2014 AL Wild Card: Oakland Athletics vs. Kansas City Royals

A's

haha, should be Lester (16-11), Shields (14-8). trying to watch football at the same time.

ROYALS DUH JFC

i mean not even cause i hate the A's right now but how can you not root for the royals, if the O's are knocked out i want them to take it all

Royals

^^

A's come on nothing good should happen to Missouri or Kansas.

i mean not even cause i hate the A's right now but how can you not root for the royals, if the O's are knocked out i want them to take it all

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Sunday, September 28, 2014 6:48 PM (1 hour ago)

ned yost?

it's not about the team so much just have to root for a team/city that's been so miserable for so long. and they've always been The Team of the 80s in my brain (esp in those powder blues), i just like KC being successful it feels "good for baseball"

also they have a great defense defense is awesome

if you need a reason, the Royals used to employ Rush Limbaugh

30th in walks, 30th in home runs -- the first team of that kind to make the playoffs.

fuck offense eh

I really don't watch much AL baseball at all, so these clubs are pretty unknown to me. KC looks like a throw back turf team from the early 80s with that club stat line. From what I gather, they are excellent with the glove and their bullpen seems pretty good. It looks like Oakland has superior starters 1 to 3, but their offense seems like a club that could easily get run up for 10+ Ks.

I'd say this game is a total toss up. James Shields is pretty good and this A's team is definitely not the Red Sox or Rangers lineup of last decade. Jon Lester is a better pitcher than Shields and a lefty, which may or not play out to be a deciding element.

Whoever wins, I kind of hope they beat the Angels.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/96989062/the-yost-way-paying-dividends-for-royals

On Monday morning, though, he stopped by Starbucks for the first time in a while and nobody asked his name.

"No, I don't get the fancy foo-foo drinks, I just get the regular coffee so they don't even bother anymore," he said.

On the BP podcast today, Sam Miller pointed out that there were several starts this year where Yost let Shields go 5-7 innings while giving up 4+ runs. You'd think the hook might be quicker in an elimination game, but it's Yost.

Dunn not in A's lineup, Soto catching.

http://m.royals.mlb.com/news/article/89271170/josh-willingham-ready-to-be-part-of-royals-lineup

Caption beneath photo: "8/12/14: Josh Willingham lines a double down the left-field line off Jon Lester in his first at-bat as a member of the Royals"

Tonight's lineup:

Escobar
Aoki
Cain
Hosmer
Butler
Gordon
Perez
Infante
Moustakas

I'm cheering for the A's for this one, mainly because Jon Lester is one my favorite pitchers around and Yost is a pain in the neck.

I doubt any of those two will survive against the Angels.

Also mlb.tv should really carry the post season in north americuh, ffs.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Alex Gordon's club-leading 19 HR must be fewest for a playoff team in a while.

was that Butler brainfart "Royals baseball," Ron Darling? (wtf first-base coach)

billy butler you doofus

i bet a lot of KC fans shouted something like "rusty kuntz" at that play

The three teams I checked on my Alex Gordon question all beat 19: the '73 Mets (Milner, 23), the '63 Dodgers (Howard, 28), the '59 White Sox (Lollar, 22). I threw the question out on High Heat Stats, and the answer seems to be the '76 Royals (Otis, 18); the '82 Cardinals (Hendricks, 19) and '74 Orioles (Grich, 19) tie this year's Royals.

trivia > games, right clem?

Sparky Anderson would be warming up some of those fine KC relievers by now.

There's a game on?

Indeed, Big Game James isn't doing very well so far. He can thank Hosmer for that good double play.

Surprised Yost isn't making Aoki bunt right now.

if big game james has a bad game can we please stop calling him big game james

If the Royals go on to win the World Series, every team will replace its house sabermetrician with a Tony Robbins/Oprah-like figure.

they mighta gotten 4-5 runs there w/out that fucking bunt

somewhere along the coast in Massachusetts, Epstein is laughing.

Don't worry, Morbius--I'm watching the game, looking up trivia, and marking art. I call it "multi-tasking"--modern girls and modern rock & roll, that's me.

