Both ALCS and NLCS are close to being over. The Kansas City Royals crushed the Toronto Blue Jays to make it a 3-1 series while the New York Mets keep pitching through the Chicago Cubs lineup, taking another close game to take the 3-0 lead.
Kansas City Royals beat Toronto Blue Jays 14-2, Lead series 3-1
The Royals are one win away from a second consecutive World Series, crushing the Blue Jays who started with R.A. Dickey on the mound but he didn’t last two innings. Those who came after him didn’t do much better. The Royals got 15 hits on 36 at bats, added 5 walks and simply crunched everything thrown at them. Meanwhile Chris Young got the start, was taken out before the end of the fifth and was replaced by Luke Hochevar who got the win.
The Royals took a 4-0 lead in the first inning following a Ben Zobrist home run, an error and a Mike Moustakas sacrifice fly. Alex Rios hit another home run in the second inning to take a 5-0 lead, but the Blue Jays brought some faith in back to the fans with Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista providing the RBIs. It was all quiet and pretty tense until the 7th inning, when things fell apart for the Blue Jays, and they might not have enough time to put things back together again.
Alcides Escobar got the party started with a sacrifice fly, and he got RBIs in the 8th and 9th innings as well. Lorenzo Cain also got in on the action with 3 RBIs from two separate occasions, and it turned out to be the biggest pitching meltdown of the playoffs up to this point, with the Blue Jays looking almost helpless throughout the entire game to get outs, especially in the disastrous ending.
New York Mets beat Chicago Cubs 5-2, Lead series 3-0
The NLCS is turning out to be quite anti-climactic, especially if you’re a Cubs fan. The Mets pitching continues to be close to untouchable, while Daniel Murphy is increasing his value as free agency gets closer. He hit his third home run of the series and sixth of the postseason, giving the Mets a 2-1 lead in the third inning. Jacob deGrom picked up the win allowing just four hits and two runs in seven innings, before Tyler Clippard and Jeurys Familia closed the game.
Up until the sixth innings things were close – Nick Schwarber and Jorge Soler hit home runs to match with Murphy and Cespedes. But a wild pitch from Trevor Cahill on a Michael Conforto at bat allowed Conforto to reach first base and Cespedes to score. In the 7th innings Cespedes did more damage at bat with a single that scored David Wright, while a Lucas Duda ground out in the 7th finished the job, scoring Murphy.