Now the NYM wheels have really fallen off.
Apparently so. Unless the bottom half of the inning holds a miracle for NY.
B12 coming up. Stick a fork in the apple, it’s cooked.
If the bottom of the inning holds, there is not much work getting done in KC tomorrow morning. Quite an exclamation point on their last 18 months of work.
Congratulations to KCR. They kept coming back and coming back, in amazing fashion. And to score 5 in T12 - incredible.
Way to go, Royals. And congratulations to the diehard KCR fans, too.
And there it is. In 5.
Congrats to the KC ROYALS! A hell of a deciding game. Well-deserved!
It’s at times like this that I am so glad I’m not a Mets fan (although as a New Yorker I was rooting for them.) Congratulations to KC - they were just the better team. Amazing.
I don’t mind that Collins brought Harvey in for the 9th, though I would’ve preferred Familia. I do mind a little that he left him in after the lead-off walk.
I’m a little peeved that they left Cespedes in to finish his at bat after the knee injury. If he played down his injury, how does that work? How do you let him stay in without first saying, “Ok, Yo, let’s see you run 30 feet and back again.” Dude could barely walk.
But, like I said in the other thread, the Mets lost because they weren’t as good a team as the Royals this year. Congrats to them and theirs. And it was still a hell of a season.
This thread is probably going to drop like a rock now that the Royals have taken the crown, but I have one quick question I hope somebody can answer.
What happened to Pete Rose? He was with the Fox pre/post game crew all through the playoffs and for the first two WS games in KC, then just vanished when they went to NY.
He had “prior commitments” that forced him to leave after game 3. They made an announcement.
Apparently the prior commitment was signing autographs. Gotta pay the bills, after all.
I’ll posit this here instead of in the other thread, which should be a congratulatory thread for the Royals. And, I do applaud the Royals. They were aggressive and never-give-up throughout.
But, I just have to say: in the top of the 9th with 1 out, Eric Hosmer is at 3rd as the tying run. For him to run as he did, on Sal Perez’s broken bat groundout to SS that Wright fielded, it was a dumb mistake that he got lucky on to score.
Forget that a decent throw from Duda would’ve beaten Hosmer to the plate, easily. Before that, and I’m speaking as a former SS / 3B infielder, knowing that the Royals are aggressive on the basepaths, and also knowing that there’s plenty of time to get Perez at 1st on this easy grounder, if I’m Wright I not only look Hosmer back to 3rd, but then I also pump fake my throw to 1st, to see if Hosmer commits.
Hosmer committed to run as Wright was throwing. A pump fake would’ve gotten Hosmer in an easy pickle and, assuming no keystone cops fielding or throwing (not a safe assumption with these 2015 Mets, however), Hosmer becomes the second out in the inning.
If Hosmer does not commit when I pump fake, there’s still plenty of time to get Perez at 1st. Easily. But Hosmer committed and I would’ve gotten him in an easy pickle.
A stupid mistake on Hosmer’s part that would’ve been the second out at the plate when he’s down 2-1 in the 9th. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
Agree Hosmer got lucky. If Duda makes a decent throw he’s toast. However, I’m not sure a pump fake from Wright would have done much because nobody was covering 3rd.
SS Wilmer Flores was on his way there. There’s a good chance he’d have been there. If not, I get the out at 1st, and Hosmer still doesn’t score.
Yeah, Duda’s throw was awful. I feel bad for the Mets, they must feel awful - so many errors, and many other mental or physical mistakes that didn’t count as errors.
When Cespedes hit the foul ball off his knee, that was the perfect ‘out’ for Collins to pull him. You’re hurt, hobbled, we gotta replace you - if Collins didn’t have the cojones to pull him before, that injury was his best chance. Still, he stuck with him, at it cost him.
Leaving Harvey in, I agree with. Harvey was CRUISING, practically untouchable. Drawing similarities to Jack Morris in 1991 was apropos. What surprises me is that in the 9th when Perez ran the count to 3-2, that d’Arnaud didn’t come to the mound to calm Harvey down. I’m surprised neither Collins nor Warthen called for that. Even with Perez / Dyson on 1st, still no quick conference. The 3 balls Harvey pitched to Perez were borderline wild high, a clear sign the adrenaline was pumping and not under control. Settle Harvey down, calm him down, and we’re going to K.C. for game 6.
And Duda - damn, Fox is so P.C. that they can’t say he screwed the pooch on that throw home. Instead we get some B.S. like Hosmer’s great baserunning when that really was a boneheaded decision.
But no matter what happens, K.C. still wins this series. Handily.
Loved all the playoffs and the World Series this year, exciting baseball!
The 2015 Royals are one hell of a baseball team. They deserved this win, they played their hearts out. A band of brothers, everyone is a tad crazy, everyone is athletic, and they know how to play the game - keep the line moving indeed. And do a lot of chest-thumping to keep the adrenaline up. They’re not really sluggers, but they are hitters, and they go balls-to-the-wall to get on base. One of their pitchers would never throw a hissy fit about being pulled…
I noticed that Citi was half-empty by the time the Mets took their last at bats, wasn’t that cold there either … wonder why they couldn’t stay for an extra half-inning just in case… oh yeah, must’ve been all that Mets Keystone Cops fielding and throwing. Also noticed Met fans giving Daniel Murphy a sarcastic jeer when he fielded a ground ball cleanly after the Royals big inning.
Interviews from Hosmer and others claim that they’d scouted Duda and knew he had a history of throwing errors in clutch situations, so (at least in terms of post facto justification) the odds were better than it seemed. Essentially, Hos counted on the Mets making errors in an emergency, and it seems now to have been a reasonable gamble.
And there were other mitigations, too. It was only game 5 and the Royals losing here would mean returning to Kauffman with the series lead. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world. There was so much less to lose, and so much more to gain.
But beyond all the Monday morning rationalizations, I have to believe it was just the berserker aggressiveness of the Royals offense philosophy – going for the throat at every opportunity. Even if it doesn’t succeed every time, it’s unnerving to the opposition. And you have to admit, the Mets infield definitely had the Royals in their heads. (Another example: Reed was very uncomfortable on the mound with Dyson lurking on the base path. To me, that was partly responsible for Colon getting a pitch he could single and drive in Dyson.)
Unless your team is a Gold Glove fielding machine, that kind of aggressiveness can put you out of your game and you’ll make questionable decisions and execute poor plays.
Good points, yes. The Mets were mentally weak, and the Royals were hard-charging aggressors, and that was fun to watch.
Duda had made just 20 errors in his entire career, and to this point had never played in many clutch situations at all. I have some trouble believing this was a scouted thing.
The 2015 World Series strikes me as being one of the most easily explained sporting events in recent memory; one team was much, much better than the other and kicked the shit out of them. In five games the Royals had 64 men reach base safely, the Mets just 49. If you have three more baserunners than your opponent PER GAME, you’re going to win a lot more than you lose.
RickJay:
The scouting report was not that Duda had a history of errors, but that his throwing motion was sidearm and the Royals felt that such a motion could lead to an inaccurate throw that might take the receiver of the throw off the bag. Often, this is harmless, as the receiver can stretch enough to get the throw, or the throw wouldn’t have gotten the runner anyway, but (obviously) not always.