There is no such thing as "clutch," despite what the cliches and eyeball tests say.
Baseball teams and players throughout time have been slapped with that label, but data tells us there really is no penchant for timely hitting in high-leverage situations. There is only opportunity, and the results are sometimes good, more often bad for hitters.
But there certainly is "fun," and if the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals produce World Series drama the way they have to this point in the postseason, this will become one of the most exciting, white-knuckled, fingernail-gnashing matchups of all time.
And all of that would make this Fall Classic a must-watch, regardless of baseball affiliations.
What a postseason for MLB. Best in 10 years for sure. October baseball is sports drama at its finest. #giants #royals
— Travis Unger (@travis_unger) October 17, 2014
These are a pair of below-90-win teams whose Pythagorean records were actually worse during the regular season. They had to survive the Russian roulette Wild-Card Game and have each had their share of one-run postseason thrillers (four each).
There have been huge contributions from castoffs, emergency replacements, rarely used minor leaguers and below-average regulars, with some players bleeding into more than one of these categories.
It has all been glorious.
The Royals started this craziness on the final day of September, playing a wild-card contest against the Oakland A’s that was filled with bad decisions, misplays, timely hitting and pitching, extra innings and, finally, redemption.
We said then that if the rest of the playoffs were anything close to that, baseball gods would help us survive the spiked heart rates. And then, a day later, the Giants slowed them down with a blowout win over the Pittsburgh Pirates. But what they lacked in drama in that single game, they made up for twice over in one of the best postseason games ever played just a few days later.
After a one-run win for San Francisco to start the National League Division Series that was filled with its own intensity, the Giants and Washington Nationals performed in an epic 18-inning, six-hour, 23-minute marathon that ended in a 2-1 Giants victory.
Despite the Royals sweeping the team with the sport’s best regular-season record, the Los Angeles Angels, the series did not lack for its own drama. The Royals won the first two games in Anaheim on 11th-inning home runs by two first-round draft picks with lofty expectations, Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer.
Moustakas and Hosmer have had their own separate levels of disappointment during their young careers, and Moustakas even spent time in the minors this season. But his magic continued into the ALCS against the Baltimore Orioles with two more home runs, and franchise pillar Alex Gordon, another first-round pick, won Game 1 with a 10th-inning homer of his own.
The @Royals show importance of draft picks: Butler, Gordon, Moustakas, Hosmer, Colon and Finnegan as well as Greinke all KC 1st rounders.
— Baseball Factory (@BaseballFactory) October 15, 2014
The Giants would not be out-drama-ed in the National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
In a pivotal third game in San Francisco, the Giants ran out to a four-run lead that was eventually covered by the Cardinals to send the game into extra innings. And after a walk and hit put two runners on, Gregor Blanco, a platoon player when the season started, dropped down a sacrifice bunt that Cardinals pitcher Randy Choate threw away, allowing the winning run to score.
That was the preliminary craziness for the Giants’ NLCS run, as it turned out. They were saving the real dramatics for the series-clincher.
Down a run in the eighth inning, Mike Morse, finishing out an injury-riddled season, launched a solo home run off All-Star reliever Pat Neshek to tie the game.
That home run set the stage for something even nuttier.
Travis Ishikawa, who was only on the roster because of the uncertainty surrounding Morse’s health and the season-ending injury to Angel Pagan and was a goat for a misplayed liner earlier in the game, stepped into the box with one out and two runners on base. On the third pitch of the at-bat, Ishikawa smoked an inside fastball over the right-field wall to send the Giants into their third World Series appearance in five years.
That shot completed what, to this point, has been one of the most improbable and dramatic postseasons on the books. It will end with a small-market franchise ending a 29-year World Series drought against a big-market club with the sixth-highest payroll in the majors and two titles since 2010.
Sport is entertainment, and the venues are the stages. Too often sports "fans" forget that and tune out if their favorites are excluded. But this is a time to remember that baseball can be great theater, regardless of who stars in it.
If these teams produce anything close to what they have through their first three rounds, this will be one of those World Series networks replay during rain delays and off days for the next 20 years. Describing it as "epic" could be an understatement.
Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
- Login to post comments