Report Card for the 2014-2015 Royals, Part 1.

So I think it’s only fair that I grade the performance of all those people – players and non-players alike – who made any sort of contribution to the 2014-2015 Royals. The players are listed in descending order of their bWAR over the last two seasons combined. As always, these grades are tough but fair.

Lorenzo Cain (12.3 bWAR): Cain dedicated himself to getting into better physical shape after the 2013 season, and found a way to eliminate the leg injuries that had plagued him in the past, playing in 133 games in 2014 and 140 games in 2015. He legged out enough infield singles to bat .300 for the first time in 2014, and this season he started hitting for the power he had only flashed before, hitting 16 home runs. He was 42 runs above average defensively over the past two years. This season he finished 3^rd in the AL MVP vote, becoming the first Royal since 1985 to finish in the top seven. (Think about that. From 1986 to 2014, 203 players finished in the top seven of the MVP vote. For most of that time, there were only 14 AL teams. And yet not one Royal placed.) Cain was the best player on a world championship team. That’s pretty sweet.

Also: in the Wild Card game last year, Cain batted in the bottom of the eighth with the Royals down four runs, and hit a crucial RBI single; he would eventually score himself. If Cain had not succeeded in that moment, the Royals don’t win the Wild Card game. If they don’t win the Wild Card game, they obviously do not go to the World Series in 2014. In addition, without the experience garnered in the postseason last year, as well as the disappointment-fueled focus to win it all this year after falling just short, it is highly unlikely the Royals would have come back in Game 4 of the ALDS against the Astros this year, meaning they would not have won a world championship. Lorenzo Cain is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

(To save time and space going forward, the previous paragraph will be summed up as “Postulate #1”.)

Alex Gordon (9.4 bWAR): The best defensive left fielder in the American League, Gordon led the team with 114 walks over the last two years while hitting .268/.362/.432. His near-inside-the-park-home-run in Game 7 of last year’s World Series nearly changed the course of history; his home run in Game 1 of the World Series this year did change the course of history.

Also, on August 26th, 2014, Gordon batted with the Royals losing 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth and hit a walk-off, two-run homer off Glen Perkins. If the Royals do not win this game, then they go into the final game of the season 87-74 instead of 88-73. In that case, the Royals would have been eliminated from winning the AL Central before Sunday’s games started; however, they would not have clinched home-field advantage for the Wild Card game.

In real life, once the Tigers won Game 162, the Royals – whose game was in the fifth inning – had nothing to play for, as they were guaranteed to host the Wild Card whether they won or lost. At that point in the game, the Royals were down 4-2 in the fifth inning – but they then pulled literally every starter from the game at that point. This is crucial, because the Royals came back to win, 6-4, with a lineup entirely made up of backups. Had the Royals still had something to play for, they would have stayed with their starters, in which case they very well may have lost and finished 87-75. The A’s won their final game to finish 88-74, in which case the Royals would have had to travel to Oakland for the Wild Card game.

If that game had been played in Oakland, it’s highly unlikely the Royals would have come back from a 7-3 deficit in the eighth inning. If Alex Gordon had not won the August 26th game with a walk-off home run, by Postulate #1, that means the Royals would not have won a world championship. Alex Gordon is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

(To save time and space going forward, the previous three paragraphs will be summed up as “Postulate #2”.)

Salvador Perez (5.7 bWAR): Back-to-back Gold Gloves (Perez set the Royals’ all-time record for pickoffs after he had played less 120 games in the majors) and lots of pop (he set the Royals’ all-time record for home runs by a catcher with 21 this year.) Perez passed Mike Macfarlane this season as the second-best catcher in Royals history with 14.1 career bWAR; he’s got a good chance to pass Darrell Porter (16.7) next season.

Also: on July 9th, 2014, Salvy batted with the Royals down, 4-2 in Tampa Bay, with two on and one out in the ninth. His fly ball right down the line just cleared the fence, and the Royals won, 5-4. If they had not won the game, then Postulate #2 declares that the Royals would not have won a world championship. As if that’s not enough, he somehow pulled a slider in the other batter’s box passed a diving Josh Donaldson, activating Postulate #1. Salvador Perez is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Jarrod Dyson (5.1 bWAR): While it’s a gamble, part of me would be really excited to see the Royals finally commit to playing Dyson every day (well, at least every day against right-handed pitching). He has 39 steals in 121 games started the last two years, plus 23 steals coming off the bench. Playing the equivalent of 141 complete games in the outfield, he’s been worth 25 runs above average defensively according to DRS. Put it this way: over the last two years, he has more bWAR than Mike Moustakas or Eric Hosmer, despite playing less than half the time.

Also: he stole the most important base in Royals history. Aside from Dave Roberts’ steal for the 2004 Red Sox, it might be the most important steal in baseball history. That activates Postulate #1. Jarrod Dyson is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Mike Moustakas (4.8 bWAR): Moose’s transformation into an all-fields spray hitter was one of the more impressive and gratifying transformations I’ve ever seen from a Royals player. By swallowing his pride and working his ass off, he turned himself from a replacement-level player (0.3 bWAR between 2013 and 2014 combined) into a deserving All-Star.

Also: on August 6th, 2014, Moustakas hit a two-run homer in the second, an RBI single in the fourth, and drove in the Royals’ final run with a groundout in the ninth. He had all four RBIs in a game the Royals won 4-3. That activates Postulate #2. Mike Moustakas is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Eric Hosmer (4.4 bWAR): The cleanup hitter on a world championship team, Hosmer has been an RBI machine in the postseason, with 29 RBIs in 31 games despite a pedestrian .276/.333/.398 split. His audacious dash for home in Game 5 of the World Series is one of the most iconic moments of the last two years.

Also: in the Wild Card game, with the Royals losing by a run in the 12th inning, down to their final two outs with no one on base, Hosmer saved the season by tripling high off the left-field wall, later scoring the tying run. That activates Postulate #1. Eric Hosmer is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Alcides Escobar (3.1 bWAR): Escobar won his first Gold Glove this year, a nifty recognition of his excellent defense the last five years. (Also probably his last: Francisco Lindor probably would have won this year if he had been called up earlier, and Andrelton Simmons will probably win next year and for many years after that.) Escobar hasn’t been a complete cipher offensively, hitting .270 with 48 steals over the last two years.

Also: in the Wild Card game, leading off the bottom of the eighth inning with the Royals losing by four runs, Escobar singled, and then stole second base – a ridiculously low-percentage move which worked out brilliantly when Nori Aoki followed with a one-hop bullet to the second baseman which almost certainly would have been a double play had Escobar not stolen second. This activates Postulate #1. Alcides Escobar is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Kendrys Morales (2.4 bWAR): In his first year as a Royal, Morales hit .290/.362/.485 with 41 doubles, 22 homers, and 106 RBIs. He won the Silver Slugger award. He hit three home runs and a triple in a game against the Tigers on September 20th, which is basically the greatest offensive game in the history of the franchise.

Also: in Game 4 of this year’s ALDS in Houston, with the Royals down 6-4 in the eighth inning, with none out in the bases loaded, Morales hit a double play ball with enough speed and spin to elude both pitcher Tony Sipp and shortstop Carlos Correa, turning what would have been a 6-5 deficit with two outs and a man on third into a tie game with the go-ahead run on third and none out. Without that absurd rally, the Royals don’t come back to win Game 4, are eliminated from the postseason, and do not win a world championship. Kendrys Morales is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

(To save time and space going forward, the previous paragraph will be summed up as “Postulate #3”.)

Christian Colon (1.3 bWAR): Long derided as another failed top-five pick, Colon finally debuted last season and has hit .303/.361/.382 in 64 major league games. He may have a future after all.

