The Kansas City Royals lost 106 games last season. They squeezed through the American League wild card door with 86 victories, then they dispatched the 91-victory Baltimore Orioles to march on.
They will be huge underdogs against the New York Yankees, but so what.
鈥淎nything is possible,鈥 Royals reliever Lucas Erceg told reporters. 鈥淲e鈥檙e just going to keep playing hard. Keep proving to people that we belong here, that we can compete at the highest level. We can鈥檛 wait.鈥
The Detroit Tigers tried to bail on their season ahead of the trade deadline, selling off pitcher Jack Flaherty and others for future assets. Then they kept winning anyway 鈥 right through their sweep of the perennially powerful Houston Astros.
They, too, improbably march on. So it goes in postseason baseball. Once you get into the bracket, anything can happen in short do-or-die series.
People are also reading…
Less surprising was the San Diego Padres鈥 elimination of the injury-depleted Atlanta Braves. Their quick two-game sweep was a mere warm-up for their showdown against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Padres wasted a bases-loaded, nobody-out opportunity against the Braves Wednesday 鈥 then scored five times with two outs the next inning.
鈥淔irst, that happens when you have no outs, bases loaded,鈥 Padres fielder Jackson Merrill told reporters. 鈥淎nd then you have two outs and get six straight hits. It's baseball.鈥
Thar鈥檚 postseason baseball, where insanity can prevail. Although in this case the San Diego outburst was hardly surprising.
鈥淭wo outs, nobody on -- we're really good at that,鈥 Padres manager Mike Shildt said. 鈥淚t's a big part of our identity with our club, the mantra of, 鈥榃e're going to compete regardless of circumstances.鈥 Nobody on, we'll figure it out, get it going.鈥
So the Padres move on. As it turns out, Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak did Shildt a favor by firing him in a snit. Shildt moved on to an ultra-aggressive organization in 鈥渨on now鈥 mode while the Cardinals have lapsed into a period of economic retrenchment and long-haul rebuilding.
Maybe Shildt should send Mozeliak a thank-you note from the NLDS later this week . . .
Here is what folks have been writing about the baseball playoffs:
Gabe Lacques, USA Today: 鈥淭he cigar smoke and rivers of booze made their way through the protective covering enclosing the聽Kansas City Royals鈥 visiting clubhouse at Camden Yards Wednesday night as Tommy Pham, the 36-year-old veteran of five playoff runs, popped his head out. Six days, two champagne celebrations 鈥 and the promise of more to come - and Pham couldn鈥檛 be prouder of his young teammates, some barely old enough to imbibe. 鈥楾hey鈥檙e some professional bottle poppers, now!鈥 Pham said, as the party rolled on into the night and eventually back outside, turning the infield into an impromptu disco. These are the spoils for October鈥檚 greats, and to be clear, these Royals aren鈥檛 quite there yet. One season after losing 106 games, Kansas City injected the perfect amount of veterans over the winter and at the trade deadline, won 86 games, claimed a wild-card spot and now, over the course of two games at Camden Yards, became what every team aspires to be this time of year. A problem. They knocked out the 91-win聽Baltimore Orioles聽across two taut playoff afternoons at Camden Yards, finishing the job Wednesday with a 2-1 victory that catapulted them to the American League Division Series for the first time since 2015. Next stop: Yankee Stadium. Game 1 of the ALDS will be Saturday night, likely a matchup of reigning AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole and veteran right-hander Michael Wacha.聽Aaron Judge and Juan Soto聽will loom in the middle of the opposing lineup and more than 50,000 championship-starved fans will be in full throat. Yet they also have plenty to fear.鈥
Michael Baumann, FanGraphs: 鈥淭he past decade has been pretty rough for Orioles fans. Thanks to front office ineptitude followed by ownership neglect disguised as a half-decade-long tank job, the Orioles went eight years between home playoff games. In last year鈥檚 ALDS against Texas, with the games coming on a weekend and Baltimore a heavy favorite, there was an irrepressible excitement in the crowd. This time around, having been frustrated last October, the atmosphere was a little more subdued. This being a big ballpark in a tiny city on a weekday afternoon, there were some 6,000 empty seats in Camden Yards for Game 2. But more than that, the happy-to-be-here was gone. The crowd would not settle for another runner-up鈥檚 ribbon. Instead, they were begging for a reason to explode. (Seth) Lugo, the man of a million pitches, grooved a 93 mph four-seamer right down the pipe to (Cedric) Mullins, who might not be the 30-homer threat he was a few years ago, but is hitter enough to blast a meatball like that into the seats. Concurrently, decade鈥檚 worth of catharsis poured out of the stands. When the Orioles loaded the bases and chased Lugo within the next four hitters, it only got louder. This was the moment. Obviously. Baltimore鈥檚 star-studded offense was about to erupt like an unclogged pipe. The optimism lasted a matter of moments.鈥
