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The Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles are two teams that most people didn’t have advancing past the ALDS, but they have managed to make it to the ALCS by sweeping their heavily favored opponents, the Los Angeles Angels, who had the best record in baseball, and the Detroit Tigers, who had three Cy Young award winners on their team.
Kansas City Royals vs. Baltimore Orioles, Friday, October 10, 8:07 PM. ET. TBS.
The Royals have been the most surprising team in the playoffs so far; they made the playoffs for the first time in 29 years, and aren’t playing like a team that is making their first playoff appearance in a while, winning their first four games.
The Orioles were supposed to have trouble solving Detroit’s starting pitching, but they did a great job scoring runs against the Tigers, and also got timely hits in the close games between the two teams, helping them sweep the series.
Pitching Matchups
The Royals will send James Shields to the mound, the Orioles haven’t announced their starter, but will likely go with Chris Tillman as their starter.
Shields has been crucial to the Kansas City’s success this postseason, he started their Wildcard game against the Oakland Athletics, but allowed four runs in five innings, he pitched better in the ALDS against the Angels, allowing two runs in 6 innings, and getting the win for his team in game 3. The Royals are hoping to get a repeat of that performance against the Orioles. Shields were 2-0 against the Orioles during the season, which is why the team is giving him the game 1 start.
Chris Tillman helped his team get the win in game 1 of the ALDS, he won his first playoff start by allowing only 2 runs in 5 innings, and he got a lot of help from their offense, which scored 12 runs in the game, and took a lot of pressure off him. Tillman won his only start against the Royals, and should be confident going into the game.
Kansas City won the last two games they played against the Orioles, and won the regular season series 4-3. On paper, the Orioles are the better team, because their hitting and pitching statistics are better than that of the Royals, they scored 705 runs during the season, which was 8th best in the league, and had a batting average of .256, which was 9th best in the league. The Royals scored 651 runs, which was 14th best in the league, but had a better batting average, hitting .263 during the season, which was the 4th best in the league.
The Orioles pitching staff had a 3.43 ERA, which was 7th best in the league, while the Royals pitching staff had a 3.51 ERA, which was 12th in the league.
Personal Pick: This is going to be a very close series that will likely go all seven games, because of how close the games between these two teams have been all year, but I think the Royals will continue their undefeated run, and win this game.
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