MLB 2014 season thread

Tear the entire fucking thing down.

 

Kansas City is a similar comp to the '07 Rockies- a team not good the year before or after their surge.
And they had a similar torrid run to the WS, and the lull between series pretty much doomed them.
The numbers don't favor teams going into the Series with that much off-time.
Also see 2012 Tigers and 2006 Tigers.

 

The Royals were good last year.

 

86-76 is not all that good.
The Rockies also won a one-game playoff in a similar fashion.

 

It's one game better than they were this year.

 

They were 89-73 this year and made the playoffs.
Although they had a weak pythag this season.

 

Ummm, didn't they win 89 this year?
I'm confused.

EDIT: 3OF beat me to it.

 

89 wins. OK. I was thinking 87. Anyway, it's not worth dickering over. Your point is taken.

 

Has there ever been a World Series in which neither team won 90 games?

 

My larger point is I am predicting the Giants smother them, like they did the rested Tigers two years ago.

 

Not in a full season, no.

The only two times it's happened were 1981 (strike) and 1918 (season cut to 140 games due to World War I travel restrictions).

http://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/

 

Sorry, I've been busy most of the day and just saw this. The points have largely been made. I would like to add that in the postseason, there are more off days built in and every game is played as if it might be your last chance at a win. So you rely more on your better players than in the regular season when the full bullpen is used and resting guys is a necessity.

The Royals having three awesome options at the back end of the bullpen essentially makes it a 5 or 6 inning game. In the regular season (Before Finnegan was added) they had guys like Bueno, Crow and the two Colemans pitching because you can't throw Herrera, Davis and Holland out there every game. And you rarely throw any of them more than an inning. A manager is also more apt to leave a starter in to try to get 6-8 innings if the game's somewhat close. You can't deny that it's different playing one out of 162 games, compared to one out of five or seven.

If you can avoid the lesser quality arms in your bullpen and play exceptional defense, it's hard for other teams to score runs. LTL talked about not giving away runs. That's the Royals right now in a nutshell. They rarely make errors, they don't walk many batters and they actually make better than average plays in the field. Clean base hits and home runs are practically the only way to score on them right now.