There was precedent for Wade Davis‘ amazing Royals transformation. You could, for example, point to Wade Davis, in 2012. Or you could point to any number of other guys who’ve found comfortable homes in the bullpen after struggling as starters. But a year before Davis turned into an unhittable Royals reliever — that is, the same year that Davis was a very much hittable Royals starter — there was, in the same uniform, Luke Hochevar. Hochevar, for years, was a very mediocre starter. In 2013, he took off in relief, and he projected to be of great help again in 2014, until he blew out his elbow at the start of spring training.

So, Hochevar had Tommy John surgery. And the Royals, famously, didn’t miss him. They rode defense and their bullpen almost all the way to a championship, and then they arrived at more or less the present day. And after paying Hochevar millions of dollars to not pitch in 2014, the Royals are going to pay Hochevar millions of dollars to hopefully pitch in 2015 and beyond. Word’s out that Hochevar has re-signed as a free agent, for two years and $10 million, and now one’s left to wonder what the Royals might do about their roster construction.

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The Arizona Fall League championship game (domestic professional baseball’s de facto funeral for the year) featured superlative performances from a number of prospects that may have piqued your curiosity. Here’s a look at how, after nearly two months of evaluating these players, I feel things will play out moving forward.

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Remember when Billy Butler stole a base against the Angels in the playoffs? Of course you do. It was beautiful and it was absurd, and it psychologically cemented the notion that there was nothing the Angels could do to slow the Royals down. Even Billy Butler was having his way, however he wanted to. It was like the Royals flying their flag over the Angels’ conquered castle. And it had to be Butler. It felt meaningful because that’s something Butler just doesn’t do. There are reasons he doesn’t run, so when he ran, and when he got away with it, the Royals felt invincible.

Here’s an image sequence that should remind you of how the moment felt:

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Madison Bumgarner pitched quite a bit this past season. Including the regular and post season, he threw a total of 4,074 pitches, which wasn’t even the season’s top total; James Shields bested him by throwing six more, for a total of 4,080 pitches in 2014, not including spring training. So with all of the pitches thrown this season (and one month less of rest), how should we expect these two to produce next season? Let’s look at some comparable pitchers.

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It was following a half-decent season in 2013 that Royals general manager Dayton Moore said he felt a little like he’d won the World Series. The remark didn’t go over very well locally or nationally, and Moore conceded later he could’ve chosen better words, but at the core of a poorly-worded sentence was a legitimate message. Moore sensed that people were getting into the Royals again. Even though the team that season had fallen a little short of the playoffs, the roster was at least competitive, and the fans at least had a product to watch. What Moore meant to say was that the franchise was restoring its bonds with the city around it, after too many years of two-way neglect.

The bonds are restored now. They maybe have never been stronger. After a year of no playoffs, Moore felt like he’d won a title, so I can’t imagine how he feels after a year of coming one win away. The fans are in love again. Many of the fans, they were always in love, but they’re once again willing to act on it. And new fans have been gained, as well, fans who previously never gave baseball a second thought. Consider one anecdote, to represent many:

People are wearing blue proudly again. People filled Kauffman Stadium proudly again. People are chanting proudly again. Last year put the Royals back on the map; this year circled the Royals with dark ink and arrows. The fans sense an opening window of contention, and as heartbreaking as it is to lose in a seventh game, this doesn’t have to have been the last chance. The Royals could be back, and they could be powered in no small part by gains from having made so deep a run.

All that success, all that restored loyalty and enthusiasm — that’s money. What’s more, that’s money the Royals weren’t even budgeting for. I’ve never been confused for a financial wizard, or for any kind of wizard, but what the Royals have been gaining is pure profit, and the gains aren’t going to end with the playoff run. As a matter of fact, the Royals will be benefiting from this past month for a good while yet.

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Imagine if, for some reason, you completely missed Game 7. Not only did you miss it — you didn’t hear anything about it, from friends or from family or from the Internet. You get home, and this is the first thing you see:

What on earth has to be going through your mind? It requires special circumstances for a third-base coach to end up with a postgame interview. And why is this one smiling? He must’ve made one hell of a decision. You know what the rules are, with regard to attention paid to base coaches. They only get it when they’ve done something controversial.

People want there to be a controversy here. The way the World Series ended was final, conclusive. Salvador Perez, 100% absolutely, made the last out on a foul pop-up. There is no what-might-have-been with Perez’s at-bat. So many have turned to the play before, when Alex Gordon was stopped at third after sprinting on a single and an error. It’s a frantic search for closure that resembles a frantic avoidance of such, and without any doubt in my mind, if Gordon had been waved around, it would’ve made for an all-time moment regardless. But while we can’t say for sure that Gordon would’ve been toast, since the play never happened, it sure seems to me the odds were too strongly against him. Mike Jirschele did the smart thing, and Alex Gordon did the smart thing, and Salvador Perez did the following thing. Barring a miracle, sending Gordon would’ve just ended the game a few minutes sooner.