Also: in the Wild Card game, Colon batted with the tying run on third base and one out in the 12th inning, and chopped an infield single that tied the game. He stole second base and then scored the walk-off run. This activates Postulate #1, which gave Colon the opportunity to drive in the winning run in the final game of the following year. This year. Christian Colon is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Ben Zobrist (1.2 bWAR): My favorite trade deadline pickup of all time. Zobrist hit .284/.364/.453 in two months as a Royal, seamlessly moving from left field to second base when asked, and then was the Royals’ best hitter in the postseason. Thanks, Ben. Give Blaise Royal a kiss from all of us.

Also: in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the ALDS in Houston, Zobrist lined a single to load the bases and keep the line moving in the five-run rally. That activates Postulate #3. Ben Zobrist is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Paulo Orlando (1.0 bWAR): The first Brazilian to ever appear in a World Series, Orlando was a highly useful fourth outfielder this season, hitting .249/.269/.444 with very good defense, despite not reaching the majors until he was 29 years old. (Only three other hitters have made their major league debut with the Royals at an older age: Chris Hatcher, Aaron Guiel, and Edgar Caceres.)

Also: on July 12th, 2015, Orlando led off the bottom of the eighth with a home run to break a 10-10 deadlock against the Toronto Blue Jays. (The Royals had scored six runs in the first and led 7-0 after five innings before giving up eight runs in the sixth.) The Royals won the game, 11-10. If they had lost the game, the Toronto Blue Jays would have held home-field advantage when the two teams squared off in the ALCS.

Had Toronto been the home team, it’s unlikely that Ryan Goins would have pulled off of Ben Zobrist’s pop-up that ignited the five-run rally against David Price in the seventh inning of Game 2. In addition, given the evidence that umpires are subconsciously influenced by the home crowd to make borderline calls that favor the home-team, it’s likely the 2-1 pitches to Ben Revere and Dioner Navarro in the ninth inning of Game 6 would have been called balls, not strikes, dramatically changing the dynamics of the inning, possibly allowing the Blue Jays to come back and win. (Admittedly, a very shaky proposition, given that Wade Davis was on the mound and Wade Davis does not give up runs.)

If the outcome of both games changes, then the Blue Jays win the ALCS in six games; if the outcome of either game changes, then Johnny Cueto has to start Game 7 of the ALCS on the road. If Paulo Orlando doesn’t hit that home run, the Royals probably lose to the Blue Jays in the ALCS, and do not win a world championship. Paulo Orlando is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

(To save time and space going forward, the previous three paragraphs will be summed up as “Postulate #4”.)

Nori Aoki (1.0 bWAR): In his one season with the Royals, Aoki gave them exactly what they wanted when they traded Will Smith for him: a leadoff type hitter who could get on base (.349 OBP) with speed (17 steals in 25 attempts) to play right field (which, strictly speaking, he did).

Also: in the bottom of the ninth inning of the Wild Card game, with Jarrod Dyson on second base and one out, Aoki waited out Sean Doolittle for four pitches – giving Dyson enough time to figure out Doolittle’s move and steal third – and then hit a deep fly ball to right field, allowing Dyson to trot home with the tying run. This activates Postulate #1. Nori Aoki is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Johnny Giavotella (0.1 bWAR): The sight of Giavotella playing cheerleader throughout the 2014 playoffs like it was the role of a lifetime never failed to amuse me. I can’t say that the Royals miss him – his defensive weakness makes him a poor fit for what they’re trying to do – but I am so happy for him that he won the starting job in Anaheim this season and hit a highly respectable .272/.318/.375. I always believed in him, and I’m glad that he finally showed what he was capable of this year.

Also: on May 11th, 2014, with the Royals losing 7-6 in the top of the seventh, with men on first and third and two outs, Giavotella hit a three-run homer of Danny Farquhar to give the Royals a 9-7 lead they would not relinquish. This activates Postulate #2. Johnny Giavotella is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Josh Willingham (0.1 bWAR): The Royals traded for Willingham on August 11th, 2014, to be an insurance policy in the outfield and DH and as a right-handed hitter off the bench, and he performed that job reasonably well, hitting .233/.349/.384 in 86 plate appearances down the stretch.

Also: the last hit of his major league career was a pinch-hit single to lead off the bottom of the ninth of the Wild Card game against left-hander Sean Doolittle. Dyson would pinch-run for him and you know the rest. This activates Postulate #1. Josh Willingham is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Terrance Gore (0.0 bWAR): Gore is, quite simply, the fastest basestealer I (and pretty much anyone else) have ever seen. His future as a perennial September call-up is assured – the major league minimum is worth $80,000-$90,000 a month, and that doesn’t include his postseason shares, so it’s a good job if you can get it. But after hitting .284/.367/.311 in Double-A this year, the possibility is there for him to carve out a Dyson-like career.

Also: on September 15th, 2014 – popularly known as the “That’s What Speed Deux” game – Gore pinch-ran for Aoki after Aoki had just doubled with two outs in the bottom of the ninth (this after Dyson, himself in the game as a pinch-runner, had stolen third base with two outs – and then just kept running when the ball got away from the catcher, scoring the tying run.) Cain then hit a slow infield single to shortstop, and Gore just turned the corner at third base and didn’t slow down until he had scored the walk-off run. This activates Postulate #2. Terrance Gore is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Omar Infante (0.0 bWAR): Infante plays second base pretty well.

Also: on June 29th, 2014, Infante hit a walk-off single with one out in the ninth inning to beat the Angels. This activates Postulate #2. Omar Infante is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Erik Kratz (0.0 bWAR): Kratz performed the magical feat of being on a postseason roster all the way to Game 7 of the World Series without ever appearing in a game.

Also: on August 18th, 2014, Kratz pinch-hit for an ailing Salvador Perez in the top of the seventh inning, with the Royals leading, 3-0, and homered. He batted again in the ninth with the Royals leading, 5-1, and homered again. The Twins then scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth, meaning Kratz’s two home runs were the margin of victory in a 6-4 final score. That activates Postulate #2. Erik Kratz is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Danny Valencia (0.0 bWAR): Valencia came to the Royals in December 2013 in exchange for David Lough, and then was traded in July 2014 for Liam Hendriks and Erik Kratz, both of whom had their own role to play in the drama of the last two years.

Also: on April 16th, 2014, Valencia started at third base against an up-and-coming left-hander named Dallas Keuchel, and homered in the second inning. The Royals would need 11 innings to defeat the Astros that day, 6-4. This activates Postulate #2. Danny Valencia is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Pedro Ciriaco (-0.2 bWAR): Yeah, apparently Pedro Ciriaco played for the 2014 Royals.

Also: on May 29th, 2014, Ciriaco started at third base in Toronto, and with the Royals losing 4-2 in the fifth inning, he doubled in a run and then scored the tying run in what turned into a three-run rally. The Royals would fall behind 6-5 before tying it in the ninth when, with two outs and Dyson on second base, Perez hit a routine ground ball to shortstop Jose Reyes, only Reyes’ throw to first bounced out of Edwin Encarnacion’s glove, and Dyson came all the way around to score. The Royals would win in 11 innings. This activates Postulate #2. Pedro Ciriaco is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Drew Butera (-0.2 bWAR): The best hair of any backup catcher in the business.

Also: in Game 4 of the ALDS in Houston, playing in favor of an ailing Perez, Butera batted with two on and one out in the top of the eighth inning in a tie game, and against Luke Gregerson’s filthy slider, somehow worked a ten-pitch walk, keeping the line moving for Gordon to drive in the go-ahead run with a groundout to second base. This activates Postulate #3. His reward: catching the final out of the World Series. Drew Butera is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Billy Butler (-0.3 bWAR): We’re not making fun of Billy Butler here. From 2009 to 2013 he was one of the best DHs in baseball. Unfortunately this run began in 2014.

