By Sam McPherson

The San Francisco Giants like winning Game One of the World Series.

This is the fourth straight time now, dating back to 2002, the Giants have won the opener of the Fall Classic, and while it didn’t work out for them the first time 12 years ago against the then-Anaheim Angels, it certainly set them on the right path in 2010 and 2012. Of course, 25 years ago, San Francisco did not win the first game of the 1989 World Series, as the Oakland Athletics went on to sweep the Giants that October.

So, yes, all in all, you’d rather win Game One than lose it.

Madison Bumgarner threw seven innings of one-run baseball, and the Giants scored three times in the first inning off James Shields on their way to a 7-1 win in Kansas City. This was the first time the Royals had lost a game this postseason.

Game Two is scheduled for Wednesday evening, again at Kauffman Stadium.

History Repeating for San Francisco

In 2010, the Giants used an 11-run outburst in Game One to jump-start the Series against the Texas Rangers in style. San Francisco’s light-hitting offense came alive in Game Two as well, scoring nine runs in a shutout win. The Rangers never knew what hit them, really, as the Giants went on to win their first championship since 1954 in just five games.

Two years ago, Justin Verlander got out-dueled by Barry Zito in Game One — let that one sink in for a moment — as the Giants won Game One, 8-3 over the Detroit Tigers. Just like in 2010, San Francisco’s opponent never really got it going, and was swept in four games while being outscored 16-6 and shut out twice.

Even back in 2002, the Giants jumped out to a 4-1 lead on their way to a 4-3 win in Anaheim. After taking the Game One advantage, San Francisco eventually went back to Southern California with a 3-2 Series lead for Game Six, and the team was just a handful of outs away from winning it all in that contest, before disaster struck.

This blowout win on Tuesday night looks a lot more like 2010 and 2012 than 2002, for sure.

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Royals Get Dethroned at Home

Kansas City managed just four hits against Bumgarner, a pitcher the Royals beat back on August 8. But in a matchup on postseason mojo against postseason mojo, the Giants came out on top this time.

Every Giants starter in the offensive lineup had a hit tonight, except National League Championship Series hero Travis Ishikawa. Meanwhile, a Royals lineup that had averaged more than five runs per game this postseason was held to just one: catcher Salvador Perez hit a solo home run in the seventh inning.

The Royals had only five base runners all night, which didn’t give them a lot of opportunity to wreak havoc in their normal fashion, and they went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. Kansas City’s best shot came in the third inning when they put runners on second and third with nobody out.

But two strikeouts and a walk later, Eric Hosmer grounded out to end the threat — and the possibility of a comeback, for all intents and purposes. The Giants scored two more runs in the top of the fourth to effectively put the game out of reach.

Game Two Outlook

The Royals already find themselves in a must-win situation, sending Yordano Ventura to the mound against San Francisco’s Jake Peavy.

Peavy was a disaster last October for the Red Sox, giving up 10 earned runs in 12 2/3 innings in the postseason. But somehow, he’s come to the Giants this postseason, and — like so many other journeymen before him in San Francisco uniforms — he’s suddenly discovered a fountain of youth with the organization. He’s given up just two earned runs in 9 2/3 innings this October for the Giants.

Ventura has been inconsistent this postseason, holding the Angels to one run in seven innings and then giving up four runs in 5 2/3 innings against the Baltimore Orioles. But his season-long effort — a 3.20 ERA and a 125 ERA+ — is significantly better than the numbers Peavy put up this year with the Red Sox and the Giants (combined 3.73 ERA and 100 ERA+).

On paper, the matchup still favors Kansas City, but we’ve seen the Giants pull so many “clutch” performances out of nowhere in the last few Octobers, it’s hard to understand how and why they won’t just do it again.

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Sam McPherson is a freelance writer covering all things Oakland A’s. His work can be found on Examiner.com.

By Daniel Rathman

While this year’s Fall Classic was billed as the first-ever matchup of teams that failed to win 90 games in a 162-game season, the subplot for Game 1 featured two much-less-dubious feats. The Kansas City Royals entered Tuesday as the only team ever to win its first eight games in a postseason. The San Francisco Giants came to Kauffman Stadium having won their last seven playoff series openers on the road, the longest such streak in major-league history. One of those runs would end, the other would live on, and the latter’s owner would jump out to a 1-0 lead.

