BALTIMORE — The Royals now are halfway to their goal. Yet they have fully blown our minds already.
Coming into Camden Yards and beating Buck Showalter’s Orioles in two tight, late-decided American League Championship Series games? That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Then again, neither were these guys supposed to steamroll over the Angels in the AL Division Series. Nor crawl out of a huge hole against Oakland ace Jon Lester in the wild-card game.
So it’s about time to stop being shocked by them, isn’t it?
On Saturday, the Royals prevailed in Game 2, 6-4, by virtue of a two-run ninth inning that broke a 4-4 deadlock, and they now head home to Kauffman Stadium with a commanding, 2-0 lead in this series — and a jaw-dropping 6-0 record for the postseason.
“I think we came into this series the underdog and our guys, they don’t really pay much attention to that,” said Royals manager Ned Yost, who again piloted an unlikely course to victory. “I don’t think they mind being the underdog, because they have a lot of confidence in their abilities.
“But they’re playing their best baseball of the year right now, and it’s sure the best time to play it.”
The last team to win its first six games of the playoff was the 2007 Rockies, who swept the Phillies in the National League Division Series and the Diamondbacks in the NL Championship Series before getting swept themselves by the Red Sox in the World Series. So that isn’t precisely the model the Royals want to follow. For now, though, the Royals have stunned the baseball world just as those Rockies did seven years ago.
These guys rile us up more than those Rockies, though, because they waited so long to return to the postseason — of the 18 guys who have played for the Royals in this ALCS, only six were born when Kansas City won the 1985 Fall Classic — and because the manner in which they have won these games. Only one, their 8-3 clincher over the Angels in ALDS Game 3, didn’t go down to the wire.
This time, the Royals didn’t cash in on an uncharacteristic home run for the winner. Rather, they utilized their more standard tactic of manufacturing a pair of runs without hitting the ball particularly hard. Omar Infante started the ninth with an infield single to third, a soft roller on which he beat Ryan Flaherty’s relay. Then, as Showalter lifted his righty setup man Darren O’Day for his lefty closer Zach Britton, Yost asked Mike Moustakas to bunt even though he homered earlier in the game and has gone deep four times in this postseason.
“Britton is really, really tough on lefties,” Yost said. “We had a decision to make right there, if Omar got on … do we pinch‑ hit [Christian] Colon and bunt him over there? Or do we try to create a little havoc and pinch‑ run for Omar and let Mous bunt? That was the direction we took, and it worked out great for us. Mous did a great job of getting the bunt down.”
He did, with Infante’s pinch-runner Terrance Gore advancing to second, and then Alcides Escobar hit a grounder off the end of his bat down the first-base line for a run-scoring double. Escobar wound up scoring from third on Lorenzo Cain’s single up the middle, Cain’s fourth hit of the day, and Cain added a pair of spectacular catches in the outfield.
That Cain and Escobar came over in the same 2010 trade December 2010 trade from Milwaukee, in return for ace Zack Greinke, made the day’s events all the sweeter for the Royals.
“Our team is very confident,” Cain said. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to go out and do it on the field. That’s what we’ve been doing as of late. We’ve been on a nice run so far.”
The Royals have enjoyed some good bounces and well-placed balls; they scored their first two runs off Baltimore starter Bud Norris when Eric Hosmer knocked a two-run, first-inning bloop single over the head of O’s shortstop J.J. Hardy. But the Orioles have benefited, too. This hardly feels like a case of luck carrying the day. Nor does it feel like Baltimore giving its opportunity away.
“I think about a hundred percent of that is what they’re doing, not what we’re not doing,” Showalter said.
If the veteran manager was as thrown off as the rest of us, he did a fine job hiding it. At this point, though, it would throw most of us off if the Orioles managed to win at least two of three games in Kansas City to bring things back here.
Until further notice, the baseball universe is officially upside down.
