Royals on cusp of championship after stealing Game 4 from Mets
By Jeff Passan
8 hours ago
Yahoo Sports
NEW YORK – Give the Kansas City Royals an inch and they will take a borough. As all of Citi Field teetered on the edge Saturday day – as Queens nibbled its fingernails to nubs just the same – the New York Mets desperately tried to hold onto the fourth game of the World Series that was slipping from their stranglehold. On came closer Jeurys Familia, so reliable this season, and out went a groundball to second baseman Daniel Murphy, so integral this October, and the inch – the one between Murphy’s glove and the ball – was Kansas City’s.
And so went the rest of the night, a triumph for the never-say-die Royals and a disaster for a Mets team so close to evening the series. Instead, Murphy’s error led to a tie game, and two more Royals hits staked them a two-run lead, and the best reliever in baseball, Wade Davis, came on to lock down a six-out save and leave the Royals one game from a championship with a 5-3 victory in front of a crestfallen 44,815 at Citi Field.
All night, the crowd had lived on the precipice of joy, knowing the Royals’ tendency for comebacks and trying to ignore it. And after setup man Tyler Clippard walked two batters in the top of the eighth, on came Familia, who blew the save in Game 1, to author a five-out version. Eric Hosmer chopped a groundball toward Murphy, a shaky second baseman whose bat carried the Mets to the World Series, and Murphy charged the in-between hop trying to pick it clean.
Daniel Murphy reacts after missing a ball hit by Mike Moustakas during the eighth inning. (AP)
He failed, the ball squirted into the outfield, Ben Zobrist faced around to score, and the Royals did what they do. Mike Moustakas dribbled a groundball past Murphy into right field to score Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Perez laced a single into right to plate Hosmer, and the Royals’ 3-2 deficit turned into a 5-3 advantage.
Manager Ned Yost spent no time messing around, bringing in Davis for two innings, the latter of which got a bit hairy when two runners reached. Davis induced a broken-bat pop-out from Lucas Duda, and Yoenis Cespedes was inexplicably halfway between first and second and got thrown out for a game-ending double play and Davis’ second six-out save of the postseason. His last one came in Game 4 of the division series when the Royals erased a four-run deficit – a game similar to Saturday’s in result and almost as vital, as it saved Kansas City’s season.
Without that comeback, the Royals aren’t here, on the cusp of their first championship in 30 years, one they can close out Sunday night with Edinson Volquez on the mound and a pair of games left at home.
The series looks far different than it did before the eighth inning, when the Mets looked poise to even the series thanks to rookie Michael Conforto. Faith, in baseball’s postseason, comes down to options, and Mets manager Terry Collins kept running out the rookie outfielders, in the depths of an 0-for-20 slump, because no better choice existed on his roster. And it seemed as though Conforto would reward that faith with a victory thanks to a display not seen in nearly two decades.
“Every time he gets in the batter's box,” Collins said Friday, “you think he's going to hit one in the seats.” Collins’ faith turned into prescience on Saturday night. Conforto hit home runs in his first two at-bats, the latter staking the Mets their 3-2 lead. The 22-year-old Conforto became the youngest person to homer in a World Series game since Miguel Cabrera in 2003 and the first rookie with a multihomer game in it since Andruw Jones in 1996. After starting the season in Class A, Conforto, the Mets’ first-round pick in 2014, joined the team during the summer and played a vital role in its ascent to the top of the National League East.
Alex Rios (15) is congratulated by teammate Mike Moustakas after scoring on a passed ball in the second inning. (AP)
His struggles in the playoffs prompted questions whether he belonged in the Mets’ lineup. Collins stuck with him, playing Yoenis Cespedes in center field over Juan Lagares, a superior defensive player. It was a move to keep Conforto’s bat in the lineup. He snapped his hitless streak with an infield dribbler in Game 3 and deposited his next two hits 395 feet into the upper deck in right field and 390 feet into the bullpen in right-center field.
“If you show panic now, it could spread in the clubhouse, and I'm not going to do that,” Collins said. “I like our lineup. I like what they've done all year long. You go through ups and downs, but as we've seen, when they break out, they're good.”
The Mets didn’t break out enough. Following Conforto’s home run in the sixth inning, Luke Hochevar worked a perfect sixth, Ryan Madson a flawless seventh and Davis a three-up, three-down eighth.
Murphy reached in the ninth on a hit to third baseman Mike Moustakas that should’ve been ruled an error, bringing the tying run to home plate in Duda.
But the Cespedes baserunning mess epitomized the night for the Mets, left for dead in Kansas City, resurrected Friday night at home and on Halloween seemingly haunted to the end.
Poster Comment:
GO ROYALS!