Mets and Royals give us a World Series where one perennial loser must win

For the first time since the Astros and White Sox met in the 2005 World Series, there’s symmetry to the Fall Classic. Neither the Mets nor Royals have won a World Series since the ‘80s. The babies made after drunken nights of Trivial Pursuit are now mothers and fathers themselves, and they’ve never seen a Mets championship or a Royals championship. Technically, the Royals have the longer drought, and their fans got to say, “That’s OK. We got ours last year, and we’ll be back,” while they watched the Mets celebrate.

It’s been a long time, is all. And the drought will go away for just one of them. That’s the sad thing. Unless you hate both teams equally. Maybe you live next to Bret Saberhagen, and the dude just doesn’t stop with his leaf blower. Then this is the World Series of Schadenfreude for you. The rest of us, though, will cringe at the thought of one of these teams waiting ‘til next year. They’ve had to crawl though so very much to get here.

That’s the other delightful symmetry. We were just laughing at these teams. And it was the kind of laughing that wasn’t questioned, not something that would start an online war. Mets fans and Royals fans knew exactly why their teams were so amusing to the baseball jerks among us. They watched their teams in the dark years because there was some sort of intangible payoff on the other side, there had to be, and they would take the laughter and sit in it, a fetid, warm puddle that soaked through their jeans. They were waiting for something. They were promised something

It’s here! Maybe. Unless this is the end of a very elaborate prank, and their prom dates are on the other end of the phone, laughing because they can’t believe the gag went on this long. Someone’s about to get stood up. The other one is going to have a lot of crap for sale. It’s a fine line.

We laughed at the Royals because they were incompetent. They would neatly fold up their first-round picks and eat them, bite by bite, never turning them into anything that would help them win. If, on the rare occasion, they stumbled into a Johnny Damon or Carlos Beltran, they would trade them for stock options in a mail-order company that specialized in VHS cassettes. Or Neifi Perez. Every damned time. They could never build a proper team around their homegrown stars, and when it came time to trade them, they failed. They finally developed a Cy Young pitcher, and then they had to trade him. You knew they were going to screw it up.

We laughed at the Mets because they were cursed, but not by a mystical, unseen force. Their rich owner did dumb things, and now he wasn’t so rich anymore. It’s the reverse Horatio Alger story that would have sold twice as many copies; boy, howdy, do we love using an envy mallet to knock those types down a peg. Seriously, on a Ponzi scheme? How does that ... you really thought ... I mean, a 40 percent return couldn’t have seemed ...

(Also, they were cursed on the field by a mystical, unseen force, and that was in the good years.)

Now they’re outstanding, and we watched it happen. The Royals didn’t screw up the Greinke trade; they somehow traded a Cy Young away, and he would have more Cy Young-type years, and they got better for it. The Mets drafted young pitchers, and they acquired young pitchers, and they developed young pitchers, and at no point did they screw it up. Their fourth starter would be the talk of the postseason if he were on another team -- a young lefty, throwing 94 with command, the weight of the franchise on his wonky back. Instead, he’s safely tucked away in the middle of the series, if he appears at all, an electric arm overshadowed by three others.

The Mets and the Royals, in the World Series. Are you a fan of a lousy team? Say that sentence, eyes closed, face toward the sky. The Mets and the Royals, in the World Series. The Mets and the Royals, in the World Series. This is gonna be fun.

Now let’s look at these teams and pretend like we know what’s going to happen.

This would appear to be a mismatch, depending on your lack of confidence in second-half Johnny Cueto. Edinson Volquez and Chris Young were just in the free bin two years ago, nicked, rusty and unwanted. Yordano Ventura was erratic enough to take a detour to the minors this year before he bit Johnny Cueto on the neck and sucked out his powers. Cueto was excellent until he was traded to Kansas City, where Yordano Ventura bit him on the neck and sucked out his powers.

Meanwhile, the Mets have four absurd flamethrowers in the rotation, all of them 27 or younger. Jacob deGrom is undefeated in three starts, and in his shakiest outing, he allowed two runs in six innings. Matt Harvey’s best postseason start was his last one, and Noah Syndergaard has struck out 20 batters of the 52 he’s faced. And look at this guy, so eager:

Won’t you like him? You will one day, you know.

No one in the Mets’ rotation has been overworked. No one in the bullpen has been overworked. If you’re looking to draw up an encouraging pitching staff before the start of a World Series, it would look like this. The fastballs haven’t lost an inch, but October bats can be slower. At least, that’s been the conventional wisdom for decades.

Advantage: Mets.

Except I’ve seen things, people. I’ve drifted through fog and doubt and watched Barry Zito outpitch Justin Verlander in his prime. I’ve been cold and hungry, and I have broken bread at the Church of Jeff Weaver. In the last World Series, an ace stepped forward and mumbled “I’m a gonna ace now” and then he aced for the entire series. I’ve seen the best pitchers of their generation completely crumble for no good reason, other than “eh, happens.”

