The Kansas City Royals could be forgiven if they were still on a high as they enter their American League Division Series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
After all, when you win your do-or-die wild card game against the Oakland A's by storming back from a 7-3, eighth-inning deficit, as well as an 8-7 deficit in the 12th, that kind of excitement can tend to linger for a little while.
Hey, if you don't believe me, just ask George Brett.
George Brett was speechless. That says it all. GIF: http://t.co/o3ybsBWgaI #WildCard pic.twitter.com/eZR3ZNwb3u
They're still peeling George off the club box ceiling at Kauffman Stadium, by the way.
Now, the Royals can breathe a little bit. The specter of the win-or-go-home scenario is over and they can prepare for an admittedly short, five-game series. But now, it will at least really feel like a true playoff experience for a franchise that is playing its first postseason baseball since 1985.
Up next is the Angels, who went 98-64 this season to finish with the best record in baseball. They finished with a 10-game advantage over the A's in the AL West and posted a win differential of +143, second-best in MLB (behind only Oakland). And since the start of July, they went 53-29, storming ahead from six games back to overtake the Athletics with relative ease.
They will have home field advantage in this series, but as we all know, these five-game series are many times a total crapshoot. So, let's break it down.
How the Angels Got Here
The Angels arrived at the ALDS thanks to having the best offense in the American League. They scored the most runs (773), slugged the fourth-most homers (155) and finished with the fourth-best weighted on base average (wOBA of .321) in the AL. Their team OPS of .728 was also fourth-best in the American League and as a team, had a slash line of .259/.322/.406.
Incredibly, every regular member of the Angels' lineup was an above average run-creator, as told by the weighted runs created (wRC+) metric. It definitely helps to have the best player in all of baseball playing for your team, with nERD of 4.05 was second-best in all of baseball, meaning a lineup full of Trouts would score 4.05 runs a game more than a league average player.
MLB.com's Richard Justice noted Kansas City is 70-14 this season when scoring four or more runs, so that four-run number is going to be key.
Manager Ned Yost has to be better. Shields had thrown just 88 pitches when he was removed from the wild card game with no outs in the sixth inning on Tuesday. The team traded away super prospect Wil Myers specifically so they could get Shields to pitch in games like this, so removing him when he ran into a little trouble after just five innings didn't make sense. It made even less sense when he brought in a rookie starter who had not thrown a single inning of relief all season to take over, especially with the stable of dominant relievers he had to go to. Yost has to manage smarter than that for the Royals to advance.
And Kansas City needs to run, run, run. The Royals are built around speed and grinding out runs, which is what they did on Tuesday night, stealing seven bases. They're also going to sacrifice bunt us all into oblivion, and there's nothing we can do about it. So when they do move runners into scoring position via the sacrifice bunt, they need to convert almost every single time. Otherwise, they're not going to score.
Who Wins?
I'd feel a lot better about picking the Angels if they had a true number-one starter to lead them. However, they have home field advantage and finished with an AL-best 52-29 record at home this year. Their +143 run differential was significantly better than Kansas City's +27. And if their lineup can avoid a team-wide slump, they should be able to score enough runs to beat a very game Kansas City Royals team, who do not have the same playoff experience that the Angels do.
Of course, that didn't seem to matter on Tuesday night.
Our projections say there's a 62.5% chance the Angels will beat the Royals in this series, with the most likely outcome having them taking the series in four games. Works for me!