Okay, so I didn't have the Royals beating the Angels.
I certainly didn't have the Royals sweeping the Angels. Maybe I just didn't give enough credit to what speed do? Fortunately, the Times was on it:
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fourteen hundred and seventy-four players were picked in the 2006 major league draft before the Kansas City Royals selected Jarrod Dyson out of Southwest Mississippi Community College in the 50th, and last, round. Dyson then took six years to carve out a regular role on their team.
Six hundred and five players were picked before the Royals selected Terrance Gore of Gulf Coast Community College in the 20th round of the 2011 draft. Gore made his major league debut about five weeks ago.
The Royals plucked both Dyson and Gore from obscurity because of one elite trait: speed. Now they are perhaps the most unlikely heroes of the Royals’ first playoff run in 29 years. They are key weapons off the Royals’ bench: two base stealers deployed late in the low-scoring, close, intense games they often play.
I'll skip ahead to the point of this little essay: Dyson and Gore combined to score exactly zero runs in the Royals' sweep.
Yes, you can win with speed on the basepaths. Just not often. As I wrote before the sweep. Where the Royals' speed really helps is in the outfield, especially when anything's hit near Lorenzo Cain, or near Dyson when he's out there.
Maybe Gore will do something thrilling against the Orioles. We can certainly hope so, because that would be exciting! But if the Royals win again, it'll most likely because they out-hit and out-pitch and out-field the O's. Not because they out-steal them.
Meanwhile, the organization does deserve a great deal of credit for turning Jarrod Dyson into a good major-league baseball player.
