I promise we’ll move on any moment now. The Royals are champions, but we’ve known that for a couple days, and fans of 29 other teams are ready to look forward. There’s talk about qualifying offers. Players declaring free agency. The offseason is beginning, and the offseason is fun to think about, because if they handle the offseason right, then your team can be the next team people don’t want to hear about anymore a few days after the World Series. If hope springs eternal in March, it begins welling up in November. Baseball’s weird calendar is already flipping.

So pretty soon we’ll talk about other stuff. Important events are right around the corner. But the World Series just ended. Like, two days ago, there was still baseball, and the Royals were as entertaining as any team I’ve seen in forever. Before I say goodbye to them, then, I want to re-visit last week’s poll. I don’t always re-visit the polls I post, but this one, I got particularly excited about. And the results didn’t let me down.

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There were two big storylines leading up to the World Series: the unrivaled ability of the Kansas City Royals to make contact on offense, and the ability of the Mets’ young power arms. The main battle of the Fall Classic, it seemed, would be between those two opposing forces, and whichever won out over the other very well might meaningfully shift the series. Now, looking back on the five games of the Royals’ 2015 Championship, something is apparent in the outcome of that much-storied battle: Mets pitchers struggled mightily to put Royals hitters away when they had two-strike counts.

We know the 2015 Royals didn’t strike out a lot: they had the lowest strikeout rate in the majors during the regular season by a wide margin (15.9%; the next-closest team was the Oakland A’s, at 18.1%). Knowing that fact, we could look at their trend of two-strike success in the World Series as a continuation of that regular-season ability. And, while we should give the Royals a lot of credit for the quality of their at-bats (we’ll see later how their ability to foul balls off contributed to what we’re discussing), Mets pitchers also showed a detrimental tendency when the count was in their favor: they threw too many pitches in the strike zone.

First, lets understand the specifics of this Royals’ plate approach. Not only did they make contact more than almost any other team in the major leagues – their 81.8% contact rate was second only to the A’s at 81.9% — but they swung at more pitches out of the strike zone than any other team. That’s the main reason they saw the lowest rate of pitches in the zone during 2015. The thought process is simple: if a team shows that it will chase pitches, why bother throwing them strikes?

Take a look at a quick summary of their major league ranks for overall contact, swings at pitches outside of the strike zone (O-Swing%), and pitches in the strike zone (Zone%) for 2015:

This is who the 2015 Royals were: the free-swinging, contact-oriented team we’ve read about for the past month. Imagining yourself as an opposing pitcher, it might make sense to approach them with some of those traits in mind: perhaps you would throw more pitches out of the zone, get them to chase as much as possible, and hope that the majority of contact they generated would be weak because of the lack of quality pitches to hit.

However, Mets pitchers had a difficult time executing that game plan effectively during the World Series. Let’s take a look at a few heat maps from Baseball Savant to get an idea of some of the issues they faced putting Royals hitters away. We’re just going to focus on counts in which the pitcher was ahead with two strikes: 0-2 and 1-2 counts. First, here’s where Mets pitchers attacked their opponents during the NLDS & NLCS vs. the World Series in 0-2/1-2 counts:

There are obviously a different number of pitches between the two images, but we can see that the NLDS and NLCS image has far more pitches out of the zone, especially low and away to right-handed hitters. This makes sense: in 0-2 and 1-2 counts, a pitcher wants to throw pitches out of the zone. They want to get hitters to chase, and they can waste pitches trying to do that because the count is in their favor. The World Series image, however, has a lot of red (meaning a higher frequency of pitches in that location) on pitches up and over the heart of the plate. This, theoretically, is not want you want to be doing in 0-2 and 1-2 counts.

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The Royals — the 2015 MLB champion Royals — were historically clutch. If you paid even any attention at all, you probably don’t learn anything from that sentence. It’s so obviously true it might as well be left unsaid, like “that pizza was delicious” or “I wish we didn’t get lost.” Being clutch became the Royals’ whole thing, all the way through erasing a ninth-inning deficit in the last game they played. But, look: I’ve got data. I’m going to give it to you. You can’t stop me from doing this. By the time you’re reading this post, it’s already done.

Somewhere around the middle of September, I wrote a post for JABO talking about how the Cardinals had been historically clutch. For the Cardinals, the strength had been run prevention, above and beyond what one would’ve expected just from their already strong overall performance. Right here, I’m going to follow a similar template, since now that everything’s over, it feels worthwhile to consider the final numbers. The Cardinals, at one point, looked like the clutchiest team in the league. They ultimately surrendered their lead. (note: pretty unclutch of them) (second note: typical Royals)

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Over the past two seasons, the Royals have gained a reputation for smart baserunning, lethal relief pitching, a contact-heavy offensive approach and excellent defense. Now that they’ve appeared in two consecutive World Series and are the reigning champions of baseball, it’s time for other teams to recognize the value in that formula and do the only thing they can: copy them! Home runs are out. Ace pitchers are out. It’s singles and relievers from here on out, folks. Or until a different team wins next season.