Chelsea Janes, Washington Post: 鈥淭hese are not the hugs Adley Rutschman wants to remember, these puffy-eyed embraces that double as goodbyes. Rutschman and the new Baltimore generation were supposed to be the antidote to years of October disappointment. Instead, these Orioles scored one run in 18 innings the past two nights and watched the Kansas City Royals celebrate a 2-1 victory at Camden Yards 鈥 while they get ready for another long winter searching for a cure. These are not the popping sounds the Orioles wanted to hear in the clubhouse, the dutiful slapping of backs instead of ecstatic popping of corks. This franchise has lost 10 straight postseason games, dating back to 2014. Five of those have come since Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson and the rest arrived with seemingly endless promise. They scored two runs or fewer in four of those losses . . . The Orioles limped into these playoffs. They slumped down the stretch. But given all the injuries to starting pitchers and relievers and the disintegration of the veteran closer they paid for just these circumstances, pitching seemed likely to be the thing that would hold Baltimore back. As it turned out, Orioles pitchers held the Royals to three runs in 18 innings, and that was not enough.鈥
Alden Gonzalez, : “Perhaps it was fitting that Andy Ibanez, a 31-year-old part-time player who batted .175 over the past two months, delivered the biggest hit of the Tigers' season. He was summoned to pinch hit against Astros star closer Josh Hader with the bases loaded and two outs in the eighth, and Ibañez laced a three-run double down the left-field line. The hit propelled Detroit to victory in a game that saw it deploy seven different pitchers. The Tigers are young and unheralded, but they continue to find a way. Their latest conquest: snapping Houston's streak of seven consecutive trips to the American League Championship Series. By doing so, the Tigers advance to the division series, which begins Saturday. Their unfathomable run continues. The Tigers' next opponent is a familiar one -- their AL Central rivals the Cleveland Guardians, a team that seems just as scrappy and united as the Tigers. The Guardians barely won the teams' season series, taking seven of 13. The Astros, meanwhile, enter an offseason of uncertainty, mostly surrounding their star third baseman, Alex Bregman, who is scheduled for free agency.”
AJ Cassavell, : “The Padres didn’t even make it into their clubhouse on Wednesday night to celebrate before those three familiar syllables thumped throughout Petco Park, a reminder of what comes next. One moment, catcher Kyle Higashioka went sprawling to the grass as he held onto Travis d’Arnaud’s popup for the final out of the National League Wild Card Series. The next moment, the Padres were mobbing each other on the infield, celebrating the accomplishment. And then, just as quickly, came that reminder. The largest crowd in Petco Park history -- 47,705 fans all ready to party after the Padres held on for a 5-4 victory in Game 2 -- broke out in unison: ‘Beat L.A.’ Indeed, the Padres are again headed north on Interstate 5. There’s another dragon to slay.”
Bradford Doolittle, : “The Brewers were in this position last year -- down 1-0 to a 6-seed, battling in a close elimination game, needing just one big hit to even things up. That big hit never came, and the loss helped launch the Arizona Diamondbacks to the World Series. But a big theme about these Brewers is that while the wins and the seed are the same, this is a very different club. And so it is. The Brewers got not just one big hit when they had to have one but two on eighth-inning homers from Jackson Chourio and Garrett Mitchell. This was the version of the Brewers that had everyone so excited. They are young. They have swagger, power and speed. And they have a deep, lethal bullpen ideal for October baseball. That group showed up just in time during Game 2. So much about going on a run in the playoffs is simply grabbing the momentum. The Mets have been riding the wave all week, starting in Atlanta. However, heading into a decisive Game 3 on Thursday, the Brewers now have momentum on their side. And best of all: We actually get a wild-card Game 3!”
MEGAPHONE
鈥淟ike I keep saying, we didn't come this far just to come this far, so we're going to keep getting after it, keep trying to create our own legacy. So, it's pretty special to see what this team has done this year from what happened last year, and so now we've just got to keep doing it.鈥
Kansas City Royals star Bobby Witt Jr.