2015 WORLD SERIES: Game 5-Royals 7, Mets 2

So the Royals come back and win Game 4 and later that night I’m walking from the ballpark to the train station with a Kansas City Star co-worker, Kathleen Gier, and say:

“These guys are about to win the World Series.”

They’re up 3-1 on the Mets and have three chances to win one game, but all things considered it would be a lot better to win that one game right here in New York because if the Series goes back to Kansas City, the Royals starting pitchers will be Johnny Cueto and Yordano Ventura.

Nobody—and that includes Johnny and Yordano—know what those two will do if they get another start.

So maybe it would be a good idea to win Game 5 and avoid all that suspense.

Unfortunately…

The Mets are starting Matt Harvey and for eight innings Harvey’s a beast: he’s throwing a four-hit shutout and his team’s up 2-0 going into the ninth.

Harvey had a 1-2-3 eighth inning on nine pitches—at this point, 102 pitches total—and hasn’t been in a real jam all night, so Harvey wants to finish the game. In fact, Harvey insists on finishing the game. Harvey is later quoted as saying, “No way I’m coming out.”

Now here’s what that exchange looked like:

The New York media later interprets this as selfishness on Harvey’s part, but if Harvey had won the game you can bet the media would have interpreted Harvey’s insistence on finishing the game as “having the heart of a champion” which is one of the many reasons pro athletes don’t like reporters; we wait until the smoke clears and then shoot the wounded.

(The pro athletes also think we’re overweight and dress poorly and they’re not 100% wrong about that.)

Mets manager Terry Collins could have gone to his bullpen—which it looked like he was ready to do—and sent out closer Jeurys Familia to pitch the ninth, but Familia’s been shaky and already blown two saves in the Series and imagine what the New York media would have said if Collins pulled a starter having a great night to go to a pitcher who’s been scuffling.

OK, so Harvey comes back out for the ninth and the crowd (which will later turn on Collins) cheers; at this point they think it’s a great idea to keep Harvey in the game.

But then Harvey walks Lorenzo Cain.

Base-running Rules? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Base-running Rules!

So LoCain’s on first base and down 2-0 in the ninth inning you wouldn’t normally steal second base because the tying run—the run that matters—is still at home plate.

But the Royals believe in pressure and running the bases aggressively puts pressure on a defense and after Alex Gordon made the first out of an inning at third base in Game 3, he asked third base coach Mike Jirschle if he’d made the right decision and Jirsch said don’t worry about it; it’s what we do.

Which is a huge deal because a lot of coaches would turn on a player and let them take the blame and for Jirsch to back up Alex meant the Royals weren’t taking the foot off the gas; they were still going to run the bases aggressively.

That being the case…

Lorenzo Cain steals second base.

If it’s there, the Royals are going to take it and Harvey delivers a pitch in 1.2 seconds-to-1.4 seconds; 1.2 is too fast a delivery to steal, but 1.4 isn’t (every extra tenth of a second is worth about 2.2 extra feet to a base stealer) and Cain gets a slow delivery from Harvey and now he’s on second base and the double play is no longer in order.

Here’s that steal and the thing to look for is Harvey’s leg kick because the higher his front foot goes up, the longer it takes to get back down.

Royals base-running coach Rusty Kuntz had his runners watch the pitcher’s back shoulder because if it went forward the pitcher was using a slide step (a faster delivery) but if the shoulder went back the pitcher was using a full leg kick (a slower delivery) and Rusty’s base-stealing mantra was:

“If he’s quick you stick, if he’s slow you go.”

Harvey was slow and Cain went.

Also…Harvey threw Hosmer a first-pitch slider (87.9 MPH) which takes longer to get to home plate than a fastball so the Royals picked the right pitch to run on.

Was Collins a Batter Too Late?

So Cain steals on the first pitch to Hosmer (the aforementioned slider) and then Hosmer doubles on the next pitch (a fastball) and later the second-guessers say Collins should have pulled Harvey after Cain walked.

But in Game 1 Hosmer was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against Harvey and so far in Game 5 Hosmer’s once again 0-for-3 with two strikeouts, so letting Harvey face Hosmer was not a bad decision.