Also: in the Wild Card game, facing Luke Gregerson in the eighth inning while representing the tying run with one out, Butler didn’t hit into the inning-ending double play we all feared – he punched a single to right-center field, making the score 7-5 and bringing Gore out of the dugout to pinch-run as the potential tying run. Gore wouldn’t score, but Hosmer – who had moved to third on Butler’s single – would, and the Royals would tie the game an inning later. This activates Postulate #1. Billy Butler is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Jonny Gomes (-0.4 bWAR): As a hitter, Gomes is pretty much washed up. As a clubhouse guy, Gomes is still at the peak of his powers.

Also: On October 1st, 2015, Gomes drove in three runs for the Royals – a two-run single in the second and a sacrifice fly in the fifth – in a game they won, 6-4. If they don’t win that game, perhaps the Blue Jays take Game 162 more seriously and don’t start Mark Buehrle…okay, you’re not buying that one? How about this: if Gomes played better defense, he wouldn’t have collided with Sam Fuld in the 12th inning of the Wild Card game, and maybe Hosmer would have held at second base, in which case he would not have scored on Colon’s infield single, and then who knows if the Royals tie the game, let alone win it.

So Postulate #4 is partially activated, and Postulate #1 is partially activated, and then Gomes activated both of them by coaching and counseling Colon all October to be ready if and when his opportunity presented itself, which it did in Game 5 of the World Series. If you have any doubt left, he gave a speech during the parade. If you have a problem with that, you hate America. Jonny Gomes is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Raul Ibanez (-0.8 bWAR): He may well have given the most important clubhouse speech in a players-only meeting in the history of baseball.

Also: on August 1st, 2014, Ibanez hit a home run off Sonny Gray in Oakland. It was the only run in a 1-0 game, the only time since 1993 the Royals have won a game 1-0 on a home run. Coming against the A’s, this definitively activates Postulate #2. Raul Ibanez is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

Alex Rios (-1.1 bWAR): He was signed by the Royals to be a productive right fielder, and it only took him six months to do it.

Also: in Game 4 of the ALDS, he led off the eighth inning rally with the Royals losing, 6-2, and singled to left field on the first pitch. This alone activates Postulate #3. He also drove in the tying and go-ahead runs in the fifth inning of Game 5, the only other elimination game the Royals played all season. Alex Rios is responsible for the Royals winning a world championship. Grade: A+

I hope you agree that these grades accurately reflect how each player performed over the last two years. Pitchers and others still to come.

The Future.

As much as I would like to spend the entire off-season writing about nothing except the legacy of the 2015 Royals, I figure I owe you at least one column to discuss what the Royals of 2016 and beyond ought to look like. It would be lovely to live in a world in which, after winning a championship, your appetite for victory were completely and permanently satiated. Alas, we are creatures of greed. I suspect that, just as most narcissists secretly suffer from insecurity, at the core of most greed is actually a fear of poverty. That’s certainly the case for me: it’s been barely a month since the Royals won the championship that I’ve been pining for for over a quarter-century, and I’m already terrified that someone will snatch it away. I’m afraid that when they do, the 2015 Royals will eventually be forgotten. And that won’t do.

So let’s see if we can’t get another pennant or two, if not another ring or two, out of this group – enough success so that they’ll never be forgotten. If they’re going to do it, it’s going to have to be soon, because the reality that has to drive every decision that Dayton Moore and his front office this off-season isn’t the fact that Alex Gordon and Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto are free agents. It’s the fact that the following players all become free agents at the same time, after the 2017 season, a scant two years from now:

Eric Hosmer

Mike Moustakas

Lorenzo Cain

Alcides Escobar

Wade Davis

Danny Duffy

Jarrod Dyson

(Omar Infante and Jason Vargas would be free agents as well, although I think we can safely ignore them for purposes of this exercise. Also, Cot’s Baseball Contracts lists Edinson Volquez as having a club option for 2017, although everywhere it’s been reported as a mutual option, meaning he really is a free agent after 2016.)

That’s four everyday hitters, including the 2-3-4 hitters for much of this season, as well as the best closer in the game, and Duffy and Dyson are hardly chopped liver. Maybe the Royals think they can weather the storm and still be competitive in 2018. And if they do, maybe they’re right; while I’m not getting out of the predicting-the-Royals-are-wrong business permanently, I do think a sabbatical is probably in order. But from where I stand, I think it’s going to take an incredible amount of skill and a good deal of luck for the Royals to be a contender in 2018.

And you know what? That’s fine. We knew, pretty much from the moment Eric Hosmer was called up from Omaha to make his major league debut in May of 2011, that the window for The Best Farm System Ever was 2011-2017. The first year was a grace period, 2012 was a disappointment, and 2013 was good but not good enough – but two pennants and a world championship in the last two years matches any reasonable expectation for the entire seven-year run. Anything they do over these next two years is delicious, delicious gravy. If they can make the playoffs in each of the next two years, this particular crop of Royals players will have four postseason berths, two pennants and a title to their names at the very least. They will have fulfilled every expectation we could have had for them.

And if in 2018 they have to start over again, I’m good with that. The rebuilding process won’t take nearly as long as the last one, if for no other reason than that the Royals’ Latin American pipeline has been running at full capacity for years now. Guys like Raul Mondesi and Bubba Starling and Kyle Zimmer should have established themselves in the majors and still be on the upslope of their careers. The Royals will still have Salvador Perez and Yordano Ventura under contract, giving them a couple of very valuable trade chits if they want to supercharge the rebuilding process. And of course they still have two drafts and two Latin American signing periods between now and then to add more talent.

But it’s hard for me to see how they can win in 2018 with the talent they have on hand, unless they nail every mid-level free agent signing – granted, Moore basically did that last winter. Maybe they sign one of their young players to an extension. Hosmer, I think, is as good as gone, and Cain will turn 32 just after Opening Day in 2018, but I do wonder if Moustakas would be amenable to an extension this winter. But even with Moustakas, and Mondesi at shortstop, and maybe Christian Colon at second base, and Perez behind the plate…they have no first baseman and no outfield. Ventura is their only starter under contract; Kelvin Herrera is their only reliever.

A lot can happen in the next two years, absolutely. If the Royals continue their mimicry of the St. Louis Cardinals by having a lot of Grade B and C prospects come up and perform better in the majors than they did in the minors, this discussion could be moot. But realistically, I think the Royals need to approach this off-season with a mindset that they should be willing to sacrifice wins in 2018 and beyond in order to maximize their ability to win the AL Central in each of the next two years.

To put that in more stark terms: the Royals should be willing to sacrifice the long term for the short term. This is a position that I’m not terribly familiar with, but then I’m not terribly familiar with the experience of being the fan of the defending world champions either. We all have to adjust. There is a time for being prudent with your resources, for spending wisely and hoarding prospects carefully. This just doesn’t happen to be one of those times.

That’s why I find the Royals’ seeming reluctance to commit to a long-term deal for Alex Gordon so annoying. I get their reluctance to pay the market rate for Ben Zobrist: Zobrist’s value is elevated greatly by his ability to play second base, and if the Royals re-sign him, it would not be to play second base. For one thing, he would be taking Alex Gordon’s money – and so, as when the Royals traded for him, they would have a huge hole for him to fill in left field. Also, the Royals have another option at second base to consider.

