After an exciting Major League Baseball Postseason, the 111th World Series between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets will get under way at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday night. The Mets, division winners of the NL East, went 90-72 and went 49-32 at Citi Field, winning just one game fewer than the Royals.
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Mets starters have gone at least six innings in five of their nine playoff games. The Mets enter the World Series with a league-best 2.81 postseason ERA compared to KC’s 4.41 (and the Royals haven’t even had to face new Babe Ruth/Daniel Murphy yet!). “We wanted Johnny Cueto in Game 2 because Johnny really feeds off the home crowd”.
Games 3-5 are scheduled for Friday-Sunday at Citi Field. If this World Series were played 100 times, I think it would be close to a 50-50 outcome.
The Mets last won the World Series in 1986 and have not been in the Fall Classic since 2000. They can’t “out-hero” the Royals in the late innings.
Weather or not, that is the question for managers Ned Yost and Terry Collins on a soggy Tuesday with forecasts calling for rain all day and into the evening, including the scheduled start of Game 1 of the World Series. They make an art form of fouling off pitches and frustrating the opposing hurler.
It is safe to say Long did not lose Murphy – not in the 2015 season and certainly not in the playoffs, where the Mets have ridden Murphy’s bat (and, to be fair, its excellent pitching) to their fifth National League pennant.
“It’s another game, I don’t have to do anything different than what I’ve been doing”, Volquez said at a press conference.
The next day during the World Series that now has rain in the forecast is Game 7 on November 4 in Kansas City.
While the Mets have the advantage when it comes to starters, things look a little better for the Royals when it comes to their bullpen.
The Mets hang their hat on their starting rotation, which involves Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz and have the advantage in that department. Enough with the he-said, he-said game going on between himself, the New York Mets and his agent, the ever-powerful Scott Boras.
There’s no official word on what would happen if the game was outright postponed, but the hunch is they’d just push back Games 1 and 2 while keeping the New York games on as scheduled, meaning Games 1-5 would be played five straight days.
Ed: The Mets’ sparkling starting pitching will keep them in the series, but these Royals have been here before.
On his preparation being different than usual, Volquez said, “It’s another game”. Whether or not the good Cueto decides to show up may very well just decide this series.
Volquez said of Murphy, “He’s been really good”. According to the manager, he opted for Harvey in part because he’d only pitched once in each of the first two rounds and was in line to pitch next if the NLCS had gone to Game 5. “We’re going to use our strengths against their weaknesses but sometimes our strength is going be our strength vs. your strength and let the best man win”. The Mets said, as far as they knew, there was only a “soft” innings cap.
In fact, four of the Royals’ seven postseason wins have been of the come-from-behind variety. As you can see, the Royals are the heavy favorites among Sun baseball guys – maybe it’s an American League bias.
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More than anything, with the Mets finally able to shape their rotation exactly as they want, the choice of Harvey likely signals that they still consider him their true ace.