That’s significant, because the winner of the opener has gone on to take 10 of the last 11 titles. After a 7-1 romp, in which they silenced the crowd early and added on before the home club could counter, the Giants now have history on their side.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. Giants starter Madison Bumgarner took the hill with a 3-0 lead, which spelled trouble for the Royals, because the left-hander had not permitted a run in either of his first two World Series assignments — Game 4 in 2010, Game 2 in 2012 — and had set the record for the most consecutive scoreless playoff innings on the road earlier this October. Bumgarner was aggressive, throwing first-pitch strikes to 21 of the 26 batters he faced, and the Royals did not get on the board until the 25th batter, Salvador Perez, launched a solo home run with two away in the seventh inning.By then, it was 7-0 Giants, more than enough to console the 25-year-old, who lost his record streak as a visitor at 32 2/3 frames.

2. The visiting Giants never trailed on Tuesday, thanks in large part to their three-run first-inning rally, capped by a two-run jack from Hunter Pence. Bruce Bochy’s right fielder dug in with more experience against James Shields than any other Giant, but his résumé before Game 1 — 0-for-11 with three strikeouts — was fit only for the recycling bin.

That high fastball he sent over the center-field wall in the first and his leadoff double that sparked a two-run Giants fifth earned Pence a post-game interview last night. Pence also drew two walks against the bullpen, becoming the first player to log two extra-base knocks and two free passes in a World Series game since Carlos Ruiz in Game 2 in 2008, which, coincidentally, was Shields’s only previous Fall Classic outing.

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3. It probably won’t make Shields feel any better this morning, but he’s far from the first pitcher to suffer at the Giants’ hands in a recent playoff series opener. Since the turn of the century (14 series), Game 1 starters facing San Francisco are a combined 0-12 with an 8.00 ERA.

The pair who watched their teams go on to win were the Reds’ Johnny Cueto, who exited with an injury one batter into the 2012 NLDS, and the Cardinals’ Lance Lynn, who was done after 3 2/3 in Game 1 of the same year’s NLCS.

4. One thing can be said for the Royals: While they struggled to score against Bumgarner, they made the southpaw work. Ned Yost’s lineup ranked second-to-last in the American League and 27th in the majors by seeing 3.74 pitches per plate appearances during the regular season, a tick ahead of the Seattle Mariners (3.73), who sat in the junior circuit’s caboose. On Tuesday, Kansas City averaged 4.06 offerings per trip — which would have eked out the Red Sox (4.05) for the league lead had they sustained it from April through September.

ALCS Most Valuable Player Lorenzo Cain was a pest throughout the night. He made life difficult for the Giants’ ace in the very first inning, when he fell behind 0-2, laid off of two balls to even the count, fouled off three straight pitches, and then took offering no. 8 for the team to give the Royals their first base runner. Cain fought his way out of another 0-2 hole to work a six-pitch walk that loaded the bases in the third, before Bumgarner finally retired the center fielder on the seventh pitch of their meeting in the sixth.

Yost’s center fielder was the only home hitter to earn his way aboard twice in Game 1.

5. After downing the Rangers in five games in 2010 and sweeping the Tigers in 2012, the Giants have now won seven consecutive World Series contests. That might sound impressive, but it only puts them halfway to the all-time record of 14. Bochy’s bunch would have to sweep the Royals and bring the brooms in its next trip to the Fall Classic just to match the 1996-2000 Bombers.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

By Sam McPherson

This isn’t the way the San Francisco Giants scripted their third trip to the World Series in the last five seasons, and that’s just fine with the Kansas City Royals.

The Royals’ bats came alive in the sixth inning in Game Two Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium, as Kansas City turned five hits and a walk into five runs to break open a tie game. The Royals bullpen then finished out the game, as the Giants failed to jump out to a 2-0 Series lead like they did in 2010 and 2012 on their way to championships.

With the 7-2 victory for the Royals, the Fall Classic heads back to San Francisco tied at one game apiece — much like the last wild-card series did in 2002, when the Giants eventually lost to the then-Anaheim Angels in seven games.

There’s no use drawing any more comparisons, however, right now. These two games in Kansas City couldn’t have been more different from each other — in outcome, form or function. Predictability goes out the window in October, anyway, as we’ve all learned in the Bud Selig era of the World Series.

Why Kansas City Needed This

History is rarely kind to teams that lose the first two games of the World Series at home, and that’s what the Royals were starting at on Wednesday. But this young team shook off the pressure, and they played the kind of game they needed to play.

