Handicapping the 2014 World Series

Will Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco" be
the next song banned from the radio?

Well, here we are, nearing the end of the MLB postseason when excitement for baseball is supposed to reach a fever pitch, and what do we get? The longest amount of time with no baseball games since opening day. Seriously, when was the last game of the NLCS? Thursday? That's a layoff as long as the All-Star Break, but this time we don't get the All-Star Game in the middle of it. I know the precious TV programmers must know their schedules 500 days in advance, regardless of the outcome of the playoffs, but I don't think it's fair to make the fans wait almost a full work week between playoff rounds. And that's not counting the fringe fans who might have tuned in to a game or two over the weekend but who have lost interest after four long days off.

And not only is it unfair to the fans, it's a serious drawback to the players as well. MLB's reporters are doing all they can to convince us that the time off won't hurt the Royals (who have been sitting for one more day than the Giants). But past results are not encouraging for playoff teams coming off long rest periods facing up against hot opponents. Last week, my friend brought up the 2007 Rockies who, like the Royals, won their play-in game and swept the first two rounds of the playoffs. Then they sat for a week and got steamrolled by a Red Sox team coming off one of the most exciting ALCS's in recent memory. I would add to that the 2012 Tigers, who swept the Yankees in the ALCS, sat for a week, then got swept by (who else?) the Giants after their dramatic come-from-behind NLCS against (who else?) the Cardinals.

I'm not saying this situation is exactly analogous to those two examples since these Giants will have been off for almost as much time as their opponents and the Cardinals never really seemed like a big threat in this year's NLCS. But did you see the energy in San Francisco after they won Game 5 on that walk-off home run? The players were going nuts, the fans were going nuts, much more so than when Jarrod Dyson's prediction came true in Kansas City a day earlier. I know the time off allows both teams to line up their ideal pitching rotations for the World Series, but the Giants also get to carry all that momentum with them into the next round.

They say baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, and the Royals' postseason so far has seemed an awful lot like a sprint - and not just because of all those stolen bases, heyo! For all Grant Brisbee's reasons and more, I'm rooting for the Royals to take home this year's World Series trophy - even though I don't subscribe to the theory that you should support the team that eliminated your favorite team on principle. But honestly, with how the playoffs have been shaping up so far I'm not sure if the speedy upstarts are in a great position. Although perhaps the radio stations of San Francisco's anti-Lorde antics will be enough to shift the karmic tide back to the underdogs. Tune in to the World Series starting tomorrow at 8pm ET on Fox to find out!