Throwback Series
As much as people want to talk about how baseball has entered into some kind of sabermetric dominated modern age that bears little resemblance to the game of any of the earlier eras, I offer you all some thoughts about this World Series of 2015.
I think it’s a throwback series. I think both the Mets and the Royals each have styles of play that remind me of some very successful teams from previous World Series.
The Mets are a team that I believe is based on the model of great starting pitching, a closer, solid defense and a combination of some form of not very high batting average but timely hitting to hopefully produce wins in (usually) close, low scoring games. They are in this series because of the pitching of DeGrom, Harvey and Syndergaard.
The Dodgers of the mid 60’s were that kind of team with Koufax, Drysdale and some defense along with not a whole lotta offense. They won two World Series in 1963 and 65 and lost to a similar pitching and defense Baltimore Orioles team in the 1966 Series.
The Miracle Mets of 1969 were led by Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Nolan Ryan and their own version of timely hitting and defense.
The 1970’s had an Oakland A’s team that had pitching, defense and timely hitting with Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers leading the team to three titles in a row.
The Atlanta Braves of the early to mid 1990’s were led by a similar trio of stud pitchers with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.
The Mets of 2015 remind me a lot of these teams. Doesn’t necessarily mean they will win like the teams I’ve mentioned though. (Note, the Royals have just won Game 2 to go up 2 to nothing on the Mets)
That’s because the Kansas City Royals remind me of many of the super successful teams themselves. Mostly, they remind me of the Big Red Machine Cincinnati Reds of the 1970’s, with some pitching, but mostly a team built around very good hitting all the way up and down the lineup, and great relief pitching that has the ability to shut a team down once it has the lead and close their opponents out when the game is on the line late.
The Royals, though, even more seems like a team that reminds me of the New York Yankee teams of the late 1990’s. Those Yankee teams won four championships in five years, with their own version of very good (but not necessarily super) starting pitching, a GREAT closer in Mariano Rivera, and maybe more importantly, a really good hitting team at EVERY single spot in the lineup.
The Yankees had left handed batters like Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neill, Jorge Posada and a switch hitter like Bernie Williams to always seem to have a strong left handed hitting lineup to go against right handed power pithers.
The Royals have Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon and two switch hitters, Ben Zobrist and Kendry Morales. All are good at making contact, putting the ball in play, and NOT swinging crazily at bad pitches.
The Yankees had Jeter and a bunch of non descript, but solid, often platoon hitting and very “professional, all around ball players” that always seemed to put in good at bats and play a winning form of baseball.
The Royals have Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Perez and Alex Rios, who, along with the other Royals, seem to put good at bats together almost EVERY single time to the plate (pretty much just the same way those Yankee teams used to do it).
Both teams have the closer at the end of the game to stop almost any team from coming from behind to beat them. Both teams have the capability of putting together several hits in a row to come from behind and pull off a late inning rally themselves.
Both teams have that knack for utilize outs to move runners over and in driving in key runs with key hits that did NOT have to be home runs.
Both teams, in fact, do something that was very much a throwback to earlier days. They both batted as if putting the bat on the ball was a more important tactic than trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark. The Yankees seldom ever got over anxious and swung at bad pitches.
The entire team of the Royals, in the game tonight, apparently only swung and missed at three pitches all night. They did not strike out 10+ times like most major league teams. They put the bat on the ball (and they won the game 7 to 1).
A team that plays the pitching and defense model of game against a team that is a spitten image model of the old New York Yankee teams that ruled baseball. This World Series sounds like a throwback to the good old days of baseball.
