Taking a purely surface-level look at the 2014 World Series, it appears to be a classic David versus Goliath match-up – the reliable San Francisco Giants, making their third World Series in five years, facing the Kansas City Royals, America’s new favourite underdogs.
Take a closer look, though, and the Giants do not appear nearly as inevitable while the Royals become even more improbable.
Consider the Giants and their recent success – given how it came about, it is difficult to call it a dynasty.
When they beat the Texas Rangers in five games to win the 2010 World Series, it took them until the final day of the regular season to clinch a play-off berth.
Two years later, when the Giants swept the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, they had the worst record of the three National League division winners.
This season has hardly been more convincing. San Francisco’s hot early start petered out as their offence dried up, coming close to missing the play-offs altogether, and none of the teams in the play-offs had a worse record than the Giants’ 88-74.
They lost the season series to the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals, both of whom they eliminated, and were swept by the Royals in August.
There are also questions over whether the Giants can keep grinding out runs as they did against the St Louis Cardinals.
Of the Giants’ last 22 runs, 12 came from something other than hits – walks, sacrifice flies, wild pitches and errors, etc.
Before Joe Panik, Michael Morse and Travis Ishikawa hit home runs in the decisive Game 5, the Giants had not homered in more than 200 at-bats.
It is scarcely any easier to figure out the Royals. Their lack of power is at a historic level. They were last in the majors on the list of home runs and walks – no team had ever made the play-offs with that level of offensive mediocrity, let alone reached the World Series.
What may give some neutrals pause before fully embracing Kansas City is that it is difficult to judge how good they really are.
A convincing case can be made that beating the Oakland Athletics, Los Angeles Angels and Baltimore Orioles was down to passing tired horses.
Oakland peaked too early and barely made the play-offs, the Angels lost almost their entire pitching rotation to injury, and Baltimore hit a wall after losing Matt Wieters and Manny Machado to injury and Chris Davis to a doping suspension.
The Giants, in contrast, are healthy and playing well. It will take more than speed, defence and timely hitting to beat them.
Part of the beauty of baseball’s play-offs is that the best team does not always win and bizarre things happen all the time. At this point, who will win is anybody’s guess.
pfreelend@thenational.ae
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