Someone on HHH has discovered that Terry Puhl led the division-winning Astros in 1980 with 13 HR.

not sure any of those pitches to crisp were strikes -- maybe the last one

This TBS color guy is fucking horrible

i assume you mean ripken

wasn't Cal's observation that the tying run in a postseason game is a big one just the keenest?

somewhere along the coast in Massachusetts, Epstein is laughing.

you do know he gets to keep Addison Russell no matter who wins?

wow, 15 outs and goin to Ventura! Ned surprises me.

why take a risk on ventura when you already have one of the best pens in the game

use davis!

use davis!!!

Yosted himself.

yosted on his o

you do know he gets to keep Addison Russell no matter who wins?

sure, but really looking at this game I find the A's to be underwhelming. Even after going all in by trading Russel for Samardzija and Hammel.

i guess home runs are important after all

dunno brimstead, i think Darling is making sense on bullpen usage now, huh

I guess I mainly object to his tone. The whole "you're asking a young pitcher to do something he's never done" re ventura did make me swear out loud, though

haha this is the recap on MLB.com!!

Royals left feeling blue after rally comes up short
Ventura, in relief of Shields, gives up go-ahead, three-run HR in sixth

KANSAS CITY -- A jammed-in crowd shook Kauffman Stadium with blue thunder, releasing its pent-up passion after 28 dry years, trying to push the Royals to another great moment in their return to postseason play. It didn't happen.

Not that the Royals didn't give the 40,502 fans jolts of joy, taking an early lead before Oakland's five-run outburst in the sixth inning pointed the Athletics to a 7-6 victory in the American League Wild Card Game on Tuesday night. Brandon Moss was the main culprit, cracking two home runs for five RBIs. Jon Lester pitched the victory.

The A's, not Kansas City's first playoff team since 1985, advance to the American League Division Series against the Los Angeles Angels beginning on Thursday at Anaheim. The Royals' season is over.

The full house of long-deprived KC fans, clad in blue, gave the Royals a rousing welcome as the pregame introductions were made. "Let's go, Royals!" they chanted, waving blue towels.

James Shields' first pitch to the A's Coco Crisp was a strike, prompting a roar which diminished in a bit when Crisp lined a single to left field. Two outs later, though, the throng was in full-throated thunder -- until Moss sent the ball soaring high and far to right field.

Over the bullpen it flew, a two-run homer launched into the seats on Shields' 0-1 changeup. Moss had hit 25 homers during the regular season.

Then it was the Royals' turn against Lester, the formidable left-hander who was 9-3 against them in his career. But Alcides Escobar immediately singled, igniting fresh excitement, before Lester got two outs.

Nori Aoki, on base after forcing Escobar, stole second and Eric Hosmer walked. Billy Butler ripped a single to left field, scoring Aoki.

There were probably relatively few in this boisterous crowd that witnessed the last run scored by Kansas City in the postseason. That was when George Brett raced in on a wild pitch in the fifth inning of the 1985 World Series Game 7. Butler's RBI was the first since Frank White's single that scored Willie Wilson in that same inning.

But now things got confusing. With Alex Gordon at bat, Butler made a false start toward second, stopped, looked at coach Rusty Kuntz and then lumbered away. Lester threw to the pulled-over shortstop and while Butler was caught in a rundown, Hosmer broke for home but was thrown out by first baseman Stephen Vogt. Catcher Geovany Soto applied the tag easily and the inning was over.

During an in-game TV interview, Royals manager Ned Yost said Butler broke too soon, that he was supposed to wait until Lester delivered to the plate. The hope, apparently, was to give Hosmer time to score.

One other consequence was that Soto injured his left thumb on the play and had to leave the game, replaced by Derek Norris.

The noise meter rose to the deafening level in the third inning as the Royals went ahead, 3-2. Mike Moustakas singled to left, was bunted to second and took third on Aoki's groundout. Lorenzo Cain ripped an RBI double to left and he scored as Hosmer blooped a single over shortstop.

The "big game" matchup between Lester and Shields ended in the A's sixth after Sam Fuld's leadoff single and Josh Donaldson's walk. Yordano Ventura, usually a starter, was summoned from the bullpen to relieve Shields.

Ventura got behind Moss 2-0 and then delivered a 98-mph fastball that the left-handed hitter sent zooming over the center-field fence an estimated 418 feet away. It was a three-run homer that propelled the A's into a 5-3 lead.

Moss had just two home runs in his last 154 at-bats during the regular season, but he had two blasts in his first three at-bats in this game.

