Is there any more manufactured rivalry than Kansas City vs St Louis? Of course, growing up I have always known about the 1985 World Series and have been mad about that… but ultimately that was more of an umpiring issue. The north side vs south side and other cross-city rivalries I have always viewed as much more potent than a cross-state rivalry. Hell, even Cardinals vs Cubs and Cards vs Reds are SO MUCH more of a rivalry in my mind, but I digress… (and yes I am still mad that the Royals won in 1985 over the Cardinals when I was still under double digits in age). <\/p>\n
Game 1<\/p>\n
What an insane game this one was! I was at work and could only halfway pay attention, looking on distantly behind piles of work. I knew the Cardinals were losing, but I did not give up hope. Something about this game I felt instinctual about. I just knew they could win that one. The Lizard King was dealing again. The Cardinals weren\u2019t hitting. But I knew this offense had a little more something to it. Because at times, they\u2019ve seemed unbeatable.<\/p>\n
But it also felt like the offense had retired since the third inning on Tuesday. Fortunately I was wrong about this angle and the offense brought a light to my workday because I knew that Herrera was due for a home run and he definitely did hit a home run it was no mirage. The game was at 3-1 Royals and Herrera put the team ahead 4-3! The Royals quickly tied the game vs the not so dominant Ryan Helsley in the 9th inning but luckily the Cardinals were able to get into extra innings and win it with help from Lars Nootbaar and a walkoff Willson Contreras hit! <\/p>\n
Notes<\/p>\n
Ivan Herrera\u2019s big time home run was worth .777 WPA. I have never seen such a thing. Reality bending even. Herrera was 2 for 3 with a walk, 2 RBI and a run scored.
\nThe game would not have been won without Willson Contreras and his walk off single scoring Noot! Contreras went 2-4 with a walk, an RBI and a run scored. Willson is practically carrying this offense lately.
\nWinn, Donovan, and Arenado combined to go 0-12 with one walk so thank goodness Herrera & Contreras showed up on offense.
\nVilade was also 0-4 so make that 0-16.
\nIncluding Burleson it was 1-19 for over half the lineup.
\nScott and Pozo also went 0-fer so now we\u2019re talking 1-21.
\nDespite all of that the team only struck out 3 times in Game 1.
\nInstead of Ryan Helsley saving the game, the Cardinals saved the game from Ryan Helsley.
\nRoyals starting pitcher Noah Cameron actually pitched really well so I think he\u2019s probably not feeling too happy right now. The Royals bullpen in the 9th and 10th inning absolutely imploded to the tune of a lopsided -1.380 WPA summing up Schreiber\/Clark\/Estevez.
\nHelsley was bad but not as bad as the Royals bullpen in the 9th and 10th innings. Otherwise the Royals pitching was really damn good innings 1-8.
\nRiley O\u2019Brien fans, this was your day: he pitched! and he pitched well: giving up only 1 hit in 1 2\u20443 IP.
\nMiles Mikolas distributed 8 hits over 6 IP while giving up 3 runs. Not so bad for the \u201cold man\u201d. Lizard King forever. Well I mean, until the end of the year at least.<\/p>\n
Game 2<\/p>\n
While game 1 was won 6-5 Cardinals in extra innings, game 2 was won by Kansas City 7-5. But I have to say, something about watching this one made it seem like the Cardinals were down more than 2 runs. I just didn\u2019t feel that comeback -ability as I did in game 1. The offense pretty much did it\u2019s job scoring 11 runs today, but there was a problem in game 2. Matthew Liberatore got hurt, or the official report right now is that he got \u201cfatigued\u201d. Speculation says that he is hurt though, since his velocity dropped to under 90 mph before he was relieved. <\/p>\n
Notes<\/p>\n
Nootbaar 0-2 with 2 BB and a run scored.
\nWinn 1-4 with 1 BB and a run scored.
\nDonovan 1-5 with a run scored.
\nContreras is going to carry this offense at times: 2-4 with 3 RBI and a run scored.
\nHerrera 1-4… it feels like an 0-fer considering how good he\u2019s been.
\nArenado picking it up: 2-4 with 2 RBI and a run scored.
\nPozo\/Burleson\/Vilade\/Gorman\/Scott combine to go 0-10… bottom of the order failure! sort of the opposite of game 1.
\nLeahy pitched two innings of scoreless baseball.
\nThe bullpen was fine… potential \u201cace\u201d Liberatore got shelled tonight. The plot most definitely thickens…<\/p>\n
That\u2019s all the fuel I got in the tank folks. I went out used car shopping with a co-worker tonight and had a long day at work. I took him to Mama Mel\u2019s pizzeria for his trouble and used my St Louis Pizza Passport and let me tell ya, their thin crust was amazing. I cannot imagine how good their Detroit style is. It looked fantabulous. I will be writing an article about the St Louis food scene at some point in the future. Please someone take me out to your favorite restaurant that I might not know about. Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is there any more manufactured rivalry than Kansas City vs St Louis? Of course, growing up I have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[196,422,5,2015,937,2014,250,181,11220,936,2123,55,2596,2595,288,4,3241,252,287,2586,2013],"class_list":{"0":"post-83104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-a","9":"tag-at","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-birdos","12":"tag-city","13":"tag-el","14":"tag-for","15":"tag-front-page","16":"tag-june","17":"tag-kansas","18":"tag-kansas-city","19":"tag-kansas-city-royals","20":"tag-kansascity","21":"tag-kansascityroyals","22":"tag-louis","23":"tag-mlb","24":"tag-recap","25":"tag-royals","26":"tag-st","27":"tag-th","28":"tag-viva"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114635228129082884","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}