I haven’t seen the Royals play much this season -- or really much at all since Bret Saberhagen was their ace and George Brett was George Brett -- but I do know this: in Alex Gordon, they have a left-fielder who can actually catch the ball, which is something the Mets will really have to get used to after four games vs. Kyle Schwarber.
Gordon is a key cog in a lineup full of regulars who play top-flight defense for Kansas City, which is widely viewed as the best-fielding team in baseball.
With their array of astonishingly talented starting pitchers and two of the season’s most impressive power surges from Yoenis Cespedes and, more recently, Daniel Murphy, the Mets have frequently been spectacular over the past few months -- a marked departure from the majority of the campaign, when they were essentially a .500 ballclub.
The Royals, on the other hand, have been steady. They put a stranglehold on first place in the AL Central back in April, and by the time the Amazins were heating up in early August, KC was so far ahead of the competition that they could start focusing on the postseason. About the same time the Mets altered their fortunes with the addition of Cespedes, the Royals remade their team with a trade for Reds’ ace Johnny Cueto, bolstering a rotation that was short on star power but solid overall.
The Mets’ hurlers are playing like they’ve been there before, but the Royals actually have. They possess a wealth of postseason experience, getting all the way to the seventh game of last year’s World Series, and their loss in that game is surely burned into their collective memory.
The AL champs also appear to match up well with the Mets’ fireballers. KC batters struck out less frequently than any other MLB team this season, and statheads who actually follow this stuff say that they’re also tops in connecting against 95+ MPH fastballs.
In short, the Royals are seasoned, smart, able and determined. They won’t beat themselves, and they won’t take anything for granted. For the Mets, the future is blindingly bright. For Kansas City, which surely knows the chances of making a third straight Fall Classic are infinitesimal, the future is now.
Sports
Given all that, it certainly seems that the Royals have a decided edge.
But that’s not all there is. There’s one side, with Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, and the other with Cueto, Edinson Volquez, Yordano Ventura and towering ex-Met Chris Young.
There goes that edge, right?
Mets win, in … Wait a second, does anyone really care how many games it takes, if the end result is a World Championship?