Copying the Royals isn’t too difficult in theory because they have such a well-defined style of play. It’s all those things I just mentioned in the first sentence. If you were watching the World Series you probably noticed how the announcers talked on and on about how the Royals never strike out, play great defense, run the bases with aplomb, and possess a bullpen full of great relievers. So now that the goal is clear, and the means are known. Who is in the best position to copy the Royals?

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You’ve got an opinion on the Eric Hosmer play. Y’know, the one where he broke from third on a ground ball that didn’t get out of the infield grass and scored the tying run in the ninth inning of the World Series? Y’know, the one where if he would have been out, the game would have been over but he wasn’t and now the Royals are world champions? That’s the one. You’ve got an opinion on the Hosmer play, I’ve got an opinion on the Hosmer play, and even if you say you don’t have an opinion on the Hosmer play, well, that’s your opinion.

Immediately, people began debating whether he’d have been out with a good throw. Because Lucas Duda didn’t make a good throw. But that’s not the part that has my attention. The result was the result. I’m more interested in the process.

You see, the legend of the Kansas City Royals’ advance scouting department has grown to near-mythological proportions. The stories say it was the advance scouting department that discovered David Price tipping his changeup. Price’s Jon Lester-like avoidance of pick offs to first base. Jose Bautista’s inclination to throw to second base from the corner in right field — which allowed Lorenzo Cain to score from first on a single in the ALCS. Now, the advance scouting department has struck again:

@AmazinAvenue How does it make assumptions when the Royals internally talked about taking chances against Duda? This wasn’t willy-nilly.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 2, 2015

This has been the set-up. I want you to now forget everything you know about the Hosmer play, about Lucas Duda, about what the metrics say about him and what you’ve seen with your eyes, about the Nostradamus-like premonitions of the Royals advance scouts and about everything you’ve read since last night. To the best of your abilities, wipe the slate clean.

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Let me give you three stat lines, and you’ll understand immediately where this is going. It’s time for Player A, B, and C. Let’s add in D, E, and F too.

Royals Players’ Recent Seasons

Player	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	DEF
A	0.212	0.271	0.361	76	4.6
B	0.232	0.324	0.378	87	-1.6
C	0.232	0.304	0.359	80	-25.4
D	0.251	0.310	0.348	80	20.3
E	0.218	0.274	0.338	72	-11.5
F	0.257	0.293	0.320	67	13.9

wRC+ = weighted runs created plus, or a weighted offensive stat where 100 is league average
DEF = FanGraphs defensive value, or positional value plus defensive value

These guys look bad.

Player A had that season in 2014. He was 26 and supposedly headed towards peaking. He could make contact and hit for power, but there was something missing. A pull-happy fly-ball approach easily defended by the shift, no walks — suddenly his glove was keeping him afloat. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

What’s funny is that Mike Moustakas actually learned the lesson he needed to learn in 2013. It just took until 2015 to really cement in his day to day work. As Ben Lindbergh pointed out on Grantland this year, he meant to change his approach to the shift coming into the 2014 season by trying to maybe hit balls over the shortstop sometimes.

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I watched the last Super Bowl in Seattle. It was a hell of a football game. It followed what had been, for the Seahawks, a miraculous conference championship game, and in the Super Bowl itself, another miraculous event put the Seahawks on the verge of a title. And then, in the dying seconds, a controversial play was called, and they threw an interception from the one-yard line. That quickly, everything that happened before was erased. A feeling crept into the fans around me, and collectively they refused to feel it. Instead, they felt confusion. Why pass? Why not run? What if they had run? The real heartache did sink in in time, but still the confusion lingers. Why not run? Would they have won if they had run? As far as the sport is concerned, it’s the greatest unanswerable question imaginable. There is no closure to be found. The closure doesn’t exist.

I also watched the previous Super Bowl in Seattle. They say people were nervous about it, but the game was shockingly comfortable. On the very first play, the Seahawks recorded a safety. The eventual celebration knew nothing of the horror that was to come. It knew nothing of the fact that a year later, that celebratory feeling would be impossible to remember unblemished.

I’ve asked myself a hundred times what it would’ve felt like if the two Super Bowls were reversed. Seemed to me, it would’ve felt perfect.

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I know this isn’t going to help, Mets fans. And I know this might seem like I’m picking on Daniel Murphy which isn’t fair because Daniel Murphy, by himself, has never lost the Mets a game and Daniel Murphy, by himself, has never lost the Mets a World Series. Players don’t lose games, teams do, and the World Series isn’t over yet.

But Daniel Murphy is a human being, and human beings are prone to mistakes. Some mistakes carry greater consequence than others, and on Saturday night, Daniel Murphy made a very costly mistake. Murphy’s mistake is the one that will be remembered, but it was just one of several made by the Mets in the late innings of Game Four that led to them blow a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning.

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The first pitch Noah Syndergaard threw Friday night sent Alcides Escobar to the ground. Syndergaard didn’t give Escobar an opportunity to swing because the instinctive priority was for him to get his head out of the way, and Syndergaard didn’t bother trying to disguise his intent after the game. He owned up to it — he wanted to give the Royals a little fright. The Royals, in turn, were furious, as they’re allowed to be, but the rest of the game spun the narrative wheel, and it ultimately settled on “Syndergaard delivered a message.” In the end he pitched pretty well and the Mets emerged victorious, so Syndergaard gets the favorable press.

