Let’s start here: Neither of the teams in this American League Championship Series were supposed to be in this American League Championship Series.
The Royals, leaving aside all the optimism in some quarters last spring, graded out as a .500 team. There wasn’t even all that much optimism about the Orioles – not with all the competition in their division – and that was before they lost two of their best players for large chunks of the season.
Of course there are two ways of looking at the Orioles. The optimistic way? This team was a lot better than we thought, and would have won 100-some games if Manny Machado and Matt Wieters had been healthy all season. The pessimistic way? This team played over its head, and isn’t a “true” 96-win team. Purely in terms of the actual talent on the roster.
We do know that both Nelson Cruz and Steve Pearce, two of the Orioles’ three most valuable players, enjoyed career years. Cruz is 34, and had never before managed to stay healthy for a whole season. Pearce is 31, and had never before been asked to fill a major-league roster spot for a whole season.
Granted, we wouldn’t expect Cruz to get hurt during the League Championship Series (nor would we hope for that). But we shouldn’t be terribly surprised if Pearce turns into a pumpkin.
Still, how much difference would that make, anyway, over the course of a best-of-seven series? Of course the answer is almost none. If the Orioles had three or four Steve Pearces in their lineup, we might be especially worried. But they have one.
And I suppose now’s as good a time as any to pull on a dangerous thread and just say this: The winner of this and nearly every other postseason series will be determined largely by chance. As Joe Sheehan recently pointed out, “The eight teams left in the playoffs range from a 98-64 team down to an 88-64 one, a spread of ten wins over 162 games that you can take seriously as a measure of relative team quality. Now, your average postseason series takes about a week, scheduled for five to seven games each, or 1/26th of an MLB season.”
What happens if you run the math? The Orioles are a 3.7-2.5 team, the Royals 3.4-2.8. There’s a difference between those fake records, but the difference is so small that we wouldn’t expect it to show up in four, five, six, or even seven games. Which goes a long way toward explaining why we’re talking about the Royals at all.
Getting back to the “analysis”, though … Among our most favorite statistics are a) the Royals finished last in the American League in home runs, the Orioles first, and b) the Orioles finished last in the American League in stolen bases, the Royals first.
With the steals, it wasn’t even close on either end. The Royals were 25 percent better than the No. 2 Astros, the Orioles 30 percent worse than the No. 14 Red Sox. It’s pretty freaky, really.
Actually, the home runs are nearly as freaky. The Orioles were 19 percent better than the No. 2 Blue Jays, the Royals 14 percent worse than the No. 14 Rangers.
So these differences in both areas are massive. But the Orioles were not a great-hitting team, and the Royals weren’t terrible; the Orioles were merely good, the Royals merely below average.
Fundamentally, there’s just a hugely meaningful difference there ... and especially if you believe that Eric Hosmer and Billy Butler are better than their 2014 numbers. Which they almost certainly are, assuming of course they’re healthy. Hosmer, in particular, has been quite good since rejoining the lineup six weeks ago.
To beat the Orioles, though, they’ll need more than just a couple of big hits from Hosmer. And they’ll need more than a couple of stolen bases from Terrance Gore.
Of course that’s the media-driven narrative: the Royals’ speed is their ace in the hole, their not-so-secret-weapon, their playing-field leveler.
Except it’s not really true. Gore scored one important run during the entire month of September. The Orioles and particularly Game 1 (and probably Game 5) starter Chris Tillman are exceptionally difficult to run against. The Royals’ various pinch-runners didn’t score a single run during the Division Series. The Royals swept the Angels the terribly old-fashioned way: the out-hit and out-pitched them, just slightly, and bunched their hits better.
Which is quite likely how they’ll beat the Orioles, if they beat them.
Which is far from impossible. The Orioles’ edge in run production is essentially balanced by the Royals’ edge in run prevention, as Kansas City has – or had, during the regular season anyway – better starting pitching, better relief pitching, and better defense (especially in the outfield). While we love the addition of Andrew Miller to the O’s pen, we also love the addition of Brandon Finnegan to the Royals’ pen.
Yes, there are huge disparities between these teams’ performances, in highly specific and dramatic ways. It’s just that the disparities aren’t all that likely to show up in this series.
What will probably show up are the differences between the two managers. Whether you agree with Joe Sheehan – “Showalter is playing chess, Ned Yost is eating the horsey.” – or not, it’s hard to deny that they manage differently, with Showalter less wedded to rigid bullpen roles for his important firemen. Is that an edge for the Orioles? I sure think so. But we shouldn’t expect it to be decisive.
Bottom line: Yes, the Orioles are the better club. It shows up in the real standings, and it shows up (even more) in the adjusted standings. But you can wipe a lot of those away now. Because they’re not playing for six months. They’re playing for maybe a week.
