2015 WORLD SERIES: Game 1—Royals 5, Mets 4

By 2014 the analytics crowd (most of whom never played baseball, but still managed to convince themselves they knew more about it than the people who did) had studied the numbers and decided the most important things you could do on offense were:

A. Hit a home run…

Or failing that…

B. Walk.

The analytics advocates also decided bunts and stolen bases were dumb plays and defense didn’t matter all that much, so it was probably thoroughly disappointing when the Kansas City Royals—who were last in walks, last in home runs, bunted, stole bases and thought defense was a Big Deal—made it all the way to Game 7 of the 2014 World Series.

Had to be a fluke and there was no shortage of analytics advocates that said so.

But then the Royals did it again in 2015.

The Royals are right back in the World Series and not only do they think defense matters, the Royals think if other teams are going to play horseshit defenders because those horseshit defenders hit home runs and walk, it would be smart to get the ball in play and force those horseshit defenders to play some of that horseshit defense.

That being the case…

In Game 1 of the 2015 World Series, lead-off hitter Alcides Escobar doesn’t waste any time; he swings at the first pitch he sees and the highly suspect defense of the New York Mets screws up immediately.

New York centerfielder Yoenis Cespedes—who will somehow win a Gold Glove in 2015—shies away from left fielder Michael Conforto, then makes a half-assed swipe at the ball, which hits him in the leg and ricochets into left field. Meanwhile Esky just keeps running and circles the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

If you forgot just how bad that attempted catch looked, here you go:

As you might have noticed from watching that video, the crowd was incredibly loud and that might be why Cespedes and/or Conforto failed to make a catch.

Even though I’ve posted this video before, here it is again and it’s the ever-informative Royals coach Rusty Kuntz talking about communicating in the outfield and the use of hand signals when it gets too loud and if you watch that first video closely, you’ll see that Yoenis Cespedes didn’t do any of the things Rusty talked about:

Lack of attention to detail caused poor communication and poor communication resulted in poor defense and poor defense turned into an inside-the-park home.

And right there is one of the keys to the Royals World Series game plan.

The Royals believe the Mets are one of the teams that have loaded up on Good Bat/Poor Glove players which means the Royals want to do two things:

1. Get the ball in play.

2. Make the Mets play defense.

And not only do the Royals want to get the ball in play, a front office exec tells me if the Royals hit groundballs, they’ll win the series. Which goes against what pretty much every other team in baseball is trying to do; the other teams want to hit the ball in the air because they want to hit homers and (despite plays like Escobar’s inside-the-parker) it’s hard to hit home runs with ground balls.

And Now Some Highly Informative Arithmetic

In 2015 the New York Mets hit 177 home runs and according to Baseball Reference, 105 of those home runs came when the ball was hit with “fly ball trajectory.” The other 72 homers came on line drives. Point of interest; when the Mets hit a fly ball they batted .138.

Now subtract the home runs from the fly ball hits and at-bats totals and the Mets went 64-for-1,124 on the fly balls that stayed in the ballpark, for an .057 batting average. Which is easy to explain; generally speaking, fly balls are the easiest type of ball in play to defend because one guy has to do one thing:

1. Catch the ball.

Groundballs put more pressure on a defense because they require the defenders to (at least most of the time) do three things:

1. Catch the ball.

2. Throw the ball accurately.

3. Catch the ball again.

One of the secrets to winning is learning to let the other guy lose and giving the other guy as many opportunities as possible to fuck things up.

For instance: in 2015 the Kansas City Royals struck out 973 times (fewest in the Big Leagues) and the Chicago Cubs struck out 1,518 times (most in the Big Leagues) so compared to the Cubs, Royals’ opponents had 545 more chances to screw up on defense and do something moronic with a baseball.

Strikeouts (which the analytics advocates say are no worse than any other type of out) put no pressure on the other team’s defense and if you promise to strike out, I can play shortstop in the Big Leagues.

This is why the Royals want to hit groundballs; they put more pressure on a defense and the Royals believe the Mets defense won’t handle that pressure.

