There’s something that would bother me about Kelvin Herrera. To be clear, it had nothing to do with his personality. And it had nothing to do with the fact that he was successful. Herrera should be successful. Have you watched him? The last two years, he’s run a 2.06 ERA. He’s allowed a .570 OPS, and while maybe that doesn’t mean a lot to you without context, how about this as context — Kenley Jansen has allowed a .569 OPS. David Robertson, .581. The numbers have been there for Herrera. He’s been a reliever with a triple-digit fastball and some statistics to match. Nothing about that is weird.

What would bother me was that, just from watching Herrera for a few minutes, you’d think he’d be a high-strikeout pitcher. Just from being aware of his velocity, you’d think he’d be a high-strikeout pitcher. I know we might make too much of strikeouts around here. I know I shouldn’t have been too bothered when Herrera was still finding ways to succeed. But the last two years, he’s been a flamethrower with the same strikeout rate as Chad Qualls. Compared to the league, Herrera actually ran a strikeout rate that was slightly below average for a reliever. It’s a small thing, maybe a petty thing, but it’s a thing my brain struggled to understand. Whenever I looked at Herrera’s numbers, I’d expect them to be something different.

Something like, say, what Herrera’s done in these playoffs. Since really emerging as a shutdown reliever for the Royals, Herrera’s struck out a little more than a fifth of the hitters he’s faced. Against the Astros and Blue Jays, however, he’s struck out about half of the hitters he’s faced. Herrera in this postseason: 33 batters, 16 strikeouts, .438 OPS. The heat, as you know, has been there. But it’s been accompanied by something different, something new. Kelvin Herrera tinkered with a slider, and he learned to harness it just in time.

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The Royals put me in a weird position. It’s not because their two consecutive pennants make skeptical and critical analysts look stupid — we went over that a year ago, and previously, we went over the same stuff with the Giants. If anything, that part of this is just funny. No, the Royals put me in a weird position, because they make it tempting to believe in ideas that run contrary to what I’ve been taught. I’m not supposed to believe in a team’s vibe. I’m not supposed to believe in a team’s unkillability. I’m not really supposed to believe in powerful and particular things, because baseball is intensely competitive, and it doesn’t make sense that one team would ever have a secret. I’m not supposed to believe the Royals are more special than any other team. Than, say, the Blue Jays. And I’m not saying I do believe in the Royals’ magic. They’re just pretty good at sucking me in. It’s a baseball team that makes me think twice about assumptions I have about baseball teams.

The ALCS isn’t going to have a Game 7. Would’ve been fun, but this was a plenty good way to wrap up. The ALDS between the Rangers and the Blue Jays came to an unforgettable conclusion, a very wild and unpredictable conclusion, but aside from the tie-breaking home run, that memorable inning turned on a series of defensive mistakes. Just before the homer, the whole inning was sloppy. That might’ve been baseball around its most entertaining. What we just saw in Game 6 was baseball in the vicinity of its best. The Royals and Blue Jays competed in a classic, and, of course, the Royals won. They’re the Royals, after all. I don’t know exactly how we got here, but I can tell where we are on the map.

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Allow me to argue something that isn’t going to matter in a day or two. That’s the thing about writing about playoff series — no matter what, the relevance is fleeting. It all seems so important in the moment; it’s all over in just a few blinks of the eye. This argument probably isn’t going to mean very much, and it would’ve been better made before the ALCS began, but think about series keys. A full series is almost entirely unpredictable, only a little less unpredictable than one or two games, so think of this as a general series note, being made with the series in progress.

What it is, I think, is a matter of team identities. When people think about the Kansas City Royals, they think about defense, clutch hitting, and the bullpen. Holy crap, the bullpen, that’s been so valuable for them in the past. It seems like they got past the loss of Greg Holland without even missing a beat. The Toronto Blue Jays? When people think about the Blue Jays, they think about home runs, and David Price, and Marcus Stroman, and home runs. They’re the could-be and should-be and have-already-been offensive juggernaut put together to blast its way to the Series. The Blue Jays are supposed to have the obvious strength. The Royals are supposed to do more of the little things.

