BALTIMORE — This Kansas City Royals revival isn’t finished yet.
A year after losing 106 games, the Royals are moving on to the American League Division Series after sweeping the favored Baltimore Orioles with a 2-1 win at Camden Yards on Wednesday night.
The Royals’ best player, Bobby Witt Jr., just so happens to be the fastest player in the game, and he drove in the winning run with an infield single in the sixth inning (Witt also drove in the only run in a 1-0 win in Game 1). Royals starter Seth Lugo cruised through four innings but began to stumble after a game-tying home run in the fifth, and the Royals bullpen wound up pitching 4 2/3 scoreless innings to seal the clinching victory.
In the two-game series, the Royals pitching staff allowed 10 hits and struck out 22.
It’s the second consecutive season that the Orioles have been swept in their only postseason series. The Texas Rangers swept them in last year’s division series and went on to win the World Series. — Chad Jennings
Does baseball’s newest pitching pipeline run through Kansas City?
Across two days in Baltimore, the Royals made their case as baseball’s latest pitching factory.
Such a proclamation would have seemed absurd two years ago. But after general manager J.J. Picollo took the reins of the front office in late 2022, he plucked pitching coach Brian Sweeney from the Guardians’ organization.
Look at Kansas City now.
Not only do Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo offer a potent one-two punch, but the Kansas City bullpen is suddenly a weapon. It started in September. It was even more apparent against the Orioles.
On Wednesday, five different relievers combined to pitch 4 2/3 scoreless innings, including closer Lucas Erceg, who notched his second save of the series.
The performance helped Kansas City to improve to 9-1 in their last 10 postseason series, dating back to 1985. They are in the playoffs for just the fourth time in the last 39 years. But they reached the World Series in each of their last three trips to October. — Rustin Dodd
The Royals narrowly escaped disaster in the fifth
Protecting a 1-0 lead in the fifth, Royals starter Seth Lugo gave up a solo homer to Baltimore’s Cedric Mullins and then loaded the bases with nobody out in the fifth.
But the Orioles could not capitalize.
Lugo, whose fielding error had allowed Jordan Westburg to reach with runners on first and second, buckled down and coaxed an infield pop-up to Anthony Santander. He then exited for lefty reliever Angel Zerpa, who struck out Colton Cowser on a pitch that hit Cowser in the hand.
Cowser was in serious agony. So were the Orioles when Adley Rutschman grounded out to end the inning.
Zerpa, 25, had struggled during the second half of the season, earning a demotion to Triple-A Omaha. But his performance in the highest of leverage situations kept the score tied and allowed the Royals to re-take the lead in the top of the sixth. — Dodd
The thrill may be gone for Baltimore and its incomplete baseball team
The last two seasons have been a honeymoon for the Orioles and Baltimore, a city and its resurgent baseball team. The sport lauded their ability to build a team from scratch bolstered by young talent.
An 0-5 record over the last two postseasons, however, may be bringing that honeymoon period to an end. That much seemed clear looking at the nearly empty sections in the upper deck in a stadium that was nowhere near sold-out.
This team still has a great foundation to build on, and getting to the postseason in back-to-back years is a lot better than most big league clubs can boast. But the last five playoff games exposed a team that is far from complete.
The Orioles reached the playoffs because of the work they did in the season’s first four months. August and September saw a club that backed its way into October. The last two days did nothing to dispel that notion. — Sam Blum
Could the wall have solved it all?
The Orioles mustered just one run in 18 innings. It took until the 14th inning before Cedric Mullins was finally able to turn a full-count fastball into Baltimore’s only score of the series.
As they seek answers as to how this happened, one culprit might be their exorbitantly distant left field wall. Now, to be clear, that wall is not responsible for all that ails the Orioles — who consistently chased out of the zone (i.e. Cowser striking out on a ball headed for his chest.)
The distance of that wall, however, has been a source of controversy since it came into existence before the 2022 season. And in these two one-run games, there were two deep flyouts that would have been home runs nearly everywhere else.
On Tuesday, it was Jordan Westburg’s 378-foot flyout that would have gotten out of 28 other parks. On Wednesday, Ramon Urias also hit a 378-foot fly ball that would have left 27 ballparks.
Baltimore should blame their 22 strikeouts over both games, their going 1-of-13 with runners in scoring position, and the general inability of their once-vaunted top-of-the-order to do anything meaningful.
But that wall being just a little closer could have made all of that irrelevant. — Blum
(Top photo of Pasquantino after a fifth-inning single: AP Photo / Stephanie Scarbrough)
