The McGovern Manifesto- 11th Hour

[royals19]

A lot of people love the thrill of a 162 game season.

Most people just play this game for kicks.

I however, play this game for the thrill of October. I love the regular season games for the most part but October is where it's at. The handful of games where every pitch and decision matters. It's unique from almost every other sport.



So with that being said,

What do we know?

• We know that the bandwagon fans will be flocking towards the central division champ Cubs as they try to win their first World Series in many moons. They've got the most athletic team in the playoffs with deadline acquisition Brett Gardner accompanied by Anthony Rizzo, Albert Almora and Starlin Castro anchoring the team.
• After working their way back from under .500 the Orioles claimed one of the Wild Card spots and were the tourney's "Cinderella Story" until their prompt exit at the hands of the Mariners.
• The Mariners and Nationals feature the best pitching staffs. Seattle has the talents of King Felix, Danny Hultzen, Michael Wacha, Carlos Martinez and Hisashi Iwokuma. Washington meanwhile has Stras, Gio, Zimmerman and Rookies Matt Purke, and Lucas Giolito.

What do we know about the Royals?

• We know the Royals have the worst rotation in the postseason with a pair of mediocre pitchers and 2 guys who have no idea what they're doing.
• We know we have one of the best bullpens and lineups in the postseason with Delivery Man of the Year Donnie Joesph anchoring the pen and Triple Crown and Various Accolades winner Eric Hosmer holding down the lineup.
• Lastly we know we've got a target the size of well, Kansas on our backs as the defending champs. There isn't a team out there that doesn't want to kick the crap out of us.

So with that, we'll be squaring off against Seattle in the opening round. We'll be handing the ball to the 30 million dollar man Jon Lester as he takes on King Felix in game one.

[royals19]

Ahhh.... Game one of the Postseason.

The field was all slicked up, the first pitch was thrown out by George Brett, the National Anthem was sung by a country artist, Rex Hudler was going ham in the radio booth...

Heck, tonight was even gonna on national TV.

In other words, everybody was ready to go; ready to watch the Royals squish the puny Seattle Mariners under their shoe. With Jon Lester on the mound, surely the Royals were in line for a big win tonight.

And then the exact opposite happened.


The Royals go out there and lay a massive egg. 4 hits? 1 run? 2 errors? Take that and combine it with 3 home runs from Jesus Montero and you get a humiliating loss that makes us the feature of the Tonight Show.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jay Leno

I had a friend call me and ask if the Houston Astros we're playing the Mariners tonight on TBS and I said "I thought it was the Royals playing the Mariners." So I turn on the game and after watching an inning or two, I call my friend back and say "Sorry I ever doubted you"

Quote: Originally Posted by David Letterman

So who saw that Royals game last night? (Crowd Boos) Yeah me too. So I called up the Royals this morning and demanded the 2 and a half hours of my life back.

Needless to say, we were embarrassed. We were just hoping to get out of KC with at least one W to prevent any more heckling.

On with the game recap.

Remember how I questioned our starting pitching?



Yeah, Jon Lester had freakin 55 pitches through 3 innings. With the score already at 5 to nothing, we demanded he bite the bullet and give us 6 innings to save our bullpen for more meaningful games.

And Lester couldn't even do that...



My thoughts exactly Kobe...

[AC]

How in jeebus did the Mariners manage to get Martinez and Wacha without giving up Felix?

Also, wanna send over Hoz's stats for a final calculation? Or you can do it yourself with the link in my sig.

[royals19]

Quote: Originally Posted by ACMilan99

How in jeebus did the Mariners manage to get Martinez and Wacha without giving up Felix? Also, wanna send over Hoz's stats for a final calculation? Or you can do it yourself with the link in my sig.