After Josh Reddick's single, a wild pitch and a flyout that put Reddick at third, Yost pulled Ventura for Kelvin Herrera, normally his seventh-inning specialist. The manager got a chorus of boos from the crowd as he left the field.

Herrera got Vogt to foul out but Norris singled up the middle and Reddick's run made it 6-3. Crisp, the ninth batter in the inning, also singled to center for another run.

Shields, in his five-plus innings, threw 88 pitches -- his lowest total in his two seasons with the Royals. He gave up four runs, five hits and two walks.

Lester retired 12 straight batters until Omar Infante bunted safely in the seventh. But Lester quickly ended the inning.

Neither the crowd nor the Royals would go quietly. Escobar opened the eighth by reaching base on infield single and then stole second, bringing the roaring fans to their feet. Escobar moved to third as Aoki bounced out, then scored on Cain's single.

Hosmer's grounder down the line went off Vogt's glove but was foul. Cain stole second, Hosmer walked and A's manager Bob Melvin removed Lester in favor of right-hander Luke Gregerson. Butler drilled a single to right to score Cain and the Royals were within two runs.

Pinch-runner Terrance Gore stole second on the next pitch. And Gregerson's next pitch went wild, allowing Hosmer to score and putting Gore at third with one out. The place went wild. Gordon walked and stole second as Salvador Perez struck out.

With the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position, Infante struck out to end the inning.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/665808/thumbs/o-DEWEY-DEFEATS-TRUMAN-OBAMACARE-570.jpg?4

haha awesome!

Sheffield and Pedro are tearing into Yost. Haha

man, i hate Cinderella

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 1, 2014 12:56 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

w-Kansas City 89 73
w-Oakland 88 74

missed this game live and watched after i got home. love the Wild Card, it is a great idea. how did the A's lose, wow.

still Cinderella in the grand scheme, z

the Win Probability chart must be a dilly

Yost followed 2/3 of this

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-few-pieces-of-advice-for-ned-yost/

http://www.fangraphs.com/livescoreboard.aspx?date=2014-09-30

Bunt hangover.

At least that guy got his puppy!

fun game. KC a bit annoying but satisfied with getting Lester out of playoffs.

lol Beane. Yosted by his own petard. My shit doesn't work in the etc, etc.

Backsies on Cespedes?

tbf, at least when the royals bunt they seem to get it done -- no popping out to third or whatever

Yosted/Royals 2K14

never correct me in front of the children

(Well, just one instance. The team does seem pretty efficient at getting the bunt down.)

Anyway(!):

@45PedroMartinez
What Ned Yost it's saying about bringing in Ventura, it's horrible. How much gas do you want? Why don't you just go and get a gas station?

http://deadspin.com/pedro-martinez-kills-ned-yost-on-tbs-postgame-show-1641097003

lol pedros the goat

fave TBS in-game quote from last night?
"In case you're wondering, Raul Ibanez is on the Royals roster. And he has a knack for some postseason magic".

... but not bunting.

bunting is good

http://www.baseballrelated.com/images04/losangeles/xbunting.jpg.pagespeed.ic.hVmdzBiH7s.jpg

nice, very nice

but yeah, bunting for the run "that will win you the ballgame" is the kind Earl Weaver approved of, I don't know why anybody would object to those. The early-innings stuff was insane.

i dunno - with these guys, why not. literally half the line-up only has speed going for them anyways.

bcz it's not about speed, but giving away outs. The stolen bases, esp given Lester's indifference/paralysis, were smart.

thought it was a little strange that they bunted dyson to second (in the ninth) and then had him steal third with a lefty batting. did he run on his own?

oh - i know the whole thing about giving up outs etc. just saying that these guys, maybe more than any other previous playoff line-up before them, are most likely just going to make an out anyways.

xpost - ya that was weird. yost is weird.

