Tony Sipp, Will Harris and Oliver Perez got the game to Luke Gregerson, part of Oakland’s wild-card collapse in Kansas City past year. “Certainly, they’ve been a year or two ahead of us in this, I guess, move to the middle of relevant baseball with their run last year”.
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This is a matchup uncannily similar to last year’s Royals/Angels series. Major League Baseball as a whole would be fine if any team from either league reached the final round, but ticket prices would most likely be highest for either the Mets and Cubs in the National League and the Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals in the American League. He recorded quality starts in each of his last three outings, posting a 1.80 ERA and a. 171 opponents’ average in that span. Still, he has stabilized his trajectory recently, and has experienced a string of excellent starts. In doing so, they got a veteran left-hander to slip into the top of the rotation with Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh.
Let the game begin. “I think that kind of preparation is going to prepare us for this”.
“The taste of the champagne and the beer in your eyes, I want more of it”, Keuchel said Tuesday night. But with expectations of success from last season, the Royals kept plugging along, never slumping until early September. Granted, the Kansas City Royals don’t have much experience other than their miracle run past year, they do now how to flat-out play baseball. Gomez, the Astros’ big trade-deadline acquisition, played through a strained muscle in his left side. Houston has gone 7-5 against Kansas City since the start of 2014, but the Royals have won the two most recent meetings, outscoring them 7-2.
Keuchel will be working on just two days of rest, but could he be somebody A.J. Hinch might keep on the backburner for a handful of key, late-game outs? With 16 homers and 16 stolen bases in a regular season cut short by injury, Springer has been a catalyst for Houston, which is 58-45 with him in the lineup and 29-31 without. Houston advanced to the next round after a dominant pitching performance over their wild card foe.
– With the luxury of the home-run ball comes a weakness to the Astros lineup – strikeouts. The new guy in the KC bullpen is former Phillies’ closer Ryan Madson.
The New York Times noted, “Kansas City has lined up Yordano Ventura to start Game 1, with Johnny Cueto in Game 2 and Edinson Volquez in Game 3″.
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Ventura pitched seven innings and allowed just one run on six hits in his only appearance against the Astros this season as the Royals won, 5-1, in Kansas City on July 26. Napoli, no stranger to postseason heroics, swatted five home runs and posted a. 908 OPS in 35 games for Texas. McHugh has had a solid campaign with a 19-7 record with a 3.89 ERA.