One of those being, get the late outs. And even the middle outs, depending on things. The Royals bullpen has a reputation, now, and it’s been fairly earned. The Royals bullpen is thought of as shortening ballgames, a group of arms the opponent doesn’t want to see because it means a total offensive shutdown. The way the pen gets talked about sometimes, it’s like it’s almost invincible. It is, without question, very good. Even without Holland. But an easy thing to miss is the Blue Jays aren’t much worse. Even without Brett Cecil. I don’t know to what extent the bullpens will matter over what’s left of this series, but it doesn’t look like a terrible mismatch.

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Twitter was apoplectic. Drug tests were demanded. Old suspensions were being brought up. Hands were wrung. Edinson Volquez? Throwing 96s and 97s deep into his start? Where is this velocity coming from? This can’t possibly be right.

Turns out, Volquez hasn’t even added the most velocity this postseason. He’s fourth or fifth among starters, depending on your definition, and he’s not too far from the the norm that we should be bugging out. The postseason, like the debut, comes with adrenaline, and that adrenaline leads to a bump in velocity. Baseball is that simple sometimes.

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The manager of the Royals was his typical Yostian self heading into Game Five of the American League Championship Series. He went into the game with a 3-1 lead, needing just one victory out of four games to advance to a second straight World Series. He joked about the possibility of “watching 35 drunk guys try to get through customs” if the Royals clinched in Toronto. He put Alcides Escobar in leadoff spot so Escobar could work his magic. He sent 32-year-old Edinson Volquez to the mound against the Toronto Blue Jays to try and clinch the American League crown, and for a time he got nearly the best performance he could ask for from the right-hander.

Volquez, pitching for his fifth team in five years, had his best season in half a dozen years after the Royals signed him to a two-year, $20 million contract with an option for a third season. From 2009 to 2014, Volquez pitched nearly 800 innings, putting up a mediocre 4.46 ERA (121 ERA-) and 4.35 FIP (114 FIP-) and amassing just four wins above replacement in six seasons. He put up a good 3.04 ERA in 2014, aided by a low .263 BABIP and a very good Pittsburgh Pirates defense as his 4.15 FIP indicated not much had changed. Despite high velocity, Volquez struck out players at a below average rate, although he had dropped his walk rate in recent seasons. He pitched well in two postseason games entering yesterday, with 13 strikeouts and just 3 runs conceded in 11.2 innings over two starts, but spread out eight walks and was the clear third option behind Yordano Ventura and Johnny Cueto.

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The consolation you hope for is that these uncertainties don’t end up making a difference. That way, you can talk about them, and you can investigate them, but you don’t have to worry about the results hinging on a decision one way or the other. It worked a little like that with the Rangers’ weird go-ahead run in Game 5 of the ALDS — as strange as that was, the Blue Jays still won, so it didn’t really matter in the end. Of course, that wasn’t true uncertainty, because the rules weren’t ambiguous. It was an unfamiliar play, but a legitimate run. With Edinson Volquez’s last full-count pitch to Jose Bautista in Wednesday’s sixth inning, there’s no getting to that point. You can see in the pitch whatever you want.

And you can say, all right, but the Blue Jays won by six. You can say, even as the pitch was being delivered, the Jays were heavy in-game favorites. You can try to claim the call didn’t end up too significant. But the call, in the moment, was huge. It was the difference between bases loaded and nobody out, and two on with one out. The score, you’ll recall, was 1-0. If the Royals get the call their way, maybe the inning is completely different. Maybe the Jays score, but not too much, and they have to turn to David Price out of the bullpen. The game and series didn’t turn because of one pitch, but that one pitch did some of the pushing. That one pitch was also the very definition of borderline. The only thing we know is Volquez’s breaking ball was perfect. What happened? Unfortunately, it’s a mess, in a very baseball way.

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Listen up, people. It’s time to face facts. #EskyMagic is real.

Alcides Escobar has swung at the first pitch to lead off the last five games, and eight of nine games this postseason. In every game of the ALCS, he’s led off with a first-pitch swing and reached on a hit. In the last two, that hit resulted in a run, and the Royals won the ballgame. The Royals are now 47-19 when Escobar swings at the first pitch this season, regardless the outcome of that swing. #EskyMagic is happening, and there is nothing we can do about it.

There’s nothing we can do about it. That’s the part that got me thinking, because there has to be something someone can do about it.

