2014 ALCS: Royals sweep Orioles, advance to World Series

Dayton Moore, Internet punching bag, human knock-knock joke, and giggle-generating general manager, is in the World Series. He’s hoping to join the ranks of past GM legends, like Kenny Williams, who actually won the danged thing. This is the same Moore who built some of the most amazing, hilarious rosters (Chris Getz! Yuniesky Betancourt! Willie Bloomquist! Kyle Davies!) of the past 10 years, who was inexplicably extended after a 90-loss season

Trust the Process.

The Orioles won the American League East in 1997, then waited until 2014 to claim their next division crown, but you shouldn’t expect the same kind of gap between successes this time around. You can never guarantee that the whole “Wait ‘til next year!” mantra will bring anything but disappointment, but the Orioles are in a good place going forward. Part of that is because of the composition of the team, and part of it has to do with an as-of-yet unsettled AL East.

The Orioles won the AL East in 2014 because no one tried to stop them. They had their problems with injuries, underwhelming performances, and suspensions, but so did everyone else in the division, and the Orioles handled it best. They posted a .618 winning percentage against AL East opponents -- a 100-win pace over 162 games -- doing the most damage against their closest competition, the Yankees. If the Yankees had gone 13-6 against the O’s instead of the other way around, it would have been the Yankees who won the AL East in spite of all of their shortcomings.

Sometimes you gotta go back. Matthew McConaughey told us in a car commercial, so it must be true. The Royals are going back to the World Series for the first time since 1985, which is cool as hell. Watch this, get goosebumps, enjoy the hell out of this moment.

The Royals are going to the World Series! That sound is you feeling some sports feelings.

(h/t @BryanAGraham)

The Giants lead the Cardinals in the NLCS, three games to one.

The 2014 World Series will begin at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City on Tuesday, Oct. 21, opening in the American League park by virtue of the A.L. winning the All-Star Game in July. This is the first trip to the World Series for the Royals since 1985, also the last season the team made the playoffs.

The good news is that most of the time people forget when you’re super, duper wrong, but remember those long shot calls you make and get right.

The bad news is the Internet tends to keep things alive for a long, long, time. While there is a good chance Costa was not responsible for the headline, he didn’t exactly hold back in criticism against Yost in the article which is also available online.

They were swept by the Yankees. To paraphrase Depeche Mode, the universe has a sick sense of humor.

The Phillies wouldn’t win a World Series until 1980. They beat the Royals. None of this is the least bit relevant to what the 2014 Royals have accomplished in terms of predictive power -- at this writing we don’t even know who they’re going to meet in the World Series -- but gives us a sense of the way that the elation of making it through the desert and emerging within view of the Promised Land can just as quickly lead to deflation and disappointment. Nothing is guaranteed, not even if you sweep.

The best part is they did it mostly via the long ball, despite being the worst team in baseball at hitting home runs during the regular season. It doesn’t hurt that Ned Yost began turning to his elite bullpen before the seventh inning. As you might expect, when a fanbase goes 28 years in between postseason — much less World Series — trips, they’re going to respond with... enthusiasm.

The Kansas City Royals are headed to the World Series after sweeping the Orioles. This is ridiculous. Let’s watch the final out from the crowd:

The Royals and their mascots and executives are going bananas:

The Royals won Game 4, 2-1, eliminating the Orioles and winning the American League pennant. They’ll face either the Cardinals or Giants in the World Series, which starts on Tuesday, Oct. 21.

The Kansas City Royals. Quite literally in the World Series.

Listen for the SMACK:

Yes, Gordon did catch the ball. And it’s a strong wall, or else it would have been all like ...

In the first inning of the game that could send the Royals to the World Series for the first time in 29 years, Norichika Aoki took one for the team.

We’re awaiting still photos of this event. In the meantime, enjoy this special postseason update of Aoki and his wonder-faces of pain:

The Orioles are down to what might be their final game of the 2014 season. Down three games to none to the Royals in the American League Championship Series, Baltimore will send Miguel Gonzalez to the mound to take on Jason Vargas in the hopes of forcing a Game 5 on Thursday.

Gonzalez might not be the top choice on the roster for a win-or-go-home game, but his credentials check out: He posted a 119 ERA+ this year while averaging six innings per start, and the Orioles could certainly use that kind of quality from him on Wednesday. Vargas is similarly not the Royals’ top arm by any means, but he’s just as capable of holding down the O’s bats as Gonzalez is of the Royals. They’ll need to hit some deep fly balls against Vargas to do so, though, and with James Shields slated for a potential Game 5, Ned Yost might be quick to his vaunted bullpen if Vargas gets into any kind of trouble.