No, not Omar Infante – at least I hope Infante wouldn’t keep them from re-signing Zobrist. Contracts taste like crap, but sometimes eating them is the best thing for your long-term health. No, I’m referring to Christian Colon, who might actually be a league-average second baseman, and definitely will be a league-minimum-salary second baseman. Postseason heroics aside, Colon’s career line in the majors is .303/.361/.382 with a 12.5% K/PA rate, and in 137 Triple-A games over the last two years he hit .300/.362/.401 with a 7.8% K/PA rate and 23 steals in 28 attempts. He’s probably not a .300 hitter in the majors, but a .270 hitter with good bat control and at least average defense? That’s a damn sight better than what the Royals got from Infante last year. Letting Colon play second base would free up dollars elsewhere.

Like, say, signing Gordon. Look, it’s possible that some team is going to blow the Royals out of the water with a 6-year, $120 million contract, in which case I wish him well. But if it turns out he signs for more reasonable terms – say, 5 years and $80 million, maybe even 5/$85 – and the Royals pass on him anyway, I think it will be a mistake.

For one thing, it’s quite possible that he will earn back the terms of that contract anyway. Yes, Gordon will turn 32 before spring training starts. But he takes excellent care of himself, and just as Billy Butler was a bad bet to age well because of his lack of physical fitness, Gordon’s dedication to keeping himself in prime physical condition makes him a good candidate to be productive into his mid-30s. So does his broad range of skills – Gordon isn’t simply a one-trick pony, whether that trick is power or speed. He has good power, and runs well, and draws walks, and hits doubles, and plays excellent defense. Studies have shown that players with a broad range of skills age better than players who don’t, because they have multiple ways of adjusting to the slow erosion of their natural skills as they age.

While Gordon isn’t quite as good a hitter, he’s very comparable to Dwight Evans, who (like Gordon) was a very underrated player throughout his career – he should have Jim Rice’s spot in the Hall of Fame, to be perfectly honest. Evans wasn’t elite in any one category, but hit for power, drew walks, and played great defense. After an off-year when he was 31 (he hit .238/.338/.436), Evans was terrific for the next six years; he was worth at least 3.0 bWAR every year from age 32 to 37.

That’s a best-case scenario for Gordon, admittedly, but I see no reason from where I stand why he can’t be at least a league-average player by the end of his contract. But more to the point, the Royals don’t really need him to be a good player at the end of his contract. They need him to be a good player for the next two years.

In any long-term free agent contract, the goal of the team is to get enough value from the player in the first half of his contract to make up for the fact that he’ll be overpaid in the back half. If the Royals are paying Gordon $17 million to do not much in 2020, that’s an acceptable concession for the right to pay Gordon $17 million to be an above-average everyday player in 2016. Frankly, the Royals might not have a lot of players worth paying eight figures to in 2020, so if they’re overpaying Gordon to be a clubhouse leader and face of the franchise, it’s not like he’ll be hoarding payroll space that they would otherwise spend on a free agent who might put them in the playoffs.

And that assumes he isn’t worth much in 2020. I think there’s a chance he will. More to the point, I think Gordon is a better option for left field in 2016 and 2017 than anyone else the Royals are likely to get to replace him. If they have to overpay him in 2018 and beyond in order to secure his services the next two years, I think that’s a tradeoff worth making.

The Royals may not agree, and they have the benefit of knowing him better than anyone else – maybe they think his groin injury is a sign of things to come. And certainly they have earned the benefit of the doubt. But I’d hate to see them hand his job to someone who gives the team payroll space, flexibility – and a worse performance the next two years.

Whether or not the Royals re-sign Gordon, though, I would like to propose another idea – not a fully-formed idea, but more of a thought bubble – that will be far more controversial. Consider that the two long-term assets every franchise can leverage into short-term success are payroll dollars and prospects. Signing Gordon would leverage the first asset. In order to leverage the second asset, the Royals could…trade Raul Mondesi.

This might seem ludicrous to many of you, particularly coming from me, the guy who thought trading Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi for James Shields and Wade Davis was the worst calamity to hit Kansas City since Bonnie and Clyde. But one of my greatest objections to the Shields/Davis trade was that the Royals weren’t quite ready to win just yet. The Royals aren’t just ready to win right now, it’s possible they won’t be in two years. Trading their top prospect for two years of a really valuable asset seems like a sensible idea.

They could try to trade Bubba Starling, but given Starling’s local roots and his choppy development as a hitter, the mere act of putting him on the trade market would send his value plummeting as teams would wonder why the Royals were willing to pull the plug. The same thing applies to Kyle Zimmer – putting a pitcher on the market with #1 upside and a medical record that can’t fit on a flash drive would give other teams reason to worry. Mondesi, alone among the Royals’ top prospects, has a prospect status that won’t be degraded by making him available for trade.

What could the Royals get for him? Well, he’s not Myers, who was a top-five prospect in all of baseball when he was dealt. But Mondesi is a top-50 prospect, maybe top-25; the big risk with him is that he’s still a year or two away from being major league-ready, but he’s also just 20 years old. (This, by the way, is another reason why I’d trade him now when I wouldn’t have traded Myers three years ago. Myers was ready to contribute in the majors right away – he won the Rookie of the Year award in 2013, let’s not forget – while Mondesi probably won’t be ready for the majors until mid-2017, and probably won’t be an impact player for another year or two after that.) Package him with, say, Miguel Almonte and a third prospect from the lower rungs of the minors, and you could probably get two years of an impact player from a team that’s rebuilding.

The Braves are selling everything that isn’t nailed down – Shelby Miller is being hawked everywhere. He’s not as good as Strasburg, but he’s also under team control for three years, not two. If not Miller, how about Julio Teheran, who’s admittedly more expensive (he’s under club control for five years)? Jose Fernandez would take a lot more than Mondesi – you might have to completely clean out the farm system – but he’s a true #1 starter who you’d get to keep for three years. Maybe Mondesi straight-up for Tyson Ross? I’m just spitballing here, but these are the ideas I’d like to see the Royals entertain, and that’s just among the class of starting pitchers.

Truthfully, I doubt that they will, and I’m in no position to complain if they don’t. The front office built a two-time AL champion right at the moment that many of us gave up on them; if they want to go the Cardinals route and try to build an organization that can weather the loss of free agents year after year after year, more power to them. But I just want them to know that if they decide to mortgage the future in an attempt to turn a world championship team into a veritable dynasty, I’m behind them 100%. I suspect most of you would be as well.

The Legacy Of The 2015 Royals, Part 3.

I know I may be too hung up on the final game of the World Series, but I need to document it here so I’ll have a way to look back on this when I’m 90 years old and my memory is failing me. One of the things that made the 2015 Royals not just a championship season but a storybook season was the way it ended. Game 5 of the World Series hearkened back to earlier moments in the Royals’ playoff run over and over again. In particular, the events of Game 5 and the events of last year’s Wild Card Game, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the two best games of the past two seasons, are connected in a way that’s almost eerie. One game was played on the last day of September – the earliest playoff game in Royals history – and the other was played on the first day of November, making it the latest game in Royals history.

If they were to ever make a movie about these Royals, imagine a series of flashbacks occurring before each of these plays.

- Lorenzo Cain leading off the top of the ninth: a flashback to him leading off the bottom of the eighth against Toronto in Game 6 with a walk, and him drawing a walk in the top of the eighth against the Mets in Game 4, set to the words of someone (in my mind it’s Mike Moustakas) screaming out, “keep the line moving!”

In 16 playoff games this year, Cain drew 11 walks. Granted, three were intentional, but even eight walks in 16 games was a much higher rate than his seasonal total of 37 (a career-high!) in 140 games. As a team, the Royals were only a tiny bit more patient than in the playoffs as they were during the regular season – they drew 2.38 unintentional walks per game in the postseason, compared to 2.19 UIBB/game during the regular season. But Cain, perhaps getting a great view of Ben Zobrist’s plate appearances from the on-deck circle, fought for three difficult walks – all three came on full counts, one in a seven-pitch at-bat and the other two on eight-pitch at-bats – in three crucial situations.

