What we remember from the Royals’ ALDS Game 2 win over the Astros

Five years ago this fall, the Kansas City Royals won their second World Series championship.

Fox Sports Kansas City is re-airing the Royals’ 11 victories from that postseason starting Monday, May 4. To help you relive the moments from that magical October, we’ve dug into our archives. You can read our coverage of ALDS Game 2, which re-airs at 7 p.m. May 4 on FSKC, here.

Columnists Sam Mellinger and Vahe Gregorian, plus reporter Pete Grathoff, who also covered the 2015 posteason for The Star, had these thoughts looking back on the Royals’ first playoff win that year.

No glove for Cueto

This is easy to forget, but Johnny Cueto had developed a reputation as a bit of a whiner. His talent was unquestioned, but there were baseball people who believed he was easing off the gas to avoid injury before free agency. Andy McCullough had the great story about how Cueto blamed some of his struggles on Royals catchers not putting their glove low enough as a target.

So, anyway, here comes Cueto starting Game 2 in KC, with the Royals needing to win three of the next four, and he just sort of stinks. By the time Colby Rasmus homered in the third — and it was a bomb, to center field, on one of Cueto’s hesitation deliveries — Cueto had given up four runs, six hits and two walks and recorded just six outs. The stadium deflated.

During games, I usually have two Word docs open. One is for notes, the other the column. Pretty quickly after Rasmus’ homer, Andy asked what I was writing and I pointed to my screen. The column file was blank, and the notes file had just one sentence:

“MAKE FUN OF GLOVE THING.”

Stay of execution?

Sure, beforehand, manager Ned Yost said it wouldn’t be a “death sentence” if the Royals lost.

But the first of an unprecedented eight comeback wins in one postseason is underappreciated. Down 1-0 in the series, with Astros ace Dallas Kuechel lurking over Game 3 in Houston, the Royals trailed 4-2 in the sixth only to win 5-4.

That set a tone no one could have predicted.

Over before it started?

This was an afternoon game, and when the Astros jumped ahead 4-1 off Cueto in the third inning, I thought this series might be over less than 24 hours after it began.

But Cueto dominated after that rough start and the Royals did their thing by keeping the line moving.

Perhaps most surprising of all: Salvador Perez drew a four-pitch walk with the bases loaded to force in a run and tie the game in the sixth inning. I wonder how many times Perez has drawn a (non-intentional) walk on four pitches.

That stuck with me for some reason.