Crazy eighth helps Royals stun the Mets 5-3 in Game 4 of the World Series

Inside Kansas City’s temporary clubhouse, water covered every surface, a radius that extended from the center of the room to the lockers. The spray coated a pair of black leather couches, a pair of tattered brown chairs and several wooden tables.

In the wake of a 5-3 victory over the Mets in Game 4 of the World Series, the Royals completed their usual postgame celebration, dousing one another with water as AC/DC blared through the Citi Field speaker system.

The group intends to uncork Champagne inside this room Sunday night.

With their seventh comeback victory this postseason, the Royals pushed themselves to the threshold of their first title since 1985. The team erased a one-run deficit with five outs to play and unleashed a three-run blitz to recapture control of this series with a 3-1 lead. Kansas City now has three cracks to win one more game.

The events of Saturday fit the playoff pattern. Down a run, the Royals recorded a pair of walks from Ben Zobrist and Lorenzo Cain. Eric Hosmer chopped a grounder toward Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy, who charged the baseball and watched it roll underneath his glove. The error silenced Citi Field and tied the game.

The Royals pounced with RBI singles from Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez off Mets closer Jeurys Familia, the vaunted reliever who has now been unseated twice in this series.

There was no crushing blow, no baseball destined to clear the fences. Two walks. Two hits. A pivotal error. Champions can be crowned on the back of such events.

“Any time they make a mistake, we capitalize,” Hosmer said. “That’s what championship teams do.”

Baseball is a hard game. At times, the Royals make it look easy, but their finest trait is their ability to remind their opponents of the inherent challenges of the routine. They force errors. They punish mistakes.

So in the eighth, the Royals exploited Murphy’s mishap. And in the ninth, when Wade Davis allowed a pair of runners in his second inning of work, Kansas City watched the Mets run themselves into a loss. Davis sheared the bat of Lucas Duda with a fastball, which produced a soft liner to third base. Moustakas caught the ball for one out and then picked Yoenis Cespedes off first base.

All teams commit gaffes — the Royals experienced a brain freeze from Alex Rios that led to a run on Saturday — but Kansas City watches the blunders of their opponents and transforms them into history. Ask the Houston Astros’ Carlos Correa about Game 4 of the American League Division Series. Ask the Toronto Blue Jays’ Ryan Goins about Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

“We never put our heads down,” Perez said. “Never. We like to compete. We like to play hard. And we’ll see what happens at the end of the game. That’s what we do every game.”

Their season may only last one more night. The Royals can erase the ache of last season’s Game 7 loss to the San Francisco Giants with one more victory over the Mets. The series will hinge on Sunday’s matchup between Edinson Volquez and Matt Harvey. Volquez rejoined the Royals on Saturday night after spending several days in the Dominican Republic at his father’s funeral.

Volquez arrived just before the game began. His teammates opened their arms to him.

“It was unreal,” Volquez said. “Hosmer and Moustakas and Chris Young, Rios, the whole team, they came to see me. All those guys were like ‘Hey, man, we’re excited to see you back on the team.’ ”

Volquez settled into a seat on the dugout and watched his club put on a clinic in white-knuckled baseball. Neither starting pitcher provided much distance. Manager Ned Yost removed Young for a pinch hitter in the top of the fifth. Young had given up two runs. Young and Danny Duffy combined to surrender a pair of home runs to rookie outfielder Michael Conforto.

An RBI single by Cain removed Mets rookie Steven Matz from the game in the sixth. Matz yielded two runs across five innings.

Neither starter added any additional fuel to the fire set by Mets rookie Noah Syndergaard in Game 3. The conversation on Saturday still lingered of the first pitch of the previous evening, the chin music from Syndergaard toward Alcides Escobar. A day later, both parties dug in their heels. Syndergaard refused to back down from his postgame stance, when he said the pitch was premeditated. Informed of Syndergaard’s comments, Escobar was succinct.

“That’s a stupid comment,” Escobar said.

Yost did not mind Syndergaard throwing inside. The Royals have done that on occasion to Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy during this series. Yost objected to the location of the pitch, up near Escobar’s chin. In a subtle mockery of Syndergaard, Yost offered a cryptic rejoinder.

“We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves,” Yost said. “Let’s go with that.”

But Young did not hunt the heads of his former New York teammates. Instead he yielded two runs in the third due to a home run and a slate of defensive incompetence.

Conforto supplied the homer on a waist-high, 87-mph fastball. He hammered a towering drive into the second deck of right field on the inning’s first pitch. It was the first hit of the game for the Mets and the third hit of the postseason for Conforto.

Wilmer Flores, the next man up, splashed a single into center. As Matz squared to bunt, Young spiked a fastball in the dirt. The ball bounced away and Flores took second. Matz bunted him over to third, setting the stage for Rios’ misplay.

The sequence looked preposterous. Curtis Granderson lifted a flyball into right. Rios settled underneath it. He relaxed his body as the ball reached his glove. When he caught it, he paused for a moment and took two jogging steps toward the dugout. His body conveyed the universal language of a completed inning.

Except there were only two outs. Rios realized in time to heave the baseball home. There was no play. The Royals challenged the call, suggesting Flores failed to tag up properly and left early. The replay officials upheld the call.