- Eric Hosmer, batting next: a flashback to his triple off Dan Otero in the Wild Card game last year. Or perhaps, if the footage exists somewhere, a flashback to his performance in the Texas League playoffs in 2010, which I was calling the greatest clutch display by a Royals player since 1985. (Hosmer homered six times in the playoffs. Twice he batted in the eighth or later with the Northwest Arkansas Naturals facing elimination; both times he homered to tie the game. The Naturals would win the championship.) I know it’s not rational, but ever since his 2010 performance I’ve thought of him as someone who would never let the pressure of the moment get to him. Nothing that happened last postseason, when he hit .351/.439/.544, changed my mind. I expected him to have another monster October.

And then he hit .212/.236/.288 in the playoffs this year. He was terrible…except, somehow, he drove in 17 runs in 16 games. Multiply his numbers by 10, and imagine a player over a full season hitting .212 with 20 doubles and 10 homers – and 170 RBIs. That’s how weird Hosmer’s performance was this postseason. He had more RBIs (17) than hits (14). He almost had more RBIs than total bases (19). His RBI total is a testament to his teammates, who were on base over and over again – he had three sacrifice flies during the playoffs, equaling his amount for the entire regular season – and then made Hosmer look good with their brilliance on the basepaths: Cain scored from first base on a Hosmer single twice in the playoffs.

But it’s also a testament to Hosmer’s performance with runners on base. I don’t think it was a skill of Hosmer’s – for his career, he’s hit worse with men in scoring position (.279 BA, .417 SLG) than with the bases empty (.294 and .448). But this postseason, for whatever reason, he concentrated his meager production into those moments when it would pay off the most. Twelve of his 14 hits came with runners on base; 10 of them drove in at least one run.

And in the ninth inning of Game 5, as in the 12^th inning of the Wild Card game, with the Royals again down to their final at-bat, with Hosmer again representing the tying run…he again drilled a fastball the other way over the outfielder’s head. It was a double this time instead of a triple, which set up…

- Salvador Perez at the plate, Hosmer leading off third: a flashback to Game 7 of the World Series last year, Alex Gordon batting in the ninth inning, hightailing it to third base when his line drive was misplayed by two outfielders, and…stopping. It was the right call. A good throw would have nailed him. A bad throw probably would have nailed him. But still, a year of regret had passed, regret enabled by the hindsight that comes from knowing what Perez did next. Maybe Brandon Crawford would have panicked and his throw would have sailed over Buster Posey. Maybe it would have bounced and Posey would have had trouble getting a handle on it. Maybe Crawford’s throw would have pulled Posey away from home plate, and there would have been a desperate foot race between him and Gordon, making for one of the most dramatic moments in baseball history.

Probably not. But we’ll never know. All we know is what Perez did, which makes it tempting to second-guess. We’ll probably also never know if the memory of that moment, buried deep inside Hosmer’s subconscious, triggered the synapses in his brain that sent the electrical signal to his legs to run like your life depends upon it the instant David Wright committed to first base.

I’ve seen it written in places that Hosmer got lucky, that even a decent throw by Duda gets him at the plate, even that it was a bad baseball decision. I could not disagree more. The situation was very nearly the same as last year – if he holds, the Royals are down a run with a man on third and two out, meaning the break-even point for trying is no higher than 30%. But the odds of success this time were much higher. I put the odds that Gordon would have been safe last year at no higher than about 15%, while I’d put the odds that Hosmer would be safe the moment he committed to home at around 40%, perhaps even higher.

Here are some notable differences:

1) While Crawford’s throw would have been much longer – somewhere around 200 feet – it was only one throw. The Mets had to make two throws – Wright’s throw was (I’m approximating) about 95 feet across the diamond, and then Duda’s throw home was about 85 feet. Factor in the time it took for Duda to catch the ball, transfer the ball to his throwing arm, wind up and throw home, there’s no question the Wright-to-Duda-to-D’Arnaud relay would take longer than the direct line between Crawford and Posey.

2) Hosmer had a large lead off third base, and because the ball was hit well to Wright’s left, Hosmer didn’t instinctively retreat to the bag as Wright gloved it. He then did a phenomenal job of anticipating the perfect moment to take off for home – as soon as Wright made perfunctory glance back towards him and then looked to first base. By the time Wright let go of the ball, Hosmer was 15-20 feet past third base and accelerating quickly. By contrast, Crawford had the ball in his glove a split second before Gordon touched third base. Even if Gordon had been waved home by Mike Jirschele and never broken stride, he’s probably not more than 5-10 feet past third. True, he was already at full speed and Hosmer wasn’t, but then Hosmer wasn’t worn down from running 270 feet at top speed. The time it would take from the time Wright let go of the ball until Hosmer touched home plate was, I’m pretty certain, less than the time it would take from Crawford letting go of the ball and Gordon touching home.

3) Crawford has a really, really good arm – he somehow unseated Andrelton Simmons as the NL Gold Glove winner this year, which is a little silly, but it speaks to how well his defense is considered. Wright, on the other hand, has a weak arm at this point in his career. Not just that, but he tends to throw sidearm, as he did on this play – and his sidearm motion made it easier for Hosmer to time it and start running for home even before Wright had let go of the ball. Duda’s arm is nothing special for a first baseman, even before talking about his accuracy or lack thereof.

4) This last point, I think, is the one that doesn’t get talked about enough: Crawford was throwing from left-center field, meaning Posey could wait for the throw while being turned almost all the way towards Gordon hurtling from third base. D’Arnaud, by contrast, had to face first base, not only meaning that he couldn’t see where Hosmer was out of the corner of his eye, but that after catching the ball, he would have to turn his body and swipe his glove – again, without knowing where Hosmer was exactly. Four years ago, before the rules changed, D’Arnaud could have set up just behind the plate, using his foot to block Hosmer and allowing him to catch the ball and drop his glove straight down. But now that catchers aren’t allowed to block the plate, it adds a precious split second to the time it takes to get a tag down on a ball coming from the right side of the field.

With all that, a perfect throw from Duda – one that leads D’Arnaud to his left slightly and into the runner’s path – gets Hosmer easily. A decent throw – one that hits D’Arnaud’s glove right at eye level – and safe or out, the play is almost certainly going to review. The odds still favored the Mets at the moment Wright threw the ball. But, as it did last year, the odds would have favored the Mets had Hosmer held anyway. This time, the Royals went for it. And that made all the difference.

- Bottom of the ninth, tie game: Kelvin Herrera returns for a third inning of work. Flashback to the fourth inning of Game 7 of last year’s World Series, when Jeremy Guthrie came out to pitch.

You might remember after Game 7 that my greatest lament was that Ned Yost, knowing that there was no tomorrow, and with the greatest bullpen trio in major league history having two full days of rest, let Jeremy Guthrie start the fourth. He would go to Herrera anyway later in the inning, after the Giants had men on first and third with only one out, and Michael Morse fisted a blooper to right field with two strikes to score the last run of the season. Herrera would go 2.2 innings, Wade Davis two, and Greg Holland one. Afterwards, I wondered why, if Yost was prepared to go to Herrera in the fourth inning anyway, he wasn’t prepared to start the inning with Herrera. If Herrera could get eight outs, he could have gotten nine. I also wondered why, in the final game of the season, on four days of rest – Holland hadn’t pitched since Game 3 – Yost wouldn’t have planned for Holland to throw two innings.