I have no idea, it must've slipped through the cracks. It looks like they sent Wacha and Martinez for Dustin Ackley... awful, just awful.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to do that it's probably pretty insane.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jay Leno

I had a friend call me and ask if the Houston Astros we're playing the Mariners tonight on TBS and I said "I thought it was the Royals playing the Mariners." So I turn on the game and after watching an inning or two, I call my friend back and say "Sorry I ever doubted you"

It's gotta be like that huh, bruh?



Touche

[royals19]

Quote: Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear

It's gotta be like that huh, bruh? Touche

Spoiler

That game one loss was downright embarrassing. Our guys were embarrassed to even go out and get a bite to eat at the local fast-food chain. Naturally with a loss like that, you want get back out on the field as quickly as possible.



Coming into tonight, we had to win at least ONE game in front of the home crowd.. you know for TV ratings and all that. Theoretically, we were going to go James Shields here but being down one game and the high potential for being down 2 games, we started John Lamb today... the rookie.


Lamb is coming along as a starting pitcher but with literally no other arms to start, it was either Lamb or Shields. We just had to cross our fingers and hope that Lamb could get the job done today.

We weren't expecting little more than 5 innings and a few runs... but what Lamb gave us was even better.



Lamb dueled the tough lefty Danny Hultzen for 7 innings in order to get the job done. Going 97 pitches, that might eliminate Lamb for the entire series but at this point, we could care about that. We need the bullpen for our trip to Seattle where things will presumably get hairy for us.

Of course, it can't be a playoff game if we don't get a web gem in there real quick so here's one by Kyle Seager, the Mariner third baseman.




Seager made a diving catch diving behind himself to spear a shot by Mike Moustakas... I was stuck, shaking my head trying to figure out how in Sam Hill this punk made that play. At a time where good hits were hard to find, this was extremely demoralizing.

And for most of the game, I figured we didn't have a chance to win the game.



But dang it if the bench bros didn't come through. Hos lead off the season with a triple, Alcides Escobar came in to pinch run and we pinch hit Alex Gordon for Elliot Johnson in order to get our best bunter out there. Johnson laid down a squeeze on the second pitch and scored Esky. Could this be the momentum change we need?

[royals19]

Game 3 was a strange, strange beast towards us. The Ms fans were ready to ride or die and the atmosphere was overwhelming... almost toxic for our players. As our guys sat quietly in the clubhouse, we could hear the ominous roar from the crowd... Trevor Story and Colby Rasmus darn near cracked from the pressure and ran out of the clubhouse. Had it not been for James Shields, the team would've fallen apart.



The roar of the Seattle crowd may have gotten to our other players but James Shields stood tall with his shoulders back...

And turned in an excellent start to help the cause.



7 innings and 5 runs allowed is pretty much par for the course for our pitching staff this year. Shields looked sharp yet again. Throwing tons of strikes and keeping the Ms off base for most of the night. The runs he did allow were off of homeruns on poorly located pitches... The location will come, but the fact that he's throwing strikes was even better.



Take that and throw in a couple dingers from Eric Hosmer and suddenly, we were ahead 2 games to 1 and the clubhouse lackies were already ordering the champagne for our series victory.

[royals19]

With the series at 2-1 heading into Game 4, we were feeling pretty good. Most of the guys felt we had an actual shot when they walked into the clubhouse that afternoon. But when Seattle announced their starter for the game, the mood changed quickly.




We thought he was done for the series after expending 113 pitches in the first game but apparently not. Apparently Seattle decided that tonight was ride or die with a Royals win ending the series.

To make matters worse, we had to start (more like sacrifice) Yordano Venutra tonight. For whatever reason, our starters weren't recovering quick enough. We made sure that they stayed under 100 pitches for the most part but I guess that prevention measure failed.



Our offense got out ahead and it looked like we were on cruise control until we went to Greg Holland who promptly blew the lead and then on to Tim Collins who blew the game wide open for Seattle.

This was perhaps our only real chance to win the series. We're going to have the shaky Jon Lester throw at home and with Carlos Martinez on the mound, I'm not sure how we're going to be able to work past this...