A’s Fans Should Chant: Let’s Go Royals!

If the A’s can’t have home field advantage, we should all hope the Royals tie the division.Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s go Royals! Three words that no A’s fan should be saying ever but especially right now in the final stretch to the post season unless, of course, you want the A’s to win.

How does cheering the Royals help the A’s win? I’m glad you asked. The Royals currently sit one game back of the Detroit Tigers with two games left to play and if the two teams end the season in a tie, they have to play a tie-breaker on Monday.

A tie-breaker game, for these two teams, throws a huge curveball into their post season plans, both teams having set up their rotations for game 1 starts or wild card starts. A sudden 163rd game would mean that the teams would either have to throw in their ace, a game ahead of normal schedule, or throw in their fifth starter on normal rest. I’ve never managed a baseball team but I’d assume that we’d be looking at a Max Scherzer and James Shields pitching match in the tie breaker. No team wants to pin all of their post season hopes on their fifth starter. 

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With the wild card game landing on the following day, both of these aces would be out of the rotation for a start against the A’s and we’d be looking at a matchup between our ace, John Lester, and, probably, David Price or Jeremy Guthrie. Add to that, the A’s will enjoy a day off to practice turning double plays and throwing out base stealers while the Royals and Tigers will be playing their 11th consecutive game without a break going into the post season. That could work against the A’s in that they’d be facing a team “in the groove” and coming off the biggest win of their season or it could work for the A’s in that they’d be playing a team on their 12th day in a row, down an ace and having just battled for the spot.

Price has yet to face the A’s, except for Jonny Gomes who hit .125 off of him this year. Price is 14-12 for the season with an ERA of 3.36 and he’s pitched a career high 241 innings. With 25 home runs, he’s tied for 4th in the league whereas Jon Lester is tied for 32nd with only 16 home runs.

A’s batters have hit .288 off of Guthrie. He is 1-1 with an ERA of 3.52 against the A’s this season, both of his starts coming during the infamous “slide”. Compare that to Shields who has pitched against the A’s with a 3.21 ERA but has gone deeper into games than Guthrie has. There’s no way to look at this where Guthrie isn’t the prefered opponent against Lester’s ridiculously low post season ERA in a one game playoff. The fact that he’s right handed, which is also true of Shields, only solidifies my desire to have him go up against our bats.

The chances of the A’s getting home field advantage are very slim. They would need to win the next two games against Texas, which would be their first three game winning streak since the last time the Royals were in the playoffs, and the Royals would have to lose both of their games this weekend. It is mathematically possible but highly unlikely when you consider what Kansas City is fighting for and how good Texas has been playing as of late.

Obviously, my preference would be to have the wild card game in Oakland, where I have a ticket ready, but if the A’s have to play this game on the road, I have to root for a tie breaker game between KC and Detroit. Given how the A’s have performed lately, they can and should desire to use, every advantage they can get and having either team’s number two pitcher is better than either team’s number one.

Let’s go Royals!