The Kansas City Royals cannot be stopped! 10 straight postseason wins, beating the Oakland Athletics in the Wild Card Game, sweeping the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and now they stand only one game away from sweeping the Baltimore Orioles and advancing to the World Series. It took the Royals 29 years to make it back into the playoffs since winning their last Championship during the 1985 season.
Mike Moustakas not only crushes clutch homers, he also plays gold glove defense! If Moustakas wasn’t a household name before the postseason he will be now. Moose made an unbelievable catch along the foul line into the expensive field level seats on an Adam Jones pop up. That play put the crowd in a roar, making it difficult for the Orioles to come back from a 2-1 deficit against the Royals elite bullpen and intensity from the Royal fans.
Baltimore did take their first lead of the series during the top of 2nd when JJ Hardy connected on an outside pitch off of Jeremy Guthrie, driving it deep into right field to score Steve Pearce from 1st on an RBI double.
The lead didn’t last too long though. During the bottom of the 4th Lorenzo Cain blooped a single over the shortstop JJ Hardy with one out, then Erik Hosmer hit a broken bat single into center, and to load the bases Billy Butler drew a walk to bring up Alex Gordon. Gordon hit a fielders choice to 2nd base to score Cain from 3rd, tying the game at 1.
During the bottom of the 6th inning Jarod Dyson was called upon to pinch run for Aoki. Once Hosmer came up to bat you could guess that he was going to make something happen. With his Hosmer Magic he drove a ball to right field, moving Dyson to 3rd leaving it up to Butler to bring him in. Playing the small ball they are accustomed to, Butler hit a sac fly to deep left bringing in Dyson to take a 2-1 lead.
With a 2-1 lead it was pretty much a guaranteed win after that since they had their elite arms coming in to close the game out. Kelvin Herrera in the 7th, Wade Davis in the 8th, and Greg Holland to close it out. They pitched a combined 3 innings with 2 strikeouts, retiring all 9 batters with ease. Holland collected his 3rd save.
Royals are just one win away to advancing to the World Series. Kansas City can finish the sweep tomorrow night at home with Jason Vargas throwing for the Royals and Miguel Gonzalez going out for the Orioles trying to play hero and preventing the sweep.
