Rounding Third: America … Meet the Royals

Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Chicks may dig the long ball, but the baseball universe is totally invested into the small ball Kansas City Royals at the moment.

Kansas City is back in the American League Championship Series for the first time in 29 years after a stunning three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the ALDS.

Last week I said the Angels were ripe for the picking, but never in a million years did I think the Royals would be the ones to take them down. It took me about one inning, though, to change my mind.

When Lorenzo Cain robbed Kole Calhoun on the very first pitch of the game I turned to my son and said the Royals are going to win this series. And when Mike Moustakas belted that go-ahead home run in the 11th inning of Game 1, it was good night, turn off the lights for the Angels.

The Eric Hosmer homer in the 11th on Friday was gravy, and by the time he got a curtain call at Kauffman on Sunday, the Baltimore Orioles were already knee deep in trying to figure out a way to get a ball past Cain in the upcoming ALCS.

No team in this postseason manufactures runs better than the Royals, yet they have hit the most home runs in these playoffs of any team left in the postseason. This, of course, from a team that hit a league-worst 95 on the season, or, 116 less than the team they will be facing in the next round.

“We’ll bunt, we’ll hit and run, we’ll do it anyway we can,” Mike Moustakas said after Sunday’s win. “Tonight we were able to hit a couple big homers. We don’t really care how we win ballgames, just as long as we get a W at the end of the night, and I think I speak for 25 guys in that clubhouse and will say the exact same thing. We go out every night with intentions to win and whatever we can do to win, we’ll do it.”

If you are looking for a star on this Royals team, good luck.

They are all interchangeable. And that’s probably the reason why they are so good. Hosmer, Alex Gordon, and Moustakas get most of the attention, but Cain might be the most underrated player in the game.

Cain is as good of an outfielder as there is and he’s not too shabby at the plate either, as he hit .301, drove in 53 runs and swiped 28 bases.

“I know now the whole world is starting to see what he can do,” Hosmer said. “He’s on the big stage now making the plays and doing it with the bat, also. That’s something we’ve been seeing all year from him, from Gordo (Gordon), from (Jarrod) Dyson and all these guys out there. They’ve been really controlling that outfield. There’s a lot of turf out there obviously to cover out there, and they make the stadium and the field look a lot shorter than it is.”

You might also even get an argument from some that catcher Salvador Perez is the most important player on the team, as he is probably the best defensive catcher in the AL.

And by the way, we haven’t even touched on the bullpen triumvirate of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland.

If this team gets anything similar to what starters Yordano Ventura and Jason Vargas gave them in the series versus the Angels, Kansas City may very well find itself back in the World Series for the first time since 1985.

Perhaps we overlooked just how well put together and well-rounded this team is.

It’s hard to say the Royals will now get a step up in competition considering they just knocked off the best team in the American League in the Angels, but Baltimore (we think) won’t go down quietly.

They may have watched the postseason a year ago, the O’s are very much playoff ready and could have even more momentum than the Royals considering they beat the AL’s last three Cy Young Award winners to advance.

While the Royals have had a 29-year wait between World Series appearances, it’s been even longer for the Orioles, who haven’t been to the Fall Classic since 1983.

One of those waits will come to an end sometime next week.

And we can’t wait.

Categorized in: MLB