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The Royals and Blue Jays kick off a potentially thrilling ALCS
Friday’s Say Hey, Baseball includes the start of the ALCS, the Mets’ defeat of the Dodgers and more on Chase Utley’s slide. Subscribe for your daily Say Hey!
Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
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The Division Series is now behind us, and it’s League Championship Series time. That round will kick off on Friday night, with the Royals hosting the Blue Jays in Kansas City in an ALCS rematch 30 years in the making. The last time the Royals won the World Series, they did it with Bret Saberhagen and George Brett, and they went through the Jays to get there. Toronto has won it all more recently, but not by a whole lot -- Roberto Alomar was a 25-year-old on the ‘93 squad, and now he’s retired and in the Hall of Fame. As far as World Series droughts go, both of these teams qualify for your pity.
This series has a lot to live up to, but the potential is certainly there. The Jays are coming off an instant classic with the Rangers, in large part due to Game 5’s ridiculousness, but it should not be forgotten that Kansas City and Toronto are not all that far removed from their own bench-clearing issues. Imagine, for a moment, Jose Bautista flipping his bat in a way that upsets Yordano Ventura, and all the chaos that could spring forth from that moment.
Game 1 features two surprising successes in Marco Estrada and Edinson Volquez. Estrada’s 2015 is still something of a mystery, so there is always the potential for him to revert to being just okay, but Volquez, given how he’s jumped back and forth between productive and problematic over the years, seems particularly vulnerable against this Jays lineup. Maybe that’s not true, though, and Volquez is finally over the issues that plagued him. If he’s going to have problems this series, it’s more likely to come in a start in Toronto, anyway, so good on the Royals for kicking things off with him at the friendlier Kauffman.
- The NLCS is now set, too, as the Mets defeated the Dodgers in Game 5, finalizing the Cubs' opponent for Saturday.
- The Dodgers looked like they had a real chance this postseason, and then Daniel Murphy happened.
- The Mets celebrated their victory on a beer Slip 'n Slide.
- Jacob deGrom didn't have his command, not even a little bit, but he still pushed through and limited the Dodgers to two runs. Apparently, his pitching coach credits it to deGrom's "very large sack."
- Rob Lowe wants Don Mattingly fired, and he didn't even wait for Adam Scott to deliver this bad news for him.
- The fact the Royals failed for so long helps make the success of the last few years that much sweeter.
- A fan got a tattoo of Jose Bautista's bat flip, which obviously wasn't an impulsive decision. Literal hours passed in between the event and the tat.
- 2016 might be David Ortiz's last year, and the Red Sox owe him one last postseason run.
- You would probably enjoy playing chess against Mike Matheny.
- Chase Utley's dirty slide would have propelled him 15 feet past second base, based on the impact with which he hit Ruben Tejada. But nah, those rules don't need to change or receive clarification or anything.
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