“It’s a mental mistake,” Rios said. “What can you do? You can’t just put your head down. You have to compete.”

To that point, the Royals could not touch Matz, a 24-year-old lefty pitching in only his ninth major-league game. Matz faced only one batter more than the minimum through four. He struck out five during that time. But his arm slot dropped and his energy lagged as the evening continued.

City halved the deficit in the fifth. They benefited from a mistake in center by Yoenis Cespedes. He took an inexact route for a liner from Perez, which he kicked into a double. Alex Gordon roped a single into right to plate the run.

Yost pulled Young for a pinch hitter later that inning, so Duffy entered the fray. He flung two fastballs for strikes to Conforto. Then he abandoned the heater in favor of his breaking ball. On the third consecutive slider, Conforto drilled the bender over the right-center fence.

“He went down and got it,” Duffy said. “It wasn’t a terrible pitch. It was just a bad pitch to him.”

But Matz no longer looked indomitable. With double in the sixth, Zobrist tied a postseason record with eight. Lorenzo Cain rolled a single up the middle to score him and cut the deficit to one.

There the score remained when the eighth inning began. The beginning always looks so harmless. That’s the thing. These Royals never burst into a room. Their opponents cannot recognize the danger until it is too late.

During the past month, as the Royals have brought themselves once victory away from a title, the team has faced longer odds than this. They make comebacks like this look routine. All they require is an opening.

So when Ben Zobrist chucked his bat toward the Kansas City dugout, there was little reason for panic at Citi Field. Zobrist represented the tying run after walking against reliever Tyler Clippard with one out in the eighth inning, but Familia was looming in the bullpen. The Mets may not have felt foreboding. But the Royals understood the stakes.

“That’s part of passing the baton, taking a walk when you need to,” Zobrist said. “This team is an aggressive team. But we’re aggressive in the zone. We’re not just flailing at the ball.”

So Cain squared off against Clippard. Cain fouled off the first three pitches. Clippard lost his handle on the baseball from there. On the eighth pitch, a changeup at the shins, Cain trotted to first. Mets manager Terry Collins called for Familia to face Hosmer.

Understand this: Familia won the battle with Hosmer. The grounder bounced near the plate and rolled toward Murphy. It kept on rolling. The game was tied.

“It’s a team that just looks for a little crack,” Yost said. “If we find a little crack, they’re going to make something happen. It’s amazing how they do that.”

Here, again, is the genius of the Royals. They apply pressure. They recognize vulnerability, those inflection points that games swing upon.

It was close to finishing time. Familia fired a 97-mph fastball to start the next at-bat. Moustakas cracked a single past the extended dive of Murphy. Perez laced a 96-mph sinker into the outfield for another tally. Perez thumped his chest as his teammates rollicked in their dugout.

To finish the job, Yost turned to Davis. He collected his third multi-inning save to push the Mets to the brink of the winter and the Royals to the edge of ecstasy. The players tried to temper their enthusiasm as reporters filtered through the room.

But the evidence of their excitement was apparent. Water still coated every surface as Danny Duffy completed an interview. A world championship was only one victory away. Duffy scanned the room.

“Every one of these dudes,” Duffy said, “is going to back to their room and try to fall asleep as soon as possible.”

World Series Game 4

Royals 5, Mets 3

TableStyle: SP-basebattersCCI Template: SP-basebatters

TableStyle: SP-basebattersCCI Template: SP-basebatters

TableStyle: SP-basebyinningsCCI Template: SP-basebyinnings

a-singled for C.Young in the 5th. b-struck out for Hochevar in the 7th. c-flied out for Lagares in the 8th.

E: B.Colon (1), Dan.Murphy (1). LOB: Kansas City 5, New York 2. 2B: Zobrist (4), S.Perez (2). HR: Conforto (1), off C.Young; Conforto (2), off D.Duffy. RBIs: L.Cain (1), Moustakas (3), S.Perez (1), A.Gordon (3), Granderson (4), Conforto 2 (4). SB: L.Cain (2). CS: Granderson (1). S: Matz. SF: Granderson.

Runners left in scoring position: Kansas City 3 (A.Escobar, S.Perez, A.Gordon); New York 1 (Duda). RISP: Kansas City 4 for 10; New York 0 for 1. GIDP: A.Gordon. DP: Kansas City 1 (Moustakas, Hosmer); New York 2 (T.d’Arnaud, T.d’Arnaud), (Dan.Murphy, Duda).

TableStyle: SP-basepitchersCCI Template: SP-basepitchers

TableStyle: SP-basepitchersCCI Template: SP-basepitchers

Matz pitched to 2 batters in the 6th.

Blown saves: Familia (2). Holds: Clippard (2), B.Colon (1), Niese (1), A.Reed (1). Inherited runners-scored: Niese 1-0, B.Colon 1-0, Familia 2-2. WP: C.Young.

Umpires: Home, Jim Wolf; First, Alfonso Marquez; Second, Gary Cederstrom; Third, Mike Everitt; Left, Mark Carlson; Right, Mike Winters. Time: 3:29. Att: 44,815.

AP-WF-11-01-15 0343GMT

This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 10:37 PM with the headline "Crazy eighth helps Royals stun the Mets 5-3 in Game 4 of the World Series."