The Kansas City Royals are the chocolate Labrador puppy of sports at the moment. They are goofy and charming and a little unpredictable and OMG so cute.
Look at them buy drinks for fans! Look at them bunt! Look at them steal bases and catch everything that leaves a bat. Look at manager Ned Yost pee on the rug again!
Everyone wants to rub their belly.
And now meeting them in the World Series you have the San Francisco Giants, the National League’s comfortable shoe; a team that features Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner and a bunch of guys who wouldn’t look out of place in triple-A. They advanced thanks to a walk-off home run by Travis Ishikawa who played more games in Fresno than with the big club this season.
In Toronto Blue Jays terms this would be Kevin Pillar winning the pennant.
These things only happen to other teams, it seems.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Watch the World Series on Sportsnet Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST.
In theory the Royals and the Giants – winners of 89 and 88 games, respectively, and each a wild card entry – should represent some combination of hope and promise. Seriously. If Kansas City can make the World Series, anyone can make the World Series.
Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos has no choice but subscribe to exactly that way of thinking. Out loud at least.
He says he’s only watched snatches of the playoffs. He’s too busy preparing for what he hopes will be an active off-season. But for the first time in his career he’s seeing teams that he thinks his team can and should compete with.
“You never enjoy the playoffs when you’re not in them,” he said. “You’re not frustrated or angry, the reality is we didn’t get it done. We have work to do, we have to play better, but it reminds you that you’re not far – it’s not so much a reflection of Kansas City or anyone else, just where we are.”
Still, that the Blue Jays are looking up at the Royals is especially tough to take. They are America’s darlings because they’re the little market that could; they finally broke a post-season-free streak that stretched back 29 years.
The next longest streak belongs to the Blue Jays at 21 years and counting.
So while Anthopoulos can publicly claim to be inspired by the way the World Series has taken shape, privately it’s easy to picture him stomping around his office at Rogers Centre before finally dropping to his knees and sobbing bitter tears.
Toronto had a better run differential than the Royals (+37 to +27) and got better production at six of the eight positions on the diamond according to Baseball-Reference. The Blue Jays even got better production at second base, the sinkhole of all sinkholes, as Omar Infante posted a surprisingly low .632 OPS. Kansas City had better starting pitching, but the Blue Jays had a better offence. The Blue Jays didn’t do anything at the trade deadline, but the Royals didn’t do much either.
The one significant point of differentiation between the two clubs is the bullpen, which is maddening. In 2013 the Blue Jays had the fourth-best relief corps in the AL and were returning nearly all the significant pieces.
This being baseball and this being Toronto, the bullpen was something close to a disaster, with nearly every significant contributor regressing.
“Coming into the year I figured even if we took a step back we’d have at least a league average bullpen,” says Anthopoulos.
That breeze you just felt was his wistful sigh.
Meanwhile Kansas City has benefitted from what might be the best back-end in the history of baseball.
Until this year no team had ever had two relievers with at least 60 innings pitched in a season and an ERA below 1.50. With Kelvin Herrera (1.41), Wade Davis (1.00) and Greg Holland (1.44), this season’s AL champion Royals had three. As Kansas City has reeled off eight straight wins to start the playoffs – another MLB record – the trio combined to allow just three runs in 25.2 innings.
The Royals and the Blue Jays share an amazing amount of institutional history. When Pat Gillick and Paul Beeston were working to make Toronto the most successful expansion team in MLB history, they had a blueprint to work from: it was the Kansas City Royals.
The Royals went from birth (1969) to the post-season in eight short years. The Blue Jays’ goal was to match that, and they almost did, making it to the ALCS nine years after they made their 1977 debut.
Their opponent in their inaugural 1985 playoff appearance? The Royals of George Brett, Hal McRae and Bret Saberhagen. It was the first taste of real heartbreak for Toronto baseball fans as they led the series 3-1 and lost the seventh game at home at old Exhibition Stadium on a three-run triple by Jim Sundberg before Kansas City went on to win the World Series.
It was impossible to know at the time but that was the Royals’ high point, just as no one knew that 1993 would be the high water mark for the Blue Jays.
In recent years the clubs have traced similar paths as well, with commitments to building through the draft and investments in international scouting, with each team cashing in prospects for MLB stars in the winter of 2012-13.
That’s where the paths divide. The Royals will face the Giants in a matchup of two pedestrian regular season teams that made it to the playoff and got hot. It’s a great story.
The Blue Jays – and Anthopoulos — can only wait another year to write their own.
“There’s just that sense of a missed opportunity,” says Anthopoulos. “And that we’re really close. The closest we’ve ever been.”