The Royals and Blue Jays kick off a potentially thrilling ALCS

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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.