But for whatever it’s worth, if Syndergaard did succeed in intimidating his opponent, it didn’t look that way early on, when the brushback was most fresh. After Escobar got knocked down, the Royals scored a run in the first. They scored another two in the second. The immediate aftermath, for Syndergaard, was troublesome, and the national broadcast speculated that he’d only succeeded in waking the Royals up. It was only after Syndergaard turned his game around that the conversation grew more sunny. And as a part of that process, Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud made a change on the fly.

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One year ago, at just 23 years old, Yordano Ventura became one of the youngest pitchers to start a World Series game in the last 30 years. The presence of a young starter in the World Series is not a completely rare phenomenon, naturally. Ventura, for his part, was the 64th pitcher in Series history to make a start before turning 24 years old, per Baseball Reference Play Index. Noah Syndergaard is set to be the 65th when the two face off this evening. Widening the criteria a little, one finds that 105 pitchers have made World Series starters before turning 25 years old. Ventura, now one year older, is set to be one of just 19 pitchers to make a start in two different World Series’ before turning 25, a list including Babe Ruth and, over the last 30 years including, only Madison Bumgarner and Steve Avery. Tonight’s encounter between Syndergaard and Ventura represents one of the better young pitching matchups in World Series history.

Over the last three decades, the only pitchers younger than the 2014 edition of Ventura to record a start in a World Series game were Avery, Bumgarner, Dwight Gooden, Livan Hernandez, Bret Saberhagen, Michael Wacha, and Jaret Wright. Noah Syndergaard, a few months younger than Ventura was last year, is set to join that list. The giant Mets right-hander has struck out 20 batters in 13 postseason innings thus far and looks to do what his counterparts could not as the Kansas City Royals have proven difficult to strike out.

While 105 pitchers under the age of 25 have made starts in the World Series, it’s quite rare to find two young hurlers pitted against each other. In the last 15 years, it has happened only twice: Madison Bumgarner against Tommy Hunter in 2010 and Cole Hamels against Scott Kazmir in 2008. In all of World Series history, there have only been 24 such matchups and only 19 if you remove repeat matchups in the same series. The chart below shows every World Series matchup sorted by average age.

World Series Matchups Featuring Pitchers Under 25

Year	Player	Age	Player	Age	Average Age
10/23/1981	Dave Righetti	22.329	Fernando Valenzuela	20.356	21.343
10/22/1991	Scott Erickson	23.262	Steve Avery	21.191	22.227
10/26/1991	Scott Erickson	23.266	Steve Avery	21.195	22.231
10/22/1997	Tony Saunders	23.176	Jaret Wright	21.297	22.237
10/31/2010	Tommy Hunter	24.120	Madison Bumgarner	21.091	22.606
10/19/1986	Roger Clemens	24.076	Dwight Gooden	21.337	22.707
10/7/1950	Bob Miller	24.113	Whitey Ford	21.351	22.732
10/12/1914	Lefty Tyler	24.302	Bullet Joe Bush	21.319	22.811
10/8/1934	Schoolboy Rowe	24.270	Paul Dean	22.055	23.163
10/14/1969	Jim Palmer	23.364	Gary Gentry	23.008	23.186
10/11/1964	Ray Sadecki	23.290	Al Downing	23.105	23.198
10/30/2015	Yordano Ventura	24.149	Noah Syndergaard	22.256	23.203
9/29/1932	Lefty Gomez	23.308	Lon Warneke	23.185	23.247
10/10/1970	Jim Palmer	24.360	Gary Nolan	22.136	23.248
10/14/1970	Jim Palmer	24.364	Gary Nolan	22.140	23.252
10/8/1912	Jeff Tesreau	24.217	Smoky Joe Wood	22.349	23.283
10/11/1912	Jeff Tesreau	24.220	Smoky Joe Wood	22.352	23.286
10/15/1912	Jeff Tesreau	24.224	Smoky Joe Wood	22.356	23.290
10/11/1909	Ed Summers	24.310	Nick Maddox	22.336	23.323
10/21/1972	Gary Nolan	24.147	Vida Blue	23.085	23.616
10/3/1953	Whitey Ford	24.347	Billy Loes	23.294	23.821
10/9/1934	Dizzy Dean	24.266	Elden Auker	24.018	24.142
10/22/2008	Cole Hamels	24.300	Scott Kazmir	24.272	24.286
10/27/2008	Cole Hamels	24.305	Scott Kazmir	24.277	24.291

SOURCE: Baseball Reference

The encounter between Dave Righetti and Fernando Valenzuela back in 1981, when the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees, represents the youngest such matchup of all tim . Only two of the young-pitcher games have occurred in a Game Two: Jeff Tesrau’s Giants team defeated Boston’s Smokey Joe Wood in 1912 and Dizzy Dean’s St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Tigers’ Elden Auker in 1934. If the Mets and Royals get to a Game Seven and the rotation stays as is, Noah Syndergaard against Yordano Ventura would become just the third such matchup of all-time and the first in more than 80 years.

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