicked the shit out of KC.
Seems like kismet that they both sweep the ALDS’s to face each other for a pennant.
I didn’t know this was Buck Showalter’s first playoff series win. Seems difficult to believe; the man’s a god damn genius as far as I’m concerned.
Showalter’s history has been to quickly make a bad team competitive, but to wear out his welcome just as quickly, by being the hardass that fixed the problem, before getting them this far. That does take a form of genius, but it’s not one that often gets rewarded. Well, now we know what else he can do.
I remember that too. For instance, this 1969 Nats v.2.0 game, where Frank Bertaina was getting clobbered early, and he was lifted in the second for Casey Cox, who was pitching long relief at the time. Cox got the last out in the second, then stayed in and pitched through the end of the eighth.
Teams typically had 4-man rotations and 10-man staffs then, and closers weren’t really A Thing yet, so you could have a long guy in the bullpen. Today he’d be your 5th starter, but on the other hand you have 7 relievers instead of 6.
If they don’t, though, it could be their last chance for a while.
There are a few important members of this team eligible for free agency at the end of this season, and i don’t think there’s any way that they’re willing to spend what it would take to keep them all, or even most of them.
The most obvious, of course, is Nelson Cruz, who is in Baltimore on a one-year deal worth $8 million. I know he’s 33, but there’s no way they get to keep him for that amount again next season.
J.J. Hardy will also be a free agent, and there is a 2015 team option ($17.5m, with $2m buyout) on Nick Markakis before he becomes a free agent in 2016. There are others that i can’t think of right now.
They do also have some good young players locked up for a while, though. If Weiters and Machado come back strong, they could form the core of a good team, along with Adam Jones and a few others.
Andrew Miller has also been open about wanting to return to Boston.
That’s the problem with MLB not dealing realistically with having two tiers of markets - the smaller ones have to build gradually toward a very brief window of competitiveness before they lose their best talent and have to start over. It’s a shame in a way that Balt and KC are doing it simultaneously.
I missed all the baseball yesterday because we went to see Tom Petty in concert last night, and had a pre-show dinner with some friends; I did see the first 5 KC runs on the TV at the restaurant, but that was all.
Congrats to the Royals and Orioles…I’ll be rooting for the orange and black team in the next round!
Much as some hate to admit it, Oakland has remained competitive for 14 years; it’s a small market.
“Two tiers” of teams effectively means New York and Boston, and even that isn’t panning out anymore. It’s going to be difficult for MLB to convince Boston (last place) New York (old, out of the playoffs, and in horrible shape for next year) or either Los Angeles club, who made the playoff this year but do not exactly have long records of uninterrupted success, that they need to give money to a small market like St. Louis, who have won and won and won some more the last ten years.
Oakland is not a championship contender, as you know. They’re not built to be one, as other small-market teams such as TB recently and Balt and KC now are.
Likewise, no franchise or small group of franchises has veto power. What it would take to implement a serious salary cap and serious revenue sharing (the luxury tax is a start but a feeble one) is to make it clear to most owners that they’d benefit from it - the top markets (you still left out a few) are the top revenue generators, and maybe the loss of revenue over time they’d experience in a more equal partnership would not be made up by increases elsewhere, or maybe not. But it’s all worked just fine in the other leagues.
Really hoping the Dodgers can pull out a win on enemy turf tonight. Ryu has done well against the Cards in the past, just a matter of whether or not he is sufficiently recovered from his injury. With a win tonight, the worst case scenario is that we head home for the finale.
Also hoping the Nats can at least pull out a win or two and play to their potential.