It’s incredible that he has 3000 fewer at-bats than the current record-holder, Reggie Jackson.
It’s also amazing that he has 462 career homers over 14 seasons and Baseball Reference pegs his WAR at 16.7. I’ve never seen anyone come close to his -29.5 dWAR.
Jeez, he’s also earned over 112 million dollars to date. Unreal.
What a game! Yeah, Royals! On to Anaheim, baby!
BTW, I do not think Ned was wrong for pulling Shields. You could see that he was laboring with every pitch, his face was constantly nervous. Personally, I would have gone with Finnegan rather than Ventura at that point, but I think he was right for not using Herrera. The Royals’ great 7-8-9 men are fantastic when opening an inning clean, but not as much so when coming in to salvage a messy situation.
It’s incredible that Reggie still holds the record, given how the K rate has gone up dramatically since he retired.
Reggie Jackson, of course, played a lot of games, 2820. Only 20 players have played in more, most of them not strikeout kings. Reggie Jackson - I find this amazing, but it is true - played in more games than Derek Jeter. Nobody who struck out a lot has played nearly that many. Even great players who could whiff a lot haven’t. Mike Schmidt once struck out 180 times in a season and he had a long career and was still 400 games short of Jackson. Jim Thome fell just short of Reggie in strikeouts, but was 300 games played short.
If Adam Dunn could have played in 2800 games he’d have blown Reggie out of the water. If you gave Mark Reynolds 2800 games he’d strike out 3000 times. The thing about Reggie is he came up very young and lasted a long, long time. He is to striking out what Pete Rose was to getting hits - lots of people have higher batting averages than Pete Rose, but nobody played long enough to have more hits.
Dunn is retiring at 34. Reggie Jackson won a home run title at 34, and won another two years later.
Salvador Perez had, what, *three *potential game-winning AB’s? It’s not often that a guy gets another chance to be a hero after being a goat twice, but that single in the 12th has to have felt pretty damn good. Congrats to Royals Nation!
Billy Beane looks less brilliant every year, doesn’t he? Yet another Oakland team has to put on brave faces for the handshake line. It must get tiring.
I’ll take him over Alex Anthopolous. They had a chance to win. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays had a chance to make tee times.
They don’t have handshake lines in baseball, by the way.
I’ve never seen the Royals play so I had no notion of who that guy is, but DA-YUM, his 9th inning AB looked like he’d never seen big league pitching before. Waved at 3 pitches and never came close to making contact.
I’ve heard friends on Facebook and local sports reporters make the same point: the game was the A’s season in microcosm. Big lead, squandered.
I wish the A’s well (I’m a Giants fan) but am glad to see anybody advance who hasn’t been there in 29 years.
He does? The A’s were 25th in the majors in payroll this season and made it to the postseason.
(Even more impressive is Pittsburgh, which is 27th in payroll)
I must have missed the parades for that.
All these years and his team has advanced no farther than the ALCS. Once.
You know what else gets tiring?
Hearing the truth?
That was a fantastic game. I’m pulling for KC in the AL. I’ve always been a fan, though they are in the same division as my team.
Running a marathon?
Yeah, let’s go with that. Hearing the same truth over and over and over and over regardless of facts, context, common sense, etc. Beane’s a total fool for not trading for a guy who would have knocked in an extra run in the 12th inning. That’s just GM-ing 101.
So, Elvis, what should Beane have done differently to win last night’s game?
He should have wanted it more.
Clever as he is, I doubt Beane could have figured out a way to finish in last place with a 154 million dollar payroll.
He’d have to have had to start with a whole team hung over from the World Series celebrations. 
Obviously Brian Cashman is one of the greatest GMs of all time, then.