Two For The Title

Remember when the Major League Baseball All Star Game was played back in July? Remember the score? Remember who won? There are two teams who definitely DO know who won the All Star Game. That would be the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals, the two teams who made it through their playoff tests (the Royals beat the Blue Jays in six games and the Mets swept the Cubs in four straight) and will be playing in this year’s World Series.

They know because the league that won that “meaningless exhibition game” back in July will have THEIR pennant winner getting the home field advantage in the Series. That would be the American League getting home field because they won the game 6 to 3.

So the Mets and the Royals will hook it up in a classic case of a team with great pitching and pretty good hitting (the Mets) against a team with pretty good pitching (especially in the bullpen) and, while not great, the Royals have better hitting than the Mets.

The Royals made it into the World Series last year and got beat by the San Francisco Giants in seven games, thanks of course to the once in a lifetime pitching performance of Madison Bumgarner. The Royals would have won the Series last year BUT for the shut down pitching of Bumgarner. Now they are in The Series against the Mets who have the potential of at least three potential stud, shutdown pitchers (Matt Harvey, Jacob DeGrom and Noah Syndergaard).

There is something about a young, fireballing pitcher that can throw 98 miles per hour fastballs that can make him dominate another team during a high pressure event like the World Series. Having three different ones means the Mets have three chances for one of them to get red hot and do to the Royals something similar to what the Giants did last year (win it on pure pitching performance). It is almost always that pitching turns out to be the deciding factor in World Series games.

That’s not to say the Royals don’t know how to win. They do. You don’t get to two consecutive World Series without having a solid, well balanced team. The Royals have a team of young players that pretty much all came up together and have entered into their prime years together too. Their management has taken the core players and have added the key parts that may have been missing, and now feature a batting order that is really good all the way up and down the lineup.

So you get Mets and pitching against a more balanced Royals team (but with a lesser pitching staff). The Mets have a hitter (Daniel Murphy) that is so hot that he has homered in six consecutive playoff games, an all time record. The Royals have the type of lineup that can string together half a dozen hits in a row to spark a rally at any time to come back when they are trailing. Probably NOT going to get too many big rallies against the Mets pitching.

So the Royals way of winning is going to have to be by getting a lead and having their bullpen hold off the Mets. The Mets could win having four well pitched games and beating the Royals with a few key hits. It might not take a lot of runs to beat the Royals if the Mets pitching continues like it has been.

The one thing the Royals can best do to beat the Mets is have THEIR pitching play above their heads and match the Mets pitching. That could happen. They will HAVE to NOT allow Daniel Murphy to beat them the way he single-handedly beat the Dodgers in their deciding fifth game and the Cubs in their entire series.

The appearance, though, is of a Mets team that has the type of pitching that will shut down their opponents throughout an entire series the way it has happened in numerous other World Series matchups.

I’ve learned one thing following baseball and playoff series over the years. The deciding factor is almost always pitching, pitching and even more pitching. He who pitches best wins.