A Moose Goes Old-School

Collins now pulls Harvey and goes to Familia to face Mike Moustakas and this is the at-bat that doesn’t get nearly enough attention.

Moustakas wants to pull the ball on the ground to the right side because that means Hosmer can advance to third, but Familia wants Moose to hit the ball to the left side because that will keep Hosmer at second base.

Here’s the video and watch the catcher’s mitt because Travis d’Arnaud wanted the pitch away, but Familia left it inside and Moose got the job done; he pulled the ball and moved Hosmer to third base and made the next play possible.

And Now the Play Where It All Comes Together

For me this next play is the result of the Royals Baseball Philosophy which included:

1. Get the ball in play.

2. Run the bases aggressively.

3. Let the players make in-game decisions and back them up if those decisions don’t work out.

The Royals have done their scouting and Eric Hosmer knows third baseman David Wright’s shoulder is hurting and he’s not throwing over the top and throwing hard; Wright’s throwing from underneath which puts a loop in the throw and doesn’t get the ball to first base as quickly.

So Hos waits for Wright to throw and then:

Watch Duda’s arm; Hosmer’s base running made Duda rush. He didn’t get his arm up all the way and throw over the top; he slung it sidearm which is why he missed d’Arnaud.

During the next year’s spring training I asked Hosmer to walk from third to home while we talked about the play and made a video and Hosmer revealed he thought he’d totally screwed up, wasn’t going to make it and he’d be known for making a huge mistake in the World Series. And he thought he screwed up all the way to home plate until he got to the dirt circle and saw d’Arnaud move away from home plate, so when Eric jumped up and pumped his fist, it’s part celebration and part relief.

BTW:

After we made that video in spring training, on Opening Day I saw Hosmer doing the exact same thing with an ESPN reporter—walking from third to home while being interviewed—and when I later asked Hos WTF he said:

“Lee, she stole all your shit.”

Just one more reason to dislike the media (a lot of them seem to have no problem stealing ideas from others) but enough about me…

For now.

Extra Innings

So Jeurys Familia has blown his third save of the series (don’t forget he’s the guy Terry Collins’ critics think should have been used earlier) and the game goes to the bullpens and in the top of the 12^th inning Addison Reed replaces Jonathan Niese who replaced Familia and things start to fall apart when Salvador Perez singles.

Jarrod Dyson replaces Perez, steals second, advances to third on an Alex Gordon groundout, scores on a Christian Colon single (and having a lead means Wade Davis is coming into the game) and then the shit hits the New York fan Big Time.

Daniel Murphy makes another error on a Paulo Orlando fielder’s choice (and once again, goes to his Chap Stick…weird reaction) and everybody’s safe. Alcides Escobar then doubles, Colon scores (there’s your insurance run) the Mets intentionally walk Ben Zobrist, change pitchers and now Bartolo Colon gives up a double to Lorenzo Cain. All three runners score and Wade Davis now has a five-run lead to work with.

At this point in the 2015 postseason Wade Davis has appeared seven times and given up zero runs.

In fact, go back to the regular season and it took 23 and 2/3 innings in his last 24 appearances for Wade to give up five earned runs, so the Mets have (let’s do the math) pretty much no chance of coming back to tie the game and in the bottom of the 12th inning, play like it.

In the bottom of the 12^th Lucas Duda strikes out, Travis d’Arnaud strikes out, Michael Conforto singles, advances to second on defensive who-really-gives-a-fuck and Wilmer Flores strikes out on a called strike which was probably a ball, but the umpire didn’t think the Mets would come back either, so why not get home early.

Here’s that video and I want you to watch Drew Butera:

Drew replaced Salvy behind the plate and before he ran to the mound to celebrate with Wade Davis, Drew turned and thanked the umpire for calling a good game (at least from Drew’s point of view) and when I asked Dew about it, he said his dad—former Big League catcher Sal Butera—insisted he do that and I always thought it was a cool moment of politeness in an often-overly-rude world.

Next Up:

We started this series way back on July 4^th and it took almost as long to write about the season as it did to play it, but we’ve got one more—maybe two—articles to go and I’m going to write about the celebration and the aftermath of the 2015 season and all the things that did and did not happen.

Time to go because I still have to draw a cartoon and watch three playoffs games today.

And people think I don’t work hard.