A Royal October

Kelvin Herrera is part of a powerful Kansas City bullpen
that arguably makes the Royals a better postseason team
than regular season team.

Eight games in the postseason for the Kansas City Royals. Eight wins, no losses and a trip to the World Series.

Not bad at all for an 89-win wild card team.

Nobody who enjoyed the Twins World Series title in 1987 as much as I did has any right to sneer at a sub 90-win team going to the Series. But I knew then that the Twins weren't really the best team in baseball, much less in the American League. They happened to get into the postseason and get the wins they needed to get.

Similarly, these Royals are not the best team in the Central Division, much less the best team in the American League, Their record says so. But they are unbeaten in the three rounds -- wild card game, divisional series, league championship series -- they've played.

This run is likely to be overthought and overanalyzed in coming days, and in truth this post might be a good example of that. But in my view, this Royals rampage emphasizes the difference between regular season baseball and post season baseball.

The regular season is, broadly speaking, a game a day. Six or seven games a week, more or less, for six months. This ain't football. We do this every day, Earl Weaver said years ago, and it remains true -- during the regular season.

The postseason is another case altogether. October baseball is not an everyday affair. The Royals have yet to play on three consecutive days this month. The regulars don't need, or get, the days off they do in August, so a pinch-running specialist can be carried. The pitching depth -- the fourth and fifth starters -- is less important. A six-man staff can carry you through October, but that approach won't work in the regular season.

The Royals have an eight-game winning streak going -- and they have done that without getting six innings from any starting pitcher.It been five innings or so, and here come the relief pitchers.

Here, the Royals are without peer. They have Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland -- three robust right-handed power arms with ERAs this year of 1.41, 1.00 and 1.41 respectively, with a combined 258 strikeouts in 204.1 innings.

If you're not ahead of this team after six innings with this bullpen rested, you're sunk -- and with all the days off built into the October schedule, this bullpen is always rested.

There's more to this surge than just the bullpen, of course. They are the best defensive team in the league, if not the game. And they are finding ways to score enough runs to get to the bullpen, including the long ball, something that eluded them most of the season.

Gardenhire's Twins had two seasons with similarly deep and powerful bullpens -- 2004, with Joe Nathan, Juan Rincon, the briefly healthy Grant Balfour and the rookie Jesse Crain; and 2006, with Nathan, Rincon, Crain, Pat Neshek and Dennys Reyes.

But in 2004 Gardenhire didn't trust Crain enough to use him in game situations in the playoffs, and Rincon gave up a crucial homer to Ruben Sierra. And in 2006 the starters and lineup never got the lead to the bullpen.

That hasn't been an issue for the Royals.

About last night

Ned Yost prepares to ignore the
conventional wisdom Tuesday.

That was a whale of a ball game Tuesday night, a 12-inning brawl between Oakland and Kansas City.

So much ball game. Too bad the TBS crew really wasn't up to the task, prattling nonsense about "Big James James" Shields (postseason ERA entering the contest above 5 runs a game) and blaming Brandon Moss's second-half struggles on the trade of Yoenis Cepedes rather than on a hip injury that needs surgery. Think Ron Darling would like to edit out his seventh inning claim that Jon Lester is "like a machine" pretty much just before the implosion began?

Ned Yost found a way to one-run tactic his way back against a four-run deficit. It is, in the long run, self-destructive to try that. On Tuesday, it worked.

Which, as a Twins fan, pleases me. Having a division rival get positive reinforcement for silly strategies will only encourage them to continue the silliness.

I embrace the bunt more than most internet baseball opinionmongers, but I would not object if, in the process of evaluating managerial candidates, the Twins ran Tuesday's scenarios by the candidates and rejected those who would do that which Yost did.

Yost's Royals are, in a sense, a throwback to the baseball I embraced as a young adult, built on speed and defense. Lacking from this team is the artificial turf component of Whitey Herzog's outstanding Kansas City and St. Louis teams. Lacking from those teams, but present in this one (and on the 1985 Royals team that won the World Series two managers removed from Herzog): Power arms in the starting rotation.

Which brings me to the Yost move that I most object to: His decision in the sixth inning to bring Yordano Ventura into the game with two on, no outs.

Ventura is both young and high-velocity. He started on Sunday and threw 73 pitches. Tuesday was his bullpen day, but he had never actually pitched on his bullpen day.

Yost has plenty of gas throwers in his bullpen who are used to coming in with men on base. Ventura is not. But Yost went with the tired young starter, who promptly got shelled.

Pitching Ventura in that specific situation was the wrong move both for winning the game AND for the future of the team and the player. Yost got away with it. But it was wrong anyway.