Plus, that sells the Royals short. Young wasn’t in the free bin because he was awful; he’s just had problems staying healthy. He’s healthy now. Volquez is radically different from when he was a right-handed Jonathan Sanchez, all stuff and no control. The control got better, but then dig this: So did his stuff.

That Volquez has lost some sink and gained some run is generally true of the postseason, even if the effect is somewhat small. But in that one game that he’s coming off of, Volquez may have had peak stuff. Or, at least, he was combining some of his best sink and run with his highest velocities.

Ventura was much better after returning from the minors, with the Royals going 15-5 in his starts, including the postseason. And while Cueto is the most enigmatic pitcher in a barrel of them, he’s still Johnny Freaking Cueto when he’s right. Dismissing him with a wave of your hand because of a handful of second-half and postseason starts seems dangerous. There’s a good chance that he’s tired after jumping from 60⅔ innings in 2013 to 243⅔ innings last year, but there’s also at least a decent chance that he’s in the Cueto lab right now, successfully tinkering with whatever is jimmying up his command.

Put it this way: In June, you could have made an argument that, of all the pitchers appearing in the 2015 World Series, Cueto was the most valuable. It might have been a successful, compelling argument. Four months later, it seems hard to claim that the Royals are somehow at a disadvantage because they have him in the rotation.

If there’s a problem with the Royals’ starting rotation, it’s that we’ve seen a lot of five-innings-and-done from them. But that would be a problem if a) we hadn’t watched teams do that for entire postseasons and thrive and b) the Royals didn’t have one of the very best bullpens in the land. Five-innings-and-done is almost the template, as Ned Yost starts getting jittery in the sixth and seventh, and you can hardly blame him.

The Mets don’t have that same bullpen depth -- when Terry Collins needs to get his starter before the sixth inning is over, the odds increase that an imperfect pitcher will have an imperfect outing. Folding the Royals’ bullpen into their starting rotation for your analysis makes them seem much more formidable, especially considering off days and the willingness to use someone like Wade Davis unconventionally in the last four-to-seven games of the postseason.

Another problem with pooh-poohing the Royals’ rotation in comparison to the Mets’ starting four is that the Mets have a slightly above average Major League lineup. They have more power than the average team, at least in terms of raw dingers, but unless you want to give them full credit for Yoenis Cespedes morphing into an offensive deity in the last couple months of the regular season, and then Daniel Murphy revealing that he was Cespedes’ father and a dormant and more powerful deity the whole time -- and you should not give them that credit because baseball doesn’t work like that -- the Mets are startlingly average. The National League hit .253/.316/.397 this year. The Mets hit .244/.312/.400, good for a 98 OPS+.

In other words, it’s hard to look at the Mets lineup, look at any of the Royals’ starters, look back at the Mets lineup and think, “My goodness, they’re going to crush those guys.” The Mets generally aren’t a crushing team.

Daniel Murphy can’t possibly be this good, people.

/looks around the room

Right? Who’s with me?

/you’re literally on your phone because you don’t want to make eye contact

Fine. But you know I’m right. And the Mets don’t have a thunderous, staff-taxing lineup that forces opposing managers to make erratic decisions in the fifth inning. Usually.

Of course, the Royals aren’t exactly a thunderous, staff-taxing lineup, either. The American League hit .255/.318/.412 this year. The Royals hit .269/.322/.412, good for a ... 98 OPS+. They’re more like the Mets offensively than you think, which gives the Mets the inherent advantage if you believe in their superior starting pitching. Which is probably a good idea.

That ignores the two-pronged narrative of the pre-World Series chatter: First, that the Royals are better at hitting plus-plus fastballs than other teams, which helps negate that most important of Mets advantages. Second, that the Royals being a contact team bodes well for them against a staff like the Mets.

The first point is interesting and compelling, but it also ignores that the Royals aren’t as adept against great off-speed stuff, which is another thing the Mets do exceptionally well. Mike Petriello of MLB.com crunched the numbers and reminds us all that it’s not like Harvey/deGrom/Syndergaard/Matz are all brainless chuckers.

Of course, the Mets throw their highest percentage of pitches at 87 or below, 26.2 percent of their postseason pitches, in fact, which makes sense. It’s not just Bartolo Colon; it’s Jacob deGrom complementing his fastball with a lethal changeup and Matt Harvey missing plenty of bats with his curveball. So in that sense, the Royals’ biggest weakness is the Mets’ biggest strength.

There’s that second one up there, too, the one about the Royals being a contact team. Ben Lindbergh mostly debunked the myth that contact teams are inherently better in the postseason, but the matchup still makes me nervous on behalf of the Mets because of the wild card of ...

Wilmer Flores and Daniel Murphy are rough up the middle. The Royals are a contact team. That’s all that keeps running through my mind, Lisa/dental plan-style. I could see this series coming down to the Royals hitting balls just out of their reach. I could see the Royals going an entire series hitting balls directly at them.

I have no idea what’s going to happen. So here’s my prediction.

Royals in six

Unless it’s the Mets in seven or five or four, or the Royals in seven or four or five. Have a good World Series, y’all.

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