This post is going to go like this. First, I’ll look up all the facts I can think of, deemed pertinent to #EskyMagic. Then, I’ll just dump them all onto this page and put some words around them. You’ll read them, I won’t have a conclusion, we’ll all leave confused and afraid, and the Royals will never lose another game with Alcides Escobar leading off. Cool? Cool.

Here comes the first one. This one’s the easy one, and it’s the obvious place to start.

For some reason, Alcides Escobar was the Royals’ leadoff hitter for the first 125 games he played this season. During that time, he wasn’t a good hitter, because he isn’t a good hitter, and so Ned Yost bumped him down to the nine-hole in favor of good hitters Alex Gordon and Ben Zobrist for most of September. With good hitters Gordon and Zobrist leading off, the Royals lost a few, and so Yost got not good hitter Escobar back to the top of the lineup for the last five games of the regular season, and, bam! #EskyMagic.

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First things first — by sheer coincidence, Ben Lindbergh wrote about something similar this morning at Grantland. This is a link to the post, and if you missed it, this is another link, and you should read it, and it’s good! It’s never fun to have article overlap, but as I’ve noted before, I’m stubborn about writing ideas, and more importantly, Lindbergh went about doing his research in a different way. So what follows is my own spin on things. It won’t surprise you that we arrive at similar conclusions.

Here’s a theory. The Royals have been successful in the playoffs, right? Already, today, they’ve gotten to R.A. Dickey, not that he’s the ordinary type of postseason pitcher. In the playoffs, the Royals have been able to hit. In the playoffs, pitchers overall tend to be better. A year ago, the Royals were an excellent contact team. This year, the Royals were maybe the best contact team in a very long time. So, does it make sense that being a contact team might provide some sort of playoff advantage? Are contact teams less vulnerable to going quiet against the best pitchers in the game? Not that all the best pitchers make the playoffs, but, you see where this is going. The pitchers are good. Does the offensive style really matter?

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You can detect the nervousness. The Royals stormed out to take a commanding series lead, but then Johnny Cueto’s own arm abandoned him, wrecking not only Game 3 but also a potential Game 7 as well. So there’s some discomfort there, some uncertainty, and now in a short while the Royals are going to throw Chris Young at the best offense in the league in the center of a homer-happy ballpark. If Young were a bad pitcher, he wouldn’t be in this position in the first place, but I don’t think he’s perceived as a trustworthy pitcher. So the thought is the Blue Jays are in a good place to go and tie this series up.

I don’t think we can help the way we feel about Young. He’s unusual and by no means overpowering, and everything we’ve learned about pitchers gives us reason to be skeptical. He puts the ball in the air. He doesn’t pound the zone. He doesn’t miss a ton of bats. Young’s whole game is suppressing quality contact, and being skeptical of that is like Sabermetrics 101. Yet Young, for his career, has posted a better-than-average ERA. The same has held true of late, following his career revival. Young has a real chance this afternoon, our own doubts aside. As always, it’s just going to take precision.

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So here’s something weird. I’ve noticed on Twitter that when Blue Jays fans refer to last night’s ALCS Game Three, they seem to give the credit to the Jays. They say things like, “The Jays were crushing the ball.” But when Royals fans talk about the game, they do it in a Royals-centric context, taking credit away from the Royals, as in, “Cueto sucked.” This isn’t to knock on either fan base. We all do this. I sure do. The truth though, as is often the case, lies in the middle somewhere. The Royals, Cueto especially, pitched badly. The Blue Jays, Troy Tulowitzki and Ryan Goins especially, hit well. But, when parcelling out the blame and/or credit, one can’t be binary about it. Unlike pooping the bed, it’s not an all or nothing thing.

Cueto ended up with a final line of two innings pitched and eight runs allowed. To my eye he struggled, and I doubt your eye would say much different, but based solely on his stuff I wouldn’t have guessed he was eight-runs-in-two-innings bad. Partially because that’s reeeeeeally bad (that’s an ERA of 36.00!), but partially because he just didn’t appear all that awful. So maybe more of the credit/blame for the outcome should fall on the Blue Jays. But then again, I’m not a scout, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.* I was curious to see if I could figure out who should get the credit and how much.

*Maybe?

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