Kansas City flipped many people’s expectations in the season’s final weekend.
For a lot of September, a matchup between the Orioles and Tigers in the wild card round felt like an inevitability. Heading into the final weekend, with Detroit only needing to secure wins against the MLB-worst White Sox to keep their position as the next team behind the O’s. Things flipped around over the final weekend and it’s going to be the Royals coming in to Baltimore on Tuesday instead.
The Tigers, after beating Chicago on Friday night to give the White Sox a record 121 losses, fell apart in the last couple of days, losing 4-0 and 9-5 over the final two games. With the Royals having lost on Friday, they only needed to win one of these games, and they couldn’t. In the meantime, Kansas City lost to the Braves on Saturday but rallied for a win on Sunday afternoon. The teams end up with identical 86-76 records, with the Royals having the head-to-head tiebreaker advantage.
So, it’s going to be the Royals coming to Baltimore after all. For anyone who is forever scarred by what happened in the 2014 ALCS, I feel your pain. The Orioles have not won a postseason game in a decade, starting with that series. If the O’s are going to do this thing, they’ll have to wrestle with that history.
It has nothing to do with anyone on the current team, of course. The only player who was anywhere in the organization during the 2014 postseason and is still around now is John Means, who was fresh out of college that year. It’s a whole new crew of Royals too, except for the apparently ageless Salvador Perez. That history is only in our minds.
The Orioles had the edge over the Royals in their meetings this season, putting up a 4-2 record over the six games they played. That included a pair of walkoff wins all the way back in April, with the O’s winning two of three thanks a walkoff dinger from Jordan Westburg and another walkoff in the form of a James McCann single. The O’s had a 29-27 edge in runs scored across the regular season set.
The Tigers would have been a daunting opponent, with likely Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal looming in the first game of a best-of-three set. The Royals aren’t too shabby at the top of their starting rotation, with probable top 5 Cy finishers Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo lined up for games 1 and 2. Another low-3 ERA guy, Michael Wacha, waits in game 3, if the series goes on that far.
The game times for the series were announced by MLB on Sunday night. The Orioles and Royals are scheduled for 4:08 on Tuesday, 4:38 on Wednesday, and 4:08 on Thursday. However, the game 3 start time on Thursday could end up being either 2:32, 3:08, or 7:08 instead, depending on which other series conclude after two games.
So there we are. It’s going to be the Royals. Here at Camden Chat, we’ll be breaking down how the two teams match up with their offenses, their rotations, and their bullpens in separate articles on Monday. Check back for as long as the Orioles last in the postseason for as much coverage as our fingers can stand to type.