Orioles and Royals make for a no-frills ALCS

With the elimination of both the Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday night, we will soon have the pleasure of a first-ever ALCS confrontation between the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles. It seems as if these two teams should have played in October 1979 or 1983, but no -- the Royals won six division titles between 1976 and 1985; the two years the Orioles won were among the four they missed.

Depending on how you look at it and how your mental entertainment button works, the redemption narrative for both teams may get you charged up to watch this series -- as you have no doubt heard a thousand times by now, the Orioles haven’t picked up a World Series title since 1983, when Cal Ripken, Jr. was just a young pup, while the Royals have been almost completely moribund since 1985. On the other hand, you might want to see stars, and sorry, but that’s not really in the cards for the American League. They’ve mostly gone home.

You might consider the blue-collar, anonymous aspect of these two teams part of their charm, or you might have preferred to spend more time with Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout. There’s no wrong answer there, but either way, it’s no longer an option. Here are the top 30 AL position players by WAR, according to Baseball-Reference:

And now, the pitchers:

The first Oriole shows up at No. 34 -- Zach Britton, Chris Tillman, and Darren O’Day were more or less tied at that level. As for position players, if you take defense out of the equation, Steve Pearce drops down to No. 22 and Alex Gordon to No. 31. Lorenzo Cain vanishes away like a character in a Richard Matheson story. Conversely, Adam Jones jumps from No. 19 to No. 13. And Nelson Cruz also ascends into the top 20. Still, for the casual fan, there’s going to be a lot of head-scratching “Who?” in this series.

Again, that’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. In fact, in some ways, it’s downright weird and simultaneously impressive -- low-wattage teams lacking big stars, but spreading the reasons for their success around the roster.

That statement might even be unfair to the Royals. Sure, there are no top-10 pitchers on their team, but look how many names are remaining in the top 30. We’ve all derided their offense and rightly so, but like the British at Singapore, we probably had our guns pointed in the wrong direction -- with pitching this good, who needs bats? Still hard to believe the answer is a firm, “Not these Royals.” The Angels had their weaknesses, primarily a thin pitching staff, but a 1.74 ERA in three games by the Royals against a strong offense can’t be completely dismissed -- as the Orioles may soon learn to their sorrow.