October 11, 2014

Playoff Prospectus

PECOTA Odds and Saturday Previews

by Sam Miller and R.J. Anderson

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Royals/Orioles

The Royals look to keep their unlikely winning streak going, while wags will call this a "must win" for Baltimore.

Royals (Yordano Ventura) at Orioles (Bud Norris) 4:07 pm ET
PECOTA odds of winning: 50.5% Orioles, 49.5% Royals

Projected Starting Lineups

Injuries/Availability: Everybody should be available, including Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera, who threw two innings apiece but in just 18 and 20 pitches.

Outlook: The Royals are in a tremendously advantageous position, having taken Game One while preparing today to send the 102-mph wonder up against an offense that was merely so-so against power arms this year. If they win and head back to Kansas City up two games to none, well, Ned Yost can just about start planning which odd moves he'll make in the World Series.

The Orioles announced late Friday that they will counter with Chen, who had a 2.89 ERA in the final three months of the year but got knocked out in the fourth inning by Detroit in the ALDS. There's one thing you can say about that start: He was pitch efficient. allowing just three pitches per batter as the Tigers more or less pummeled his early-count strikes. All three extra-base hits he allowed came on the first pitch, a double and two homers, one of which came on a slider left over the plate. (He allowed one first-pitch home run all regular season.) The Royals aren't known for their pummeling, but they are known for being aggressive, so this game might come down to whether Chen is able to steal early strikes without the Royals sitting on his early strikes. Norris, who started Game Three of the ALDS. Norris had the best Orioles start of that series, going 6 1/3 shutout innings, with six strikeouts and 12 swinging strikes in 100 pitches. That followed a strong September, in which he allowed a 2.08 ERA and struck out 34 in 30 innings. He has always been undone by his platoon splits, but the Royals don't stack their lineup for any man. They'll go with the same balanced L/R routine they've been using all year.

But forget all that. We know this game is going to come down to extra innings, just like all the Royals games do these days. It seems practically impossible that they'll keep homering at twice their rate, and it seems unlikely that those homers will keep coming in excessively high-leverage situations. But if you and I know that random events cluster in illusorily non-random clusters, Royals opponents are going to want to see some evidence (like a failure to pull out yet another miracle) before they feel comfortable.

Add it up, and PECOTA likes the Orioles' chances even less behind this pitching matchup than they did in the Game One matchup. Where in that game the Orioles were just 52 percent likely to win (less than home-field advantage confers), today they get only the slimmest, one-percentage-point edge. —Sam Miller

Sam Miller is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @SamMillerBB
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R.J. Anderson is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @r_j_anderson
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