KC's bunt and run strategy looked a lot better than it really was last not because the A's kept walking people and making errors and having outfielders run into each other and throwing wild pitches and giving up passed balls on pitchouts (the most WTF mistake of all) and generally finding crazy ways to give the Royals free bases without making them earn it by getting hits. When KC faces a non-choking team and find they only have two chances rather than three to drive runners home then they'll find themselves getting exposed as the worst kind of one dimensional offense (i.e. one that can't hit for power AT ALL).

i think the only way KC beats the angels is if a couple of halos starters have complete meltdowns and trout doesn't perform at his usual level and one of the KC hitters bombs four HRs in the series out of nowhere. i don't think that's outta the realm of possibility but i can't pick KC either.

xpost this should read " looked a lot better than it really was last *night*"

ie in about 30 hours xxp

If they did win 3/5 vs LAA, it wouldn't be astounding but one of the bigger upsets since the Reds swept the 1990 WS.

meh, i'm not buying the A's as chokers, they're just not as good as the first 90 games suggested.

they also were pretty unlucky. odds are decent that soto throws out one of those runners, maybe coco gets to hosmer's triple (well, probably not that)

that def did not look like a catchable ball w/out a Mays / Endy-style headslapper

When KC faces a non-choking team and find they only have two chances rather than three to drive runners home then they'll find themselves getting exposed as the worst kind of one dimensional offense (i.e. one that can't hit for power AT ALL).

This is nearly what happened last night anyway! KC are really bad for a playoff team, but it's baseball and any team can go on a 11-5 stretch out of nowhere. I'm pulling hard for them.

I'm surprised the passed ball on the pitchout hasn't come up more often as it's pretty much the direct cause of the A's loss, even then it's kind of a funny example of getting Yosted, every single person in the stadium knew that Colon was running there and somehow the catcher totally muffs it. Furthermore I was thinking about Hosmer's big hit, if that clears the wall or that's an in-the-parker due to Fuld not getting up right away, most likely Colon doesn't even get on there.

Big Media doesn't allow "your victory was a gift" summaries bcz we earn things in America, goddammit

Was hoping Posnanski (hardcore Royals fan, easily exasperated with Yost and the organization) would have something up on last night's game, but nothing so far.

I liked this from the thread last night:

cameron mentioned today in his column that the royals were a very good base stealing team and the As hardly ever throw people out, it's an advantage a manager should exploit. and credit to yost, he has
― k3vin k

Truisms are true, unless they're not. And you have to be flexible and recognize when that's true.

it was a bad pitch on the pitchout tbf. the catcher had to reach back over the plate i think

it looked to me like he just closed his clove a little early – that and/or he missed by an inch.

nothing wrong with that pitchout, norris just got ahead of himself

Neyer:

Why Melvin hadn’t brought in Abad to face Hosmer, I don’t know....

Why Melvin, needing a strikeout, didn’t bring in Cook and his high strikeout rate to face Colon, I don’t know....

There might be things we don’t know, are probably things we don’t know. Cook made only seven appearances in September, and maybe just wasn’t ready to pitch in a tight spot. But it seems to me that if you trust Abad to retire Gordon, you should trust him to retire Hosmer. If that happens, you’re one out away and nobody’s on base and you can probably figure out the rest of it.

They say that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. Except in baseball. In baseball, we always choose a father. Hello there, Papa Melvin.

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/american-league-wild-card-royals-athletics-melvin-yost-managing-blunders-100114

http://cdn.fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Dyson6.gif

let's look at how Dyson stole the base off Doolittle, leaving Norris almost helpless.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-jarrod-dyson-stole-the-biggest-base-of-his-life

I was having flashbacks to this random Royals game I watched:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2014_09_15_chamlb_kcamlb_1&mode=video&content_id=36295001&tcid=vpp_copy_36295001

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2014_09_15_chamlb_kcamlb_1&mode=video&content_id=36295093&tcid=vpp_copy_36295093

Was hoping Posnanski (hardcore Royals fan, easily exasperated with Yost and the organization) would have something up on last night's game, but nothing so far.

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/10/01/the-beauty-of-belief/

I like this:

The very best part of this year’s Royals team has been the replacement of that old bleary belief with a clarity of vision. It’s not an easy vision. But it’s clear. These Royals know what they’re up against. They can’t hit home runs. They don’t walk. They don’t have a starting pitcher who will get Cy Young votes. They have a manager who will occasionally just leave the planet. They don’t have as much money. They are not very deep.

ha! pretty much what i was trying to say upthread!

Angell weighed in (I hope he naps in the afternoon)

http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/royals-strangers-night

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/By431TCIcAES5Qa.png

team rocket is blasting off agaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

let's look at how Dyson stole the base off Doolittle, leaving Norris almost helpless.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-jarrod-dyson-stole-the-biggest-base-of-his-life

― mookieproof, Wednesday, October 1, 2014 3:17 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

v nice