“I’ve never had this much rest,” Vargas told reporters before the Royals’ victory in Game 3. “I couldn’t give you a good guideline on what I’ll be looking for, but I’ll be ready to go and be ready to try to execute my game plan and execute pitches.”

“I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out [Wednesday],” Vargas said. “But, yeah, I feel fine. Definitely rested. Had some bullpen sessions and everything feels fine,” he added.

First we saw him in a picture:

Be you, Shirtless Incredibly Excited Royals Kid. We only wish we could be as incredibly excited or as shirtless as you.

To be honest, we’ve spent the entire postseason looking to make a pun on “Royals” to go along with the song “Loyal” by Chris Brown. Jeremy Guthrie nailed it:

It’s unclear whether all the Royals have THESE O’S AIN’T ROYALS t-shirts or just Guthrie, it is also unclear whether I can buy one.

The Royals defeated the Orioles 2-1 in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, and now find themselves one win away from the World Series for the first time since 1985. That alone is reason to celebrate, but how the Royals managed to win the third game also merits not only attention, but praise. Manager Ned Yost doesn’t legitimately earn many compliments unless they’re of the backhanded variety, so let’s stop for a moment and give him credit where it’s due for the playoff rotation he didn’t change when he had the opportunity to do so.

Monday’s rainout gave Yost the chance to shuffle his rotation around to pitch Royals’ ace James Shields on short rest if he wanted to. He decided against that, and instead went with the scheduled starter, Jeremy Guthrie, for his first-ever playoff start -- to top it off, it came against Guthrie’s former team, which during his five years in Baltimore was one of the more pathetic clubs in the game. Guthrie might not be as good of a starter as he was during his prime on the Orioles, but he’s still more than capable, and he limited a productive lineup to just one run over 94 pitches and five innings before the bullpen took over.

OK, maybe we already knew that. But on Tuesday, Moustakas didn’t do it with the bat. Rather, it was the leather that gave Kansas City a boost on two separate occasions. The Royals’ third baseman made an impressive diving stab on a line drive off the bat of Pearce in the fourth and fell into the seats while making a tremendous grab in foul territory on a Jonathan Schoop pop-up an inning later.

And now possibly the best image of the post season thus far:

My goodness, it must be fun to be a Kansas City Royals fan right now. After 30 years with no playoffs, no success, nothing, they’re bursting through the playoffs with a fun, exciting team that can’t stop winning thrilling games. Imagine having put up with all the awful years and experiencing this now. I’d want the whole world to know it, and so does this guy:

Game 3 of the American League Championship Series was rained out on Monday, giving the Royals and Orioles all kinds of adjustments they could make to their playoff rotation. While Royals manager Ned Yost made it immediately clear that scheduled starter Jeremy Guthrie would still take his turn in what was now Tuesday’s Game 3, the starter for Game 4 was left up in the air. That was the case only for a day, though, as Yost stated that the Royals would go with Jason Vargas as planned for Game 4.

The reasoning is simple enough, with Yost (per Andy McCullough) stating that he wanted to get his ace James Shields and rookie Yordano Ventura an extra day of rest where he could. Shields would have been pitching on normal rest but making his fourth start of the postseason were he to take the hill in Game 4, and Ventura was lifted from his most recent start with tightness in his shoulder. Yost also admitted things might be different if the Royals weren’t up two games to none in the series.

On October 10 it appeared that ALCS Game 1 might be delayed or cancelled by rain. Embracing the old idea of the mixtape, which I guess the young’uns call a playlist, I suggested a dozen or so rain-themed tunes with which to pass the time. That game was played, but on Monday, ALCS Game 3 was wiped away by water. Today the sun is shining again in Kansas City, and so, for the few hours between now and game time, a Here Comes the Sun (for Baseball) playlist.

It has been almost 15 years since Karl Wallinger released an album by his Beatlesque one-man band, World Party. In the 1980 and 1990s he had hits with “Ship of Fools“ and ”Way Down Now.” The track below is a quieter affair off of “Bang!” Inspirational lyric: “You’re down in the basement when we’re up here on the roof/You’re looking for evidence when you’re living proof/But we hope you’re gonna make it up here.”