While the Royals have never addressed this directly, we may have gotten an answer to that last question. Given that we now know that Holland had a partial tear in his UCL dating back to August of 2014, it’s possible that the Royals simply weren’t comfortable with him throwing two innings, particularly since as the last pitcher in the chain, if he had tired and gotten into trouble in his second inning, his backup would have been Jason Frasor or someone of that ilk.

But that still left the possibility of getting three innings from Herrera. Last year, Yost only committed to 2.2. This year, even though Herrera was pitching on just one day’s rest, and even though there were potentially two more games to go (albeit after a day of rest), Yost stuck with Herrera for nine outs. It only took Herrera nine batters (a single was erased by a double play) and 33 pitches to do so. It certainly helped that Herrera had just struck out the 1-2-3 batters in the Mets’ lineup in order in the eighth, and that Juan Lagares had replaced an ailing Yoenis Cespedes to lead off the ninth. But still: in the final game of last season, Yost only trusted Herrera to get eight outs, and the Royals lost. This year, he trusted Herrera to get nine outs, and the Royals won.

- Luke Hochevar takes the mound to start the bottom of the tenth: a flash back to Brandon Finnegan starting the tenth inning of the Wild Card game. Of course.

Hochevar has to rank towards the very top of the list of players who most appreciates what the Royals accomplished this season. Eight years after he was drafted with the #1 overall pick in 2006, after five of the worst years as a starting pitcher (a 5.45 ERA and a 78 ERA+ in 127 starts from 2008 to 2012), he had finally found success as a set-up man in 2013, with a 1.92 ERA in 70 innings, when his UCL blew out just in time to miss the Royals’ first postseason in 29 years. It was probably the most success he would ever have as a professional, and it occurred in a season in which he was unable to make a contribution.

And then this year, after a slow and erratic start in his return from Tommy John surgery, he threw 10.2 scoreless innings in the playoffs. He got out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the sixth inning of ALCS Game 2, setting the stage for the Royals to come back against David Price an inning later. With the tying run at the plate, he got the final out of the fifth inning in relief of Chris Young in Game 4, earning him the win. And now, he would throw two scoreless innings – like Finnegan, he pitched a perfect tenth, then gave up a harmless baserunner with two outs before closing the door in the 11th – in the final game of the World Series. He would end up with the most coveted win of the season: the last one.

- Salvador Perez, leading off the 12th: flashback to his walk-off single in the Wild Card game. This time, he had to start the rally instead of end it, and this time he cracked an opposite-field blooper that just stayed inside the right field foul line instead of pulling a hard ground ball just inside the left field foul line. But he ended this amazing two-year playoff run the way he began it: with a 12th-inning single that changed everything.

Perez, sadly if wisely, would get pulled from the game for a pinch-runner, keeping him from catching the final out in a postseason in which he was behind the dish for all but six innings. As compensation, he would be awarded the World Series MVP award. Seems like a fair trade.

- Perez departs for a pinch-runner as Jarrod Dyson hops out of the dugout: flashback to Dyson pinch-running for Josh Willingham in the ninth inning of the Wild Card game. That night, Dyson was bunted over to second base because closer Sean Doolittle is left-handed and had a clear view of him at first base. In Game 5, with Addison Reed, a right-hander, on the mound, Dyson didn’t waste any time messing around: he stole second base on Reed’s 2-0 pitch to Alex Gordon, and was safe easily. The only thing that was missing was his vroom-vroom move.

Gordon would then hit a groundball to the right side, serving the same purpose as a bunt to put Dyson at third base with one out, the same position he found himself in during the Wild Card game, bringing up…

- Christian Colon, batting with a man on third and one out in the 12th inning: flashback to, well, Christian Colon batting with a man on third and one out in the 12th inning of the Wild Card game.

I don’t know what Colon is going to become. He has a career batting line of .303/.361/.382 in the major leagues, albeit in just 168 plate appearances. He has a career line in Triple-A of .289/.350/.394, and a .268/.339/.360 line in Double-A – he’s gotten incrementally better as he’s moved up the chain. I do think he could become a poor man’s Placido Polanco, a good defensive second baseman who makes enough contact to hit .280 in the majors and be a valuable starter for the next five years. I don’t think he will ever end up with as much success as Chris Sale, the man the Royals almost drafted instead with the #4 pick in 2010, or as much success as Matt Harvey, perhaps the man the Royals should have drafted instead.

But I do know that none of that matters now. I know that because Colon could literally not have a better postseason record than he does. In his first postseason appearance, pinch-hitting for Terrence Gore in the tenth inning of the Wild Card game, he was asked to put down a sacrifice bunt, and he did so successfully. In his next plate appearance, batting in the 12th inning with the tying run at third base and one out, he chopped a single to tie the game, stole second base, and scored the walk-off run on Perez’s single.

He would not bat again in the postseason until this moment, and only because the Royals were playing under NL rules – Colon was pinch-hitting for Hochevar. He had not even appeared in a playoff game in 2015 yet, the last person on the roster to make an appearance – even Raul Mondesi (!) had played before him. Once again, he batted in a situation that called for contact. Once again, he came through, this time with two strikes, this time a no-doubt line drive, this time to give the Royals the lead, this time to put the Royals three outs away from nirvana.

They would get there 15 minutes later, after a one-run lead had become a five-run lead, after Wade Davis was given the easiest and most rewarding job of his life. The ending ensured that this would be one of the most memorable, magical games in Royals history. The drama that began in September, 2014 ended in November, 2015, and all the ups and downs along the way, even the heartbreaking finale to Act I, all made sense in the end. Even the failures served their purpose. All’s well that ends well, and few things in baseball history have ended as well as this season did.

That’s another legacy of the 2015 Royals - they didn’t just win it all, they won it all in a way that gave us something even better than a dogpile at the end: closure.

The Legacy Of The 2015 Royals, Part 2.

To get at the heart of how the 2015 Royals won a world championship – I will repeat those seven words at every opportunity I get for as long as I can – I think the simplest, clearest explanation is to look at this line score:

Team 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10+

Opp  6  10  15   4   7  13   5   6   0   0

KC   8   8   4   4  10   5  11  22  12   6

That is the combined number of runs the Royals and their opponents scored, inning by inning, in their 16 playoff games. There’s a lot to unpack there.

- After scoring an equal number of runs (16-16) in the first two innings, the Royals were massively outscored in the third inning. I chalk that one up mostly to a fluke.

- After scoring slightly more runs than their opponents (14-11) in the fourth and fifth innings, the Royals were significantly outscored in the sixth inning, 13-5. This one, I chalk up to Ned Yost’s one residual managerial weakness: his insistence that his starter try to get through the sixth inning in a playoff game, despite a bullpen that was even deeper than last year’s was. Sometimes it worked (ALCS Game 1, ALDS Game 2). Sometimes it turned out poorly but not disastrously (WS Game 1 and Game 5). Sometimes it was disastrous only the Royals came back anyway (ALCS Game 2). And sometimes it was just disastrous (ALCS Game 5).

But in the aggregate, the Royals gave up 13 runs in 16 sixth innings. It obviously hasn’t hurt them all that much to this point, but just imagine how much better they’ll be in future postseasons if Yost doesn’t insist on turning every sixth inning a game of Russian Roulette. (I’ll get to this in a moment, but the Royals’ opponents also scored 12 runs in the sixth inning of the 2014 postseason, more than in any other inning.)

- For the first six innings overall, the Royals were outscored, 60-50. If games ended after six innings, they would have been 5-9 with two ties. And then – holy hell did they go nuts.

