After coming up short to the San Francisco Giants last year, the Kansas City Royals returned to the World Series and defeated the New York Mets in five games to claim the team’s second championship in franchise history.
“To be able to win this is very, very special, with this group of guys,” said Royals manager Ned Yost in an interview with ESPN.
Winning 95 games in the regular season, the Royals were able to win their first title since 1985.
Although the Royals trailed the Mets at one point in every game of the series, the team managed to rally in the final few innings of games 1, 2, 3 and 5 to take the series.
During the Royals postseason run, only five runs were scored in the 8th inning or later by the Royal’s opponents.
The Royals rounded up a total of 40 runs in the 8th inning or later, the most in playoff history, leading to eight postseason comebacks, in seven games they trailed by at least two runs.
The Mets started the game strong when Edinson Volquez allowed a lead off home run from Curtis Granderson, his third home run this postseason, in the bottom of the first.
The Mets were able to add another run in the 6th inning after Granderson walked.
David Wright singled, leaving Granderson in scoring position. Then Daniel Murphy reached first due to an error made by Hosmer at first base.
Bases still loaded, Lucas Duda hit a sacrifice fly to center allowing Granderson to score and Mets led the Royals 2-0 at the end of the inning.
Matt Harvey was able to pitch 111 pitches in eight scoreless innings against the Royals until Lorenzo Cain had a leadoff walk followed by Eric Hosmer’s RBI double.
Game 5 of the series went into extra innings after Hosmer’s daring run to the home plate tied the game in the top of the 9th.
Both teams kept a steady score of 2-2 until the 12th inning when the Royals stole the game by scoring 5 runs.
The inning started off with a single by Salvador Perez. Jarrod Dyson stepped in to pinch run for Perez and immediately stole second.
Alex Gordon hit a groundout, advancing Dyson to third where he ended up scoring the run that gave the Royals the lead when Christian Colon singled to left field.
Alcides Escobar added to that score with his RBI double, leaving multiple Royals players jumping onto the field from the dugout with excitement that they had extended their lead over the Mets.
The Royals ended up finishing the 12th inning with the highest-scoring extra inning World Series game after Lorenzo Cain hit a 3-run double, making the final score 7-2.
Following the game, Perez was awarded World Series Most Valuable Player.
Perez batted .364 in the series with two doubles, two RBI, and three runs scored.
Ironically, Salvador hit the last out in the World Series last year.
When asked about that last out in an interview with ESPN’s Aaron Boone, Perez responded: “I already forgot about last year. So I just enjoyed the moment now. In 2015, Kansas City is No. 1. Who cares about what happened last year?”
Fox also won when the network totaled 17.2 million viewers for Game 5.