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The story of Game Seven was, without a doubt, the performance of Madison Bumgarner. He was the story of the whole series, essentially, allowing one run in 21 innings pitched; his teammates gave up 26 runs in the other 40 innings, for reference. No single player can win a series for his team, but Bumgarner had about as large of an impact as any one player can have. Nothing else mattered as much as Bumgarner’s dominance.

But other things did matter, even last night. Besides Bumgarner’s historic relief appearance, there were several key decisions made that helped swing the game, and the World Series, in the Giants favor. Let’s go through them in chronological order.

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There’s nothing more overrated in the postseason than an ace starting pitcher. Just ask the Dodgers. Or, if you feel like it, you could ask the Cardinals. Or the Nationals, or the Royals, kind of, or the Athletics. Or the Tigers. An ace starting pitcher is just one guy, one member of a way bigger team, and baseball’s about a lot more than the first guy on the mound. There’s nothing more underrated in the postseason than an ace starting pitcher. Just ask the team that just won the postseason.

The Giants didn’t win the World Series because of Madison Bumgarner, but to the extent that one player can be mostly responsible for a championship, Bumgarner’s way up there on the list. It isn’t just that he dominated; it’s that he dominated while throwing literally a third of all the Giants’ playoff innings. Bumgarner was No. 1 on the innings-pitched leaderboard, and he finished with more than No. 2 and No. 3 combined. He also allowed fewer playoff runs than the Pirates. The worst thing Bumgarner threw all month long was a ball that Wilson Ramos bunted. Over the course of October, Pablo Sandoval hit .366 and Hunter Pence had an .875 OPS, and people aren’t really talking about them, because Bumgarner’s almost the whole story.

He mastered the Royals, of course, in Game 1 of the Series. He was somehow even more effective in Game 5. And in Game 7, Bumgarner got to work in relief, but in a starter’s kind of relief, where Bumgarner wasn’t coming out until he got tired, and he didn’t admit to fatigue until a post-dogpile interview. After all of the conversation and hype, Bumgarner turned in an iconic five-inning appearance, an appearance that will overshadow all others, and it was an unusual appearance for Bumgarner in two ways. One, he came out of the bullpen. And two, he just didn’t let the Royals hit strikes. Bumgarner saved a season extreme for a season extreme.

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Oh boy, are we ever going to learn a lot tonight. We’re going to learn, for example, how Bruce Bochy elects to use Madison Bumgarner. We’re going to learn about Bumgarner’s effectiveness out of the bullpen on short rest! We’ll learn about Ned Yost using and stretching out his big three relievers, and we’ll see how far Bochy and Yost are willing to go with Tim Hudson and Jeremy Guthrie. We’re going to learn how many runs the Giants score, and we’re going to learn how many runs the Royals score, and we’re going to learn the winner of the World Series. There aren’t a lot of situations where you know, absolutely, that a finish line will be reached. There’s nothing after this. Whenever Game 7 ends, there will be no more baseball, at least not for a few months, at least not as a part of this postseason.

We’ll learn about the game, and therefore the series. We’re not going to learn much of anything else. We’re not going to learn, conclusively, whether the Royals are better than the Giants, or vice versa. So we’re not going to learn whether one of these teams is the best team in baseball. What we get is hype and a show, with the stakes never higher. We’re going to get the most important baseball game of the whole seven months, and no matter what happens on the field, this is the point of the playoffs.

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So! Tonight, there’s going to be a Game 7 of the World Series. Your cheering allegiances aside, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. Appreciate it, because now we’ll have the most possible baseball before the long stretch of no baseball, and this isn’t an occasion that comes around all that often. We had a Game 7 three years ago between Texas and St. Louis, but it had been nine years since it’d happened before that, the longest stretch in big league history. Sometimes, you get classics like Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson against Roger Clemens & Mariano Rivera in 2001; sometimes, you get John Tudor allowing eight runners in 2.1 innings on the way to losing 11-0 in 1985. What’s important is that we’re set up for history, and often the biggest impediment to that is simply the opportunity for it to happen. Not tonight.

Jeremy Guthrie against Tim Hudson doesn’t really sound all that exciting, and maybe it won’t be. It’s difficult to imagine either pitcher going more than five innings, and perhaps it won’t even be close to that. It won’t be the worst-ever matchup of Game 7 starters — 1997’s Jaret Wright against Al Leiter probably still tops that list — but it will be the oldest, thanks to a combined 74 years of age. Or at least it will be for a few innings, since both managers are likely going to dig into their bullpens early, since it doesn’t get more “all hands on deck” than this. On the other hand, maybe that makes it more exciting. This could be baseball unlike baseball.

Obviously, any Game 7 is fascinating, but this one might just be moreso, if only because of the way the postseason has gone so far. You’ve heard in more than a few places that this is “the best postseason ever,” and while that’s probably a bit hyperbolic because of the effects of recency, you certainly understand the sentiment. To merely name a few of the lasting impressions — the AL wild card game madness, the divergent Octobers of Madison Bumgarner & Clayton Kershaw, an 18-inning NLDS game, Lorenzo Cain and the Royals defense, literally every single thing Ned Yost has done — is to unfairly neglect so many others. For a postseason like that to end with a Game 7, well, it seems like a fitting capper. Read the rest of this entry »