AL Block Championship Round
Game 5
The Seattle Mariners take a 3-2 lead looking to close out the Royals at home for game 6 thanks to a 3-2 win in the 11th inning. This was another game where once the bullpens came into the game there was barely any scoring as both bullpens remained dominant. A lead off double for Carlos Guillen in the 11th followed up by two ground outs got him home and was enough for the Mariners to take game 5.
Game 6
The Royals weren't ready to go home yet striking the Mariners for 3 runs in the first inning thanks to an Eric Hosmer 3 run home run, and they wouldn't score the rest of the game, but Seattle could only manage a run in the second inning off the home run from John Olerud as the Royals tied there series sending this back to Kansas City for the decisive game 7.
Game 7
The best words in pro sports Game 7!!!! If you want to talk classic game 7's of ocurse there needs to be a lot of drama, the biased Clevelander in me thinks of 2016 where the Cavs won a championship in game 7 of a tightly contested game that came down to the final minute. The a few months later, a 7 game World Series defeat for my Indians that went to extra innings with the drama from the Rajai Davis home run. This game felt like that to me with every role of the dice. Kansas City struck first with a run in the bottom of the third, while Seattle answered it right back in the top of the fourth. Seattle sent Freddy Garcia to the mound who gave them 8 strong innings before turning it over to the powerful bullpen. Johnny Cueto did the same through 7 innings for the Royals. One of these bullpens has to break in the crucial game 7. The Royals 4 relievers did their job befeor turning it over to the starters weakest link Dan Duffy whom also provided a scoreless inning. The Mariners top 3 all gave shut out innings as will, and when Jose Paniagua took the mound in the bottom of the 12 the first batter he faced was Eric Hosmer, who sent a deep fly ball over the hoem run wall walking off the game and sending the 2015 Kansas City Royals to the Showdown Cup Championship against the 2016 Chicago Cubs.
Showdown Cup Finals Game 1
2015 Kansas City Royals @ 2016 Chicago Cubs
The number one seed from each side made it all the way, be on the lookout for a series preview along with the player stats from these two teams as we look to crown our first champion.
Catch up on anything you may have missed so far:
WOW!!! So I picked the Cubs when this all started, and figured they'd be taking on the 2015 Blue Jays... once again, I underestimated their scrappy, speed and bullpen driven fellow 2015 AL squad in the Royals! Should be a great World Series!
ReplyDeleteWhat’s really helped the royals has been the defense of Salvador Perez. Even speed a struggles to steal on him cuz he has such a high defense. But offensively the team has outperformed my expectations
ReplyDeleteWhat every kid dreams of....extra innings, game 7, opportunity for a walk off....die roll! haha been great following along, excited to see the results
ReplyDeleteKid??? Haha everyone, thanks for following I’ve had a lot of fun creating the tournament, looking forward to doing more like it, adding in some new teams as well
Delete