With another crazy comeback, Royals defy deGrom

Alcides Escobar decided he would swing, and usually this would not be news. Escobar decides to swing the way a lot of us decide to check our cellphones — obsessively, constantly, often to the point of being counterproductive.

The same way Ken in accounting is always playing Angry Birds, Alcides in the batter’s box is always swinging.

This one was a bit different, though. First, Escobar had originally decided not to swing. Also, this one kickstarted the key rally in what eventually became the Royals’ 7-1 win over the New York Mets in Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday at Kauffman Stadium.

“Oh,” Escobar said later, asked what he was thinking after he got the hit. “Thank you.”

This was another Royals comeback, playing out in another bizarre way that makes people who watch or root or work for this team chuckle, nod their heads, and say to no one in particular: sounds about right.

The rally that made Johnny Cueto’s terrific start stand up started when Escobar walked to the plate in the bottom of the fifth. At the time, the Royals trailed by one. Alex Gordon stood on second base. Alex Rios on first. Escobar is hitting at the top of the Royals lineup, despite nobody having a good explanation for why it works. This is another of those things that only makes sense to Royals fans.

Anyway, Escobar decided he was going to bunt. He’s a very good bunter. Probably the best on the team, so if you’re going to bunt, this is a logical spot. An on-field mic picked up Royals first base coach Rusty Kuntz telling Rios a bunt was coming. This was news to nobody, and that includes Jacob deGrom, the excellent Mets pitcher.

He threw Escobar a high fastball, one of those pitches that seems to rise at it approaches the plate. Escobar fouled it off. DeGrom threw the next fastball high, again, this one a little harder. Escobar tried to bunt, again. Fouled it off, again.

Now the count was 0-2, which is actually worse than it might sound. During the regular season, Escobar hit .190 after falling behind 0-2. Batters hit .170 against deGrom after falling behind 0-2, and struck out nearly half the time. DeGrom threw Escobar a slider, a fine choice since his is one of the best in baseball — upper 80s with violent bite.

In nearly any version of reality, Escobar is sunk here, but this is the Royals’ version of reality, so Mike Moustakas watched from the dugout and said one of those things you say when you don’t know what else to say.

“Just go ahead and swing away and get a single,” Royals manager Ned Yost remembered hearing.

Simple enough, right? So, of course, deGrom left his two-strike pitch a little too high and over way too much of the plate. Escobar swung — you knew that was coming — shot the ball into center field, watched Gordon score the tying run and did that heart sign back to the dugout. Why would it have happened any other way?

“With Esky, he’s never out of it,” Gordon said. “Even though he has two strikes, he’s going to put the ball in play, make something happen, and the way he’s swinging right now it’s usually something good.”

The Royals scored three more runs in the inning. Two on a single by Eric Hosmer, and one on a single by Moustakas. They batted around and scored four times on a walk, single, single, groundout, lineout, single, single, single, and groundout. Sometimes the Royals’ offense is death by a thousand paper cuts. This was like a knockout in a slap fight, which highlights another strength of this team.

They don’t miss.

Specifically, they don’t swing and miss. They are baseball’s hardest team to strikeout by a fairly wide margin. According to FanGraphs, the Royals make contact on 81.9 percent of their swings. That’s the highest in baseball.

This was always going to be one of those subtle things that swung at least a game or two in this series, because the Mets — particularly their fantastic starting pitchers — rely heavily on missing bats.

Only six starting pitchers in baseball struck out a higher percentage of the batters they faced this year than deGrom. Just a few weeks ago, in their National League Division Series, he tied Tom Seaver’s postseason franchise record with 13 strikeouts. But against the Royals, he struck out only two.

In 33 previous starts over the regular season and playoffs, he had been this ineffective only three times. According to Daren Williams of BaseballSavant.com, this was the first time in deGrom’s 55 career starts that he had failed to get even one swing and miss on his fastball.

“They did exactly what people said,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “They put the ball in play.”

The whole thing has the affect of changing the mood of games. The Royals are never out of it, because they constantly pressure the opposing team to make plays. There were other factors, too, of course, but the comeback in Game 2 against Toronto started when Ben Zobrist’s popup dropped between the second baseman and right fielder. In Game 4 against Houston, it was Carlos Correa missing the grounder that bounced off the pitchers mound.

The Royals have come to repeat, over and over again, their hitting mantra of keep the line moving. It is a baseball cliche brought to life, the idea that a pack of piranhas can do more damage biting together than one big fish working by himself and hunting the big prey.

The funny thing about it is they end up getting the big prey more often than not. Starting with Game 4 of the ALDS, the Royals have scored in 31 innings. They have scored at least two runs in 17 of those innings.

This pack mentality has pushed the Royals to a 2-0 lead in the World Series. They can close it out in New York. If that happens, we will remember the marathon win in Game 1 but we should also remember this win in a swing game for both sides.

The Royals won, again. They did it from behind, again. They did it by swinging and making contact, again. And it all started when their best bunter could not bunt, and had to settle for swinging the Royals into a power position to win the franchise’s first world championship in 30 years.

This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 10:39 PM with the headline "With another crazy comeback, Royals defy deGrom."