The fact that the Royals and the Giants have pushed the World Series to a game seven is evidence the two clubs are very evenly matched. Even tonight’s probable starters, Tim Hudson for the Giants and Jeremy Guthrie for the Royals, are similar style pitchers. Top velocity for both is around 90-92 miles per hour. They’re not power pitchers, but plus-and-minus pitchers, meaning they change speeds, up and down, to keep hitters off balance.
And to further even things out tonight, while the Royals are known for their dominant bullpen, for game seven the Giants have lefty starter Madison Bumgarner ready to come out of the pen on only two days’ rest after his masterful shutout Sunday night.
“I will not be at all surprised to see Bumgarner come in,” says Royals assistant general manager Mike Toomey. “He can rest all winter. He’s a horse. For game seven, it’s all hands on deck.”
Toomey, another former head coach at George Washington University, has worked in professional baseball for decades, managing and scouting for, among others, the Pirates, Giants, and Expos/Nationals organizations. He’s been with the Royals for nearly seven years now and even after logging some 200 nights on the road the past year, he shows few signs of tiring. After all, his club is playing baseball in October.
“Playing in the World Series has brought a lot of happiness to a long-awaiting fan base,” says Toomey. “It’s been 29 years since the Royals last won it, and now we’re having a great year.”
It’s true Royals’ fans have been loyal and patient, but the failure to get to the World Series for nearly three decades put some pressure on the Royals’ front office. Toomey explains how the organization built a winner.
“After pitching, the priority in putting together any club is to be strong up the middle,” says Toomey. “Our catcher Salvador Perez is only 24. Our guys signed him out of Venezuela at the age of 16 and then he went to our baseball academy in the Dominican Republic.”
Perez, as Toomey explains, is one of the club’s pillars, homegrown like many of the other Royals’ stars. “Moustakas, Gordon, Hosmer, Ventura,” says Toomey, all of them grown down on the Royals farm and, thanks to their performance this October in front of a national TV audience, now stars.
And yet, as Toomey explains, the organization needed to go elsewhere to fill in some missing pieces. “There were two major trades for us,” he says. In 2010, the Royals dealt Zack Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers for then minor leaguers Lorzenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar. “Acquiring those players up solidified us defensively,” says Toomey of the Royals starting right fielder and shortstop. “The other big deal was trading minor league player of the year Wil Myers to Tampa. We got a front-line starter in James Shields, but the sleeper in the deal was reliever Wade Davis, who’s been unbelievable. So we had homegrown guys and veterans we picked up along the way. The consensus in the organization was that we have to start winning now, or people will grow impatient.”
However, the organization itself is remarkable for its patience, says Toomey. “With some of our guys, it might have been easy to give up, panic and trade them. The most important thing you can do as an organization is to assess your own club correctly. Remember that Moustakas was sent back to Triple A just this spring. So you have to give [Royals’ GM] Dayton Moore and his staff credit for feeling strongly about their guys. This kind of patience bodes well for any organization because it takes a while for these kids to gel.”
From Toomey’s perspective, impatience, or bringing young players up to the big leagues too quickly, is hurting the game. “As an industry,” he explains, “the major leagues, collectively, are rushing guys. If you look back to prior years, these guys need maybe a thousand at bats before you bring them up. Now they’re learning on the job. These kids are always having to make adjustments on the fly, and we forget they are just 23 or 24.”
Mike Trout’s an exception from this perspective. The Angels outfielder has sailed through his big league career, so far anyway. Bryce Harper, as good as he’s been and as great as he might become, is someone who might have profited from a few more at bats in the minor leagues, maybe a season’s worth. After all, he’s just 22.
“As an industry we have to be patient,” says Toomey. “It’s good to bring up young guys, but it’s better to keep them at a level where they’ll have some success before you bring them up. When you put something together it takes time.”
What the Royals have put together is a club built for speed, on offense and defense. “Speed is the thing for us,” says Toomey. “Our guys are pretty much on their own on the bases. We don’t have a tremendous amount of power, so what we lack in power we make up for in aggressive base running.”
Toomey is proud of the Royals’ outstanding defense, which is also a result of the team’s speed, especially Cain in right and Jarrod Dyson in center, whose speed makes the field smaller for opposing hitters. “We’re almost like a National League team,” says Toomey.
Indeed, they’re a lot like their opponents tonight—more speed than the Giants but less power, says Toomey. “They’re a hard-nosed bunch of guys, like our guys. It’s refreshing to see old-school baseball like this. We could get a 3-2 12-inning game tonight. Hold on to your hats!”