BTW:

Just in case you’re interested in those 72 line drive homers (and you should be) when the Mets hit a line drive, but didn’t hit a homer, they still went 660-for-1,095 which is a .603 average and why Old-School Baseball advocates think you should try to hit line drives (not fly balls) because even if they don’t leave the ballpark, odds are something good will happen when you hit a line drive.

So there’s our story line: the Royals will hit groundballs and the Mets defense will suck, but this being baseball, our story line changes almost immediately.

(OK, to be totally accurate—which is a pain in the ass—not immediately, the bit I’m going to write about happens in the 8th inning.)

The 8^th Inning

The score’s 3-3 and Juan Lagares singles with two outs and then steals second base.

Next, Wilmer Flores puts the ball in play (one of those pain-in-the-ass groundballs) and it takes a weird hop and Eric Hosmer (who will eventually win four Gold Gloves) makes an error and Lagares scores and the Mets are now up 4-3 going into the bottom of the ninth.

So the Mets take a page out of the Royals playbook (put the ball in play and run the bases aggressively) and in the bottom of the ninth inning the ground-ball hitting Royals return the favor by hitting a home run.

The Mets have brought in their closer—Jeurys Familia—for a 4-out save and since we’re now in the Twilight Zone and the Royals are the team that gave up a run on bad defense and up is now down and black is now white, the team that finished 24^th in homers avoids defeat when Alex Gordon hits one.

4-4 and we go to extra innings.

And Five Innings Later

Things get back to the original script when Alcides Escobar reaches first base on an error, Ben Zobrist hits a groundball single, Esky goes first-to-third, Bartolo Colon intentionally walks Lorenzo Cain and then unintentionally leaves a 4-seam fastball up in the zone and Eric Hosmer hits a sac fly to score Escobar.

Game over, the Royals win 5-4, drive home safely.

And now some other stuff about Game 1:

A Death in the Family

Before Game 1 started, Edinson Volquez’ father died and according to news reports, his wife and family asked that Edinson not be informed until after he pitched.

But ESPN has a story saying Eddie knew before he pitched and either way I didn’t ask Edinson about it because some stuff should remain personal and we only want to know out of morbid curiosity or even worse, because it gives the media an angle that adds human drama to the cliché-filled stories we’re going to write after the game’s over.

Thank God for Chris Young

Chris Young once again steps up and throws three shutout innings in relief and gets the Game 1 win and it’s not the first or last time CY saves his team by filling whatever role the Royals need filled.

Cain Bunts On His Own

In the eighth inning Ben Zobrist led off with a double and Lorenzo Cain tried to bunt him over to third base, which did not go well, possibly because Lorenzo Cain has never gotten a sac bunt down in his career. Bottom line: whatever you do a lot you’re going to do better than what you don’t do very often, but you’ll still see managers panic in the postseason and after ignoring the sac bunt all summer, suddenly ask someone who doesn’t bunt, to get one down and that doesn’t work out very often.

As I wrote at the time; Lorenzo’s heart was in the right place, but his bat wasn’t.

But Cain bunted on his own which is worth mentioning because unlike a lot of other teams that want to draw up a game plan at 3 PM and expect their players to stick to that plan at 9 PM, the Royals allow their players to make decisions on their own – they’re the ones playing the game and can see things nobody else can – and while it didn’t work out in Game 1, a Royals player feeling free to take a risk is going to win the World Series.

But we’ll save that moment for later because it’s a big one.

My Mistake

The game takes five hours and nine minutes and everyone’s exhausted and in the very busy and chaotic clubhouse after the game Lorenzo Cain says his bed is calling to him, but first he’s going to Taco Bell and yells out:

“Does anybody want anything?”

I have very few professional regrets—if I had a moronic impulse I generally acted on it—but one of my missed opportunities was not saying yes and asking Lorenzo if I could go to Taco Bell with him.

That would have made a great story and I missed my chance and as someone somewhere once said; you’re going to regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did, although in my case I find it pretty easy to regret both.

Next Up:

Game 2 and the ever-mysterious and inconsistent Johnny Cueto.