The anticipation is finally over, and the 2015 World Series will see the first pitch of Game 1 get thrown out Tuesday evening at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.
That's where the Kansas City Royals will welcome the New York Mets for the beginning of what promises to be a back-and-forth series. The average baseball fan can only hope to see another series like last year's championship battle, which saw the Royals take the San Francisco Giants to seven games.
While the Royals couldn't end their long championship drought then, now they have the opportunity to bring a 30-year window without a title to a close. Meanwhile, the Mets have their own drought of 29 years to rid themselves of.
Here's a look at everything to know.
Game 1 Info
When: Tuesday, October 27
Where: Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City
Time (ET): 8:07 p.m.
TV: Fox
Live Stream: Fox Sports Go
Preview
One team's lineup has been finding ways over and over to get past great pitching and put runs on the board. The other team's pitching staff is preventing opponents from having any breath of life on offense.
This World Series should be fun.
The Royals have once again defied the odds and advanced out of the American League, using their small-ball approach and timely hitting to their advantage. That style allowed them to avoid elimination in Game 4 of the ALDS despite a four-run deficit, before pushing them past the mighty Toronto Blue Jays in six games.
Timely hitting by Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain and others has paved the way for the Royals, but they'll be hard-pressed to continue it Tuesday and beyond.
That's because the Mets' arms are dealing at a ridiculous rate. Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard are a three-headed monster of a rotation that has slain everything in its path.
As compared to the Royals pitchers, Jayson Stark of ESPN captured a stunning statistic:
In (the Mets') nine starts in the first two rounds of this postseason, they got more swings and misses, 140, than balls put in play, 136. Seriously.
Want an idea of how crazy that is? The Royals' starters have induced almost double the number of balls in play, 153, versus swings and misses, 84. And none of the other six teams that have played more than one game in this postseason are even close to the Mets' ratio.
Of course, the Mets haven't been propelled by pitching alone. There's also a stout lineup and this guy named Daniel Murphy.
Murphy has emerged from the shadows this postseason into one of the biggest folk heroes in New York sports history—and that's elite company. He broke a major league record in Game 4 of the Mets' sweep over the Chicago Cubs by hitting a home run for a sixth straight postseason game.
However, one daunting sports curse could be against him in the World Series, as Adam Rubin of ESPN noted:
It wouldn't be surprising to see Murphy go the whole series without a home run, if only because the Royals have been planning for him for days. If they're smart in that regard, they'll avoid pitching to him altogether.
Tasked with that responsibility in Game 1 is Edinson Volquez, who hasn't had the prettiest of postseasons prior to Tuesday. He dropped his only decision against Houston and allowed five runs in a loss in Toronto.
But Volquez's only home start in these playoffs was a great one, going six innings on two hits. The Royals will hope for more of the same Tuesday night, as he faces off against the Mets' Harvey.
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