#Postseason mlb schedule 2015 series
Most recent losses (as measured by our Weighted Average Loss Total metric) and longest playoff droughts for World Series teams, 1969-2020 Most avg. The 2014 Royals’ World Series came out of nowhere And only one team in that span (the 1995 Cleveland Indians) had gone straight to the World Series on the heels of a longer playoff drought than Kansas City did in 2014. According to our Weighted Average Loss Total (WALT) metric, which looks at a team’s average losses per 162 games over the 20 preceding seasons - placing more emphasis on recent seasons - the Royals were the fourth-most-unsung pennant winner since the divisional era launched in 1969. (The 1976 Cincinnati Reds won all seven of their postseason contests.) And they did it mostly out of nowhere. Granting that the postseason was expanded by an extra round in 2012, no team had ever won each of its first eight playoff games until the 2014 Royals visited the World Series, nor has it happened since. Kansas City made the playoffs for the first time since that 1985 championship and knocked off the A’s in an unforgettable wild-card game, then swept the Angels and Orioles to give themselves a perfect 8-0 postseason record en route to the World Series.
got an All-Star-level season (4.4 wins above replacement) 3 from the late-blooming Lorenzo Cain in center field and an improved rotation, to go with manager Ned Yost’s core Royals formula: contact hitting, great defense, blazing speed and a lights-out bullpen. *Implied probabilities are adjusted for the “cut” that bookmakers take on each bet.Īnd yet, the Royals started out steady in 2014 and exploded in the second half of the season - going an MLB-best 52-27 2 from July 22 onward (including playoffs). With few household names (did Alex Gordon, James Shields and Salvador Pérez count?) and no recent history of playoff success to call upon, there was little reason to think the Royals would suddenly turn into a powerhouse.Ĭhances to make and win the 20 World Series for the Kansas City Royals, according to Las Vegas odds and FanGraphs’ statistical model just a 2.7 percent chance of making the World Series, and the Vegas odds implied only a slightly better 4.7 percent probability. Though an impressive prospect pipeline and a surprising 86-76 finish in 2013 had raised expectations some, Kansas City was not viewed as a serious contender going into 2014. The mid-2010s weren’t supposed to change that. From 1997 through 2013, the Royals finished better than 20th in our final Elo rankings just three times (19th in 2000, 18th in 2008 and 14th in 2013). 1 And worse than merely being mediocre, Kansas City was almost always straight-up bad. After winning the 1985 World Series, Kansas City missed the playoffs for the next 28 seasons in a row. and a host of lesser players who filled in the gaps. Team cornerstones like George Brett, Willie Wilson and Frank White gave way to stars who didn’t stay long - Carlos Beltrán, Johnny Damon, Zack Greinke, etc. had ranked among baseball’s best from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the 1990s and 2000s were not kind to the franchise. So along with our Hall of Pretty Damn Good Players, we want to appreciate these unsung teams that nobody saw coming, in a series we’re calling the Little Teams That Could.īefore their magical playoff runs of 20, the Kansas City Royals had not exactly been a fixture in baseball’s postseason.Īlthough K.C. We love our sports forecasts here at FiveThirtyEight, but one of the things that make the games great is when a team comes along and takes prognosticators by surprise.
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