250 with five homers and 13 RBIs for New York. Seriously, in the first inning Cueto threw 10 pitches, deGrom threw nine.
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For opposing hitters, it’s become an imposing march to impending doom. “I think that you’re trying to prepare physically, and baseball-wise it’s like another game, but physically and mentally you can’t help but enjoy seeing the New York Mets logo next to a World Series logo”. Game 1 is to night at Kauffman Stadium, with Harvey set to face Edinson Volquez. “The ball kind of came up on me, and I just couldn’t get a glove on it. It hit my wrist and then got me in the midsection”.
Kansas City came excruciatingly close to winning it all previous year, losing Game 7 at home to Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants with the potential tying run 90 feet from home plate. “That’s going to stay with you for a while”, Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas said.
“He was like literally a kid in a candy store – except a cookie store, I guess”, said outfielder Michael Cuddyer, who grew up with Wright in the Norfolk, Va. area. “We’ve got to make better pitches and we’ve got to play better”.
As catcher Travis d’Arnaud put it: “It just shows that they have each other’s back no matter what”. “That’s always good news”.
After all New York did this year to rest and protect its prized young arms, they might be running out of fuel in late October anyway. We’ve got to make pitches and we’re not making them.
“There’s still work to do”, deGrom echoed.
You wait and fight and suffer and endure and just go through so darn much to reach your first World Series.
Against Jacob deGrom, the Mets’ spindly, fireballing right-hander, Kansas City fouled off good pitches and spoiled bad ones and systematically neutralized his best quality: the ability to generate swings and misses. After going 3-0 with a 1.80 ERA and 27 strikeouts in three playoff starts, deGrom couldn’t keep it going against the AL champs. Three of them already had Tommy John surgery, yet the Mets were the hardest-throwing staff in the majors this year.
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“We’ve got four guys that legitimately could throw Game 1”, captain David Wright said. And Eric Hosmer, whose error on Wilmer Flores in the eighth allowed Juan Lagares to score a tiebreaking run and evoked Bill Buckner’s legendary miscue in 1986 World Series Game 6, launched the walk-off sacrifice fly to right field, with Escobar tagging and scoring.
