Game 1 of the Wild Card series was played on the Royals’ terms

The momentum has shifted.

The Royals won 86 games in the regular season, fewer than any team in the post-season except the Tigers. Twelve of those wins came against the embarrassing White Sox – the Royals went 74-75 against everyone else. For most of the year, they had one of the worst bullpen in baseball, and in September they had THE worst offense in baseball.

None of that matters now.

The Royals in the big dance, and everyone’s record is 0-0 now. Or was. The Royals took Game 1 against the Orioles and did it in the most Royals way possible – through great starting pitching and scratching and clawing for a run using small ball. In doing so, the put the game on their terms.

The Orioles hit the second-most home runs in baseball, but they came up completely empty in that department on Tuesday. Jordan Westburg sure came close, launching a ball 376 feet that would have been a home run in 28 other ballparks (including Kauffman Stadium), but was a long fly out at Camden Yards (Salvador Perez had his own 361-foot flyout that would have been a home run in 19 ballparks, so maybe call that even?)

But that’s what happens in the post-season. The air is cooler, the ball doesn’t travel as far. You face the top pitchers in baseball on a nightly basis, not some kid up from Triple-A filling in for a guy on the Injured list. Macro-analytics that work over large sample sizes may not work in a short series. Or a handful of plays. The game becomes small, a matter of inches – the millisecond a runner comes off the base becomes a pivotal play in a game.

And that plays right into the Royals’ strengths. The Royals have perhaps the best trio of starting pitchers in baseball (Phillies fans may disagree). Cole Ragans showed he is an absolute dude ready for the post-season spotlight. His breaking ball darted off the plate, his change up had fade, and his fastball had bite. He generated 15 swing-and-misses, tying Padres pitcher Michael King for the most among Game 1 starters (and more than Tarik Skubal who pitched an absolute gem for the Tigers).

A low-scoring game means teams have to find ways to score runs. The Royals aren’t particularly good at run production, but if they need to, they can be creative. They scored the only run of the game through small ball that would have made Ned Yost proud. Maikel Garcia walked and stole second. What a redemption game he had after a month (year?) of slumping and generally showing poor body language for a kid that showed so much spitfire when he played post-season winter ball in Venezuela. Maybe he raises his game when the stakes get raised. The Royals seemingly put him in over Paul DeJong to run wild on the Orioles, and that’s just what he did.

Michael Massey advanced him to third on a ground out. And Bobby Baseball rose to the occasion as stars do and collected his first career post-season RBI (tying Mike Trout for career post-season RBI!) driving him home on a single. Of course it was Bobby, it always had to be Bobby.

Meanwhile the Orioles just couldn’t get anything going offensively. They went 1-for-7 with runner-in-scoring position, striking out three times. The much beleagured Royals bullpen looks a lot better when its worst offenders are sidelined. Sam Long, Kris Bubic, and Lucas Erceg combined for three shutout innings, punctuated by Erceg’s strikeout of Heston Kjerstad with the tying run at first base. In that moment Erceg celebrated, seemingly excoriating past demons and justifying the preservance and hard work he has taken to get to this point.

Post-season is a lower-scoring environment – offense drops by about 10 percent. A low-scoring environment allows more weirdness to play a factor. Balls bounce funny. Hard-hit balls find gloves (despite the win, the Royals had a tremendous amount of bad batted ball luck). In a short series, upsets happen. Royals Devil Magic happens.

For a team that is coming off a 106-loss season, that knows their flaws, a win like this is a big validation that anything can happen, and and anything has happened before. They know they can stand toe-to-toe with the Orioles, and they know that just one more win sends them to the ALDS.

For the Orioles, a team that won 101 games last year only to get swept in the playoffs, the pressure is on. They have lost nine playoff games in a row now. Another loss means they stay home.

If the rest of the series is going to be a low-scoring, small-ball affair, I like the Royals’ chances.