You’ve probably heard that the Royals outscored their opponents from the seventh inning on by the margin of 51-11. You may have also heard that the Royals’ set an all-time postseason record with 51 runs from the seventh inning on. But you may not realize to just what a degree they set that record. Look at this chart:

Most runs scored, seventh inning on, postseason

2015 Royals:  51

2002 Angels:  36

2009 Yankees: 35

1995 Braves:  33

2007 Red Sox: 33

That’s a lead to put Secretariat to shame. The Royals averaged 3.19 runs per game just from the seventh inning on. That’s crazy.

But I actually think a more impressive stat is that, from the ninth inning on, they outscored their opponents 18-0. That’s crazy stupid. Those 18 runs were concentrated into just six games, and in only three games did those runs actually make any kind of difference. Two of those games were losses anyway (ALDS Game 3 and ALCS Game 3), and they scored in ALCS Game 4 to turn a 12-2 lead into a 14-2 lead. But in the other three games, the ninth inning runs they scored were important, and generally crucial.

They scored two runs in the ninth inning of ALDS Game 4 on Eric Hosmer’s only homer of the playoffs, which they didn’t technically need – they led 7-6 with Wade Davis on the mound – but certainly helped ice the game. And then came the World Series, where their ninth inning run tied Game 1, and their 14th inning run ended it; and Game 5, when they scored two in the ninth to tie and five in the 12th to start the parade early.

And those two games went as long as they did because the Royals were simply not going to allow any runs after the eighth inning. Consider that because of the two extra-inning games, the Royals’ pitching staff actually threw 20 innings from the ninth on. Zero runs allowed in 20 innings is nearly as impressive as the 18 runs they scored.

They also scored 22 runs in the eighth inning. In just 16 games. That’s crazy stupid love.

Just for fun, let’s throw in the same chart, but for 2014:

Team  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10+

Opp   8   5   6   6   7  12   6   4   0   2

KC   10  11  11   8   3   9   2   3   3   9

The sixth-inning issues are even more glaring here, but otherwise the shape is a little different. The Royals outscored their opponents 40-25 after four innings, but were outscored 29-17 from the fifth through the eighth innings, although most of those runs came in games that weren’t close. And from the ninth inning on…last year’s team was nearly as dominant as this year’s team was, outscoring their opponents 12-2.

The Royals’ philosophy last year was to get an early lead, and then protect it – or failing that, to get the game tied after six innings and then win it with late runs anyway. Their philosophy this year was to fall behind early, keep it close, and then take the lead late – and then never cough up the lead because your bullpen never gives up runs. Either philosophy works just fine if you have the bullpen to pull it off. The Royals had the bullpen to pull it off. Twice.

Over the last two postseasons, in a span of 31 games, covering 41 innings, the Royals outscored their opponents 30-2 after the eighth inning. They gave up two runs: Alberto Callaspo’s RBI single in the top of the 12th of the Wild Card game that nearly derailed all of this, and a two-out RBI single by Delmon Young off Greg Holland in the 10th inning of Game 1 of last year’s ALCS, after the Royals had scored three runs in the top of the inning. That’s it. Two runs in 41 innings. That is the root cause of everything the Royals have done the last two postseasons:

- They are 6-0 in extra-inning games (four last year, two this year).

- They are 8-1 in one-run games, with the one exception being, yes, Game 7 of the World Series last year.

- They have come back to win after being down by two runs or more eight times in the last two years – seven of those this season, a major league record (no team had ever done it more than five times). Last year, remarkably, they only did it once, in the Wild Card game, but then until they ran into Madison Bumgarner they never had to come back. Meanwhile, they lost only one game in which they had a lead of two runs or more: Game 4 of the World Series last year, when Jason Vargas was given an early 4-1 lead and batted with the bases loaded with two outs in the third, a moment which corresponded to the high mark of the World Series (as measured by the Royals’ odds of winning). But even that game wasn’t lost late – the Giants tied it in the fifth and took the lead in the sixth.

Not only have the Royals not lost a playoff game that they were leading after six innings – only one time in 31 playoff games did they even blow a lead after six innings: Jose Bautista’s game-tying two-run homer off Ryan Madson in Game 6 of the ALCS this year. In addition, in eight of their 31 playoff games, the Royals were tied at some point in the seventh inning or later, and just once did their opponent score to break the tie first: the 12th inning of the Wild Card game last year.

So how did the Royals win? They hit like George Brett from the seventh inning on, which doesn’t seem replicable. They also just refused to give up runs late in the game, which also doesn’t seem replicable…except that they just replicated what the 2014 team did.

When ranking the greatest bullpens of all time, you can certainly make a case for other teams, like the 1988-1990 Oakland A’s, to hang with the 2013-2015 Kansas City Royals. But their postseason success, I think, clearly elevates them above the competition. The 1988 A’s lost Game 1 of the World Series on Kirk Gibson’s home run; the 1990 A’s led both Game 2 and Game 4 of the World Series after seven innings, but lost both games (granted, starter Dave Stewart blew the lead in Game 4, and was still allowed to throw a complete game. It was a different time.) By contrast, the Royals have not lost a game they were leading or tied at any point after six innings over the span of 31 playoff games.

The best regular season bullpen of all time, that elevated its performance to even higher levels in the postseason. That’s one legacy of these Royals: they are the Mariano Rivera of bullpens.

The Legacy Of The 2015 Royals, Part 1.

So when I said that I’d fire up the blog again if and when the Royals made the postseason, I neglected to state the obvious corollary: that if the Royals actually won the World Series, I’d spend the entire off-season blogging about their World Championship. Well, a deal’s a deal. They won. Look for me to write about the 2015 Royals on this here blog from now until I’m either out of things to say or Opening Day, whichever comes first.

They won. The Royals are World Champions. I’m still in shock. I’m still in awe. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see this day. I was ten years old in 1985, but living overseas, with only the most tenuous connection to the Royals – while we had friends back home in Wichita mail the games on VHS to me to watch a few months after the fact, I have no memory of the exact moment I found out that the Royals won the World Series that year. I thought it was quite possible that I might go an entire lifetime without experiencing that moment at all.

I experienced that moment at 12:34 AM local time at Citi Field in New York City on November 2nd, in the midst of a scrum of maybe 2,000 Royals fans that had all huddled around the visitor’s dugout on the third base side in anticipation of what had, about 15 minutes earlier, become a preordained moment. After three innings of extreme tension, following eight-and-a-half innings of resignation that the series would move back to Kansas City for Game 6, after Christian Colon had become a hero once again, an extremely tight game had suddenly turned into a laugher when Lorenzo Cain cleared the bases with a double in the top of the 12th, allowing the Royals to entrust a five-run lead with three outs to go to a pitcher in the midst of one of the great reliever peaks in the history of baseball.

I was blessed to be at the park, sitting with Connor Schell, Executive Producer for ESPN’s 30 For 30 documentary series and a big-time Royals fan. As the Royals closed out their Game 4 win the night before, I decided to peek at how much plane tickets from Chicago to New York might cost the following morning – and was surprised to learn I could fly for about $300 round-trip, and be back in Chicago first thing Monday morning, in time to get to my office to see patients. Connor had an extra ticket, and suddenly what seemed like a quixotic adventure (with the death of Grantland) looked completely feasible.

I had long ago blocked off Tuesday and Wednesday from my schedule in the event that the Royals hosted Games 6 and 7, but – perhaps belatedly – I finally got what this Royals team was about before Game 5. This wasn’t a team that was going to let up in Game 5, knowing they’d have two chances to win in front of their home fans. They had already played a Game 6 and a Game 7 at home. What they hadn’t done was win a championship, and on the road to get one, they weren’t going to take their foot off the accelerator until they had reached their destination. So I bought my ticket, and I am so happy that I did. A year after I left Kauffman Stadium with 40,000 other distraught fans, thinking this might be the closest I’d ever get to seeing the Royals win a championship, I got to see them win a championship.

