The Kansas City Royals are headed to the World Series for the second year in a row with a 4-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series.
I had heard someone say the game would greatly favor the Royals since they where playing at home in Kaufman Stadium and there wouldn’t be as many home runs. Of course with that being said there where 4 home runs in the game; 2 for each team. The Royals used 2 solo home runs; 1 by Ben Zobrist in the 1st inning and then a controversial home run by Mike Moustakas in the 2nd. It appeared that a fan reached out over the wall for Mike Moustakas’ home run, prompting the Blue Jays to challenge the call. The play was upheld after a review. Jose Bautista cut the Royals lead in half with the first of his two home runs a bomb to left field that was listed as traveling 431 feet. It took until the bottom of the 7th inning before the Royals where able to put another run on the board. Moustakas led the inning off with a single. Salvador Perez flied out for the 1st out. Alex Gordon grounded out to 2nd, but Moustakas moved to 2nd base. That was the end of the night for David Price as Aaron Sanchez was brought in from the Toronto bullpen to face Alex Rios. Rios went down in the count 0-2. He took the 3rd pitch for a ball and on the 4th pitch of the at bat he singled t left field to score Moustakas giving the Royals a 3-1 lead. Now I thought with a 3-1 lead and the way the Kansas City bullpen has pitched in this series that the game was over it was just a matter of them getting the last 6 outs. As you know I was wrong. Ryan Madson took over on the mound in the top of the 8th inning. Ben Revere led off with an infield single and after Josh Donaldson struck out for the 1st out of the inning Jose Bautista came to the plate. Bautista fouled the first pitch off and then hit the second pitch into the left field seats and with Revere scoring ahead of him the game was tied 3-3. After a 45 minute rain delay Lorenzo Cain led off the bottom of the 8th inning by drawing a walk off of Blue Jays closer Roberto Osuna. Eric Hosmer followed Cain’s walk by singling to right field. Bautista fielded the ball cleanly in right, but rather than hit the cut off man Bautista threw to second base. That gave Cain, running full speed and waved home by third-base coach Mike Jirschele, just enough time to beat the relay throw from second base sliding in safely to give the Royals a 4-3 lead. Wade Davis had been brought in to get the final 2 outs of the 8th inning and had to sit trough the rain delay before going out to pitch the top of the 9th. There had to be some concern that the delay and then having to sit through the Kansas City at bat would affect Davis and after a lead off single by Russell Martin and then a walk to Kevin Pillar you had to wonder if that was the case. Adding to things Dalton Pompey was sent in to pinch run for Martin and stole 2nd and 3rd during Pillar’s at bat. With the tying run 90 feet away and the go ahead run on 1st base Dioner Navarro was inserted as a pinch hitter for Ryan Goins. Navarro struck out swinging, but on the strikeout Pillar stole 2nd. Wit one out and runners on 2nd and 3rd it was back to the top of the order for the Blue Jays. Ben Revere stuck out for the 2nd out of the inning and that left the Blue Jays season in the hands of their MVP candidate Josh Donaldson. Donaldson worked the count to 2-1 before grounding out to 3rd to end the game.
David Price made the start for the Blue Jays and pitched pretty well. Price worked 6 2/3rd innings; he gave up 3 runs on 5 hits, he walked 1 while striking out 8. Aaron Sanchez followed Price, but only pitched 1/3rd of an inning giving up 2 hits. The run Sanchez gave up was charged to Price. Roberto Osuna pitched an inning giving up 1 run on 2 hits and did walk a batter. Yordano Ventura made the Game 6 start for the Royals. Ventura pitched 5 1/3 rd innings giving up 1 run on 4 hits while walking 2 and striking out 5. As usual Kelvin Herrera was the first guy out of the Royals bullpen. Herrera pitched an 1 2/3rd; he gave up no hits and struck out 2. Ryan Madson was next out of the Royals bullpen, but lasted just 1/3rd of an inning giving up 2 runs on 2 hits while walking 1 and striking out 1. Then it was Wade Davis; turn. Davis worked an 1 2/3rd he gave up 1 hit, walked 1 and struck out 3 and didn’t give up a run.
The World Series starts Tuesday night in Kansas City as the Royals will host the New York Mets. Remember the American League won the All-Star game; so they’re the home team in the series.
I understand that the NFL schedule comes out way in advance of the season; so you don’t know what the teams will actual be playing like when the games happen. There’s also no flex scheduling for the Thursday night games like there is with the Sunday night games. I’m sure on paper this looked like a great match up. An NFC West battle featuring a team (Seattle Seahawks) that has been to back to back Super Bowls against a team (San Francisco 49ers) who went to a Super Bowl the season before the Seahawks started going and a playoff contender was what we thought we might be getting when the schedule was released. What we got was a struggling Seahawks team that was having issues holding 4th quarter leads against a 49ers team that doesn’t look anywhere near what it did last season. San Francisco went through a much publicized coaching changed and also had multiple top players retire in the off season. Instead of what might’ve been a marquee match up a season or two ago we got a pretty boring 20-3 Seattle victory.
Of course even in bad games there are people who have fantasy players going and Marshawn Lynch was the guy to have in this game. Lynch carried the ball 27 times for 122 yards and a touchdown. Besides Lynch the only other touchdown went to was a Russell Wilson to Tyler Lockett 43 yard connection in the 2nd quarter. Wilson was 18/24 for 235 yards with that 1 touchdown, but he threw 2 interceptions and was sacked 5 times for 23 yards. Wilson did pick up 20 yards rushing on 7 carries. If you had Lockett in your line up he was the Seahawks leading receiver with 5 receptions for 79 yards and that touchdown. The other fantasy relative might’ve been Seahawks kicker Steven Hauschka. Hauschka made both of his extra point attempts in the game and hit 2 field goals a 46 and a 49 yarder. The San Francisco player who may give you the most fantasy help this week might be tight end Vernon Davis; if he was in your line up. Davis hasn’t produced for his fantasy owners this season and has missed some games with injuries, but if you had him in line line up for Week 7 he caught 4 passes for 61 yards. Davis could be a big help in a league where you have to start 2 tight ends.
Here’s hoping the rest of the games in Week 7 of the NFL are better than this one. Don’t forget that Week 7 gets an early start as the Buffalo Bills play the Jacksonville Jaquars in London. This is the NFL’s first attempt at live streaming a game; so don’t forget that it’s an 8:30 a.m. start time and you can watch it online.
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