The last three outs were surreal – a Citi Field crowd that had already started filing out headed for the exits en masse after Cain’s double, while the third-base side swelled with Royals fans filing in from everywhere else in the park. In the middle of the 12th, Connor and I noticed this dynamic and made the quick decision to head down from the box level to join the mob. (It’s a testament to the security of a five-run lead and Wade Davis that, against the same team that came back in the 10th inning of Game 6 in 1986, there was no concern whatsoever about precipitating an epic comeback.)

Before Game 7 last year, I asked Chris Kamler (a.k.a. The Fake Ned), who attended Game 7 of the 1985 World Series as a 13-year-old, what it was like. He said, “it was basically a non-stop party for two hours.” This game was a non-stop party for about 10 minutes, but it was a party, a giddy coronation. We ran into and hugged Josh Swade, the director of the #BringBackSungWoo documentary for ESPN. We slapped hands and took selfies with a half-dozen Royals fans – while the inning was still in progress. And then there were two outs, and Davis got two strikes on Wilmer Flores, and 2,000 smartphones were all simultaneously pointed towards home plate.

And before Flores was called out looking, I noticed that, on the other side of the field, down the first-base line, the stands were two-thirds empty, which is a hell of a sight for the final out of the World Series. And it struck me that what I was seeing was the mirror image in so many ways of that night in Chicago last September, when this postseason ride officially began, and my brother and I were with maybe 500 Royals fans packed around the Royals’ dugout on the first-base side, in a road stadium that was two-thirds empty. All of the Royals’ other celebrations had occurred at home – the Wild Card game, the ALCS and ALDS victories last year as well as this year. But this amazing journey ended like it started, late at night in unfamiliar territory, with a hardy band of Royals fans on hand to celebrate that was just the vanguard of the wild party that was waiting back home.

Somehow, I was there for both the beginning and the end. When the Royals clinched in Chicago I said at the time that Royals fans celebrated like we had won the World Series. And now…we had actually won the World Series. I’m still in disbelief that it happened at all, let alone that it happened like this. I am so immensely grateful.

That’s the sentiment that I want to hold onto most of all: gratitude. I never really thought this would happen. When the Royals were losing 100 games four times in five years, when they were making inexplicable and embarrassing moves as a matter of course, I wasn’t dreaming of a world championship, or back-to-back pennants. I just wanted to experience a clinching moment or two, that moment when you qualify for the playoffs. Maybe experience what it’s like to win a playoff game or two. Maybe even winning a playoff series.

But to win five of them in two seasons – six if you count the Wild Card game? (Which you should.) To win 22 playoff games – more in the last 14 months than the Royals had won (18) in their entire 45-year history? Nah. I didn’t expect this. No one should expect this.

Think of it like this: mathematically speaking, in order to win two pennants and one world championship, it should take an average of eight appearances in the LDS round. The Royals needed only two playoff appearances – and in one of those had to go through the Wild Card game! – to bag that much hardware. From 1976 to 1985, when the Royals made the playoffs seven times in ten years, they underachieved pretty significantly in the postseason, as you can tell from their 18-25 record. They should have won 3.25 pennants (the 0.25 is for their wacky 1981 ALDS appearance in that bizarre split-season strike year, when they became the only team ever to make the playoffs with a losing record). They actually won only two. But their success these last two postseasons has made them overachievers in the playoffs: they now have a lifetime 40-34 record in the postseason, and have won four pennants and two World Series against an expectation of 3.625 and 1.8125, respectively.

As Royals fans, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that making the playoffs is harder than succeeding in the playoffs – after all, it took 28 years to reach October, but just one try to win a pennant and two tries to win a championship. Don’t fall into that trap. The odds of making it to the LDS round (26.7%) are higher than the odds that an LDS team will make it to the World Series (25.0%), let alone win it.

The Royals have done it two years in a row. That’s not normal, folks. It’s so abnormal that my immense gratitude is tinged with a sentiment I never could have imagined feeling 14 months ago: guilt. Well, maybe not guilt exactly, but whatever the word you would use to describe how you feel when you’ve been blessed with an immense fortune that you’re not quite certain you earned.

What’s that, you’re saying? How could Royals fans have not earned this success after 28 years of nothing? Put aside for a moment the fact that two pennants and one world championship in the last 30 years is exactly what you would expect, statistically speaking – and that’s starting your count from 1986, immediately after the Royals had won their last world championship. Let me put this into perspective this way:

The Royals began play as an expansion team in 1969. Three other teams started play that season: the Milwaukee Brewers (they were the Seattle Pilots for one year), the San Diego Padres, and the Montreal Expos, now the Washington Nationals.

The Expos/Nationals have never won a pennant. They have never been to the World Series.

The Milwaukee Brewers have won a single pennant, in 1982. They lost the World Series.

The San Diego Padres won pennants in 1984 and 1998. They lost both World Series.

The Royals just accomplished something that their three expansion brethren have never experienced, in a combined 141 years of baseball. Counting a championship as worth twice as much as a pennant (which is probably conservative), the Royals have experienced as much success in the last 14 months as the Nationals, Brewers, and Padres have experienced in their entire history combined.

Let’s expand this to look at every expansion team. The Toronto Blue Jays have won two World Series, but they are the only pennants they have ever won. Their 1977 expansion brethren, the Seattle Mariners, have never been to a World Series.

The Florida Marlins, like the Blue Jays, have won two World Series but no other pennants. Their 1993 compatriots, the Colorado Rockies, have one pennant and no championships. The same is true for the Tampa Bay Rays, who started play in 1998 along with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who won the World Series in their only trip there.

Let’s go back to the 1961-62 expansion teams. The Angels won the World Series in 2002 – it’s the only trip to the World Series in their history. The Texas Rangers (who started play as the second iteration of the Washington Senators) have been to two World Series, but lost them both. The Houston Astros have been to only one World Series, and lost it.

The Royals have two pennants in the last two years – only one other expansion team has won more than two pennants ever. That team, which you would never guess because their fans and the media act like they’re this incredibly woebegotten, cursed franchise even though they once won a world championship after being down to their final strike, down two runs with no one on base, is the team the Royals just defeated to win the World Series: the New York Mets, who have won five pennants (1969, 1973, 1986, 2000, 2015) and two championships, in 1969 and 1986.

Of course, the Royals had won two pennants and a world championship before last year. The Royals have won four pennants and two championships in their history; by that gauge of success, they have once again re-established themselves as one of the most successful expansion franchises ever. But just think: even if they had never been to the World Series in their entire history before 2014: today they would still claim more success than 10 of the 13 other expansion teams.

Let me put this in chart form to make it more clear:

Team                Pennants  Championships

New York Mets                5            2

Kansas City Royals           4            2

Miami Marlins                2            2

Toronto Blue Jays            2            2

Kansas City Royals (2014-15) 2            1

San Diego Padres             2            0

Texas Rangers                2            0

Arizona Diamondbacks         1            1

Los Angeles Angels           1            1

Colorado Rockies             1            0

Houston Astros               1            0

Milwaukee Brewers            1            0

Tampa Bay Rays               1            0

Seattle Mariners             0            0

Washington Nationals         0            0

Expand this further by looking at how some other teams have fared since the Royals entered the major leagues in 1969:

The Chicago Cubs: zero pennants.

The Chicago White Sox: one pennant, one championship.

The Cleveland Indians: two pennants, zero championships.

That’s how rare, and how precious, the 2014-15 Royals are. Fourteen months ago we were the most hapless fans in American sports. Now we are the envy – the rightful envy – of nearly half the teams in the major leagues.

Next time: more on how they pulled it off.