Try to remember how shocking it was back in 1996 when the Atlanta Braves — the defending champions, who had been in the World Series four times in five seasons at that point — took a 2-0 lead over the New York Yankees after two games in the Bronx. Those Yankees were a relatively unknown commodity at the time; they’d lost in the American League Division Series to the Seattle Mariners in 1995, dramatically, and they weren’t proven winners like the Braves were.

But the Yankees stormed back to take four straight from Atlanta and launch a dynasty.

Kansas City just avoided having that kind of pressure put on them by winning Game Two.

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Why San Francisco Isn’t Sweating It

These Giants have been here before.

Well, maybe not specifically here in the World Series, but San Francisco just faced this same predicament in the National League Championship Series. They took Game One in St. Louis and then lost Game Two. Coming back home to AT&T Park, the Giants proceeded to win three very close games to end the series abruptly.

That’s what San Francisco would like to do again this weekend.

Added incentive for the Giants: Both their 2010 and 2012 Series-clinching games came on the road, first in Texas and then in Detroit. San Francisco would like nothing better than to give its hometown crowd the happiness of winning one on the home field.

The Giants haven’t clinched a Series championship on their home field since… 1922, when the team was in New York.

Suffice it to say, there’s probably not a Giants fan alive who can say he or she saw the team clinch a World Series title on its home field.

Game Three Outlook

Thursday is a travel day, and Friday will be one of those “Orange” nights in San Francisco at AT&T Park, for sure. And San Francisco starter Tim Hudson will need all the energy he can get from the home crowd.

Hudson is old: At age 39, he struggled with a 4.73 ERA in the second half of the season. The postseason has jacked him up a little bit, as Hudson has posted a 3.29 in his two October starts. But every time out has to be a grind for the old guy after throwing 189 1/3 innings in the regular season, one year after fracturing his ankle.

For the Royals, it will be journeyman Jeremy Guthrie: The 35-year-old pitcher’s second-half ERA was 3.50, so his stamina may be a bit better than Hudson’s for this big game. Guthrie gave up just one run in his only postseason appearance this October, going five innings against the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS.

Neither starter has ever made an appearance in the World Series before in their long careers, so look for Friday night’s game to be all about the offenses.

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Sam McPherson is a freelance writer covering all things Oakland A’s. His work can be found on Examiner.com.

By Daniel Rathman

Armed with perhaps the most dominant late-inning relief corps in the majors, the Royals were 65-5 when leading after six innings this year. So even though Game 2 started ominously, with a leadoff home run by Gregor Blanco, all Kansas City needed to even the series was for its rookie starter, Yordano Ventura, to keep the offense in the game long enough for them to get to his counterpart, Jake Peavy.

Ventura stuck to the script, holding the Giants to just one more run in his next 4 1/3 innings on the hill, before Kelvin Herrera stranded two inherited runners to preserve a 2-2 tie in the top of the sixth. That set the stage for the Royals to pull away in an eventual 7-2 victory that knotted the World Series at one game apiece.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. The Royals had two reasons to feel confident about carrying a draw into the bottom of the sixth: Their three-headed bullpen monster of Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland, and Peavy’s postseason credentials. In eight career playoff assignments preceding Game 2, the right-hander had never recorded 18 outs.

Peavy needed 20 pitches to get out of the first inning, but he spent just seven and eight in the fourth and fifth, respectively, leaving his count at 57. Efficiency was on the right-hander’s side, but the lineup wasn’t, as he’d have to navigate the heart of Ned Yost’s order for the third time. Manager Bruce Bochy elected to let him try, but a single by Lorenzo Cain and a walk drawn by Eric Hosmer prompted the skipper to give Peavy the hook.

That’s when the Royals’ bullpen advantage became apparent for the first time in the series.

Jean Machi took over for Peavy and promptly coughed up the lead on a single by Billy Butler. Two batters later, Salvador Perez doubled home a pair off of Hunter Strickland. Omar Infante followed with a two-run bomb, and the rout was on at Kauffman Stadium.

2. Infante’s long ball was the fifth surrendered by Strickland this October, a heaping slice of humble pie for the first-year reliever, who served up only three in 38 2/3 minor-league frames before joining the Giants as a September call-up. Despite his high-90s gas, Strickland now holds the record for big flies allowed in a single postseason, a loud indication that he’ll need to improve his command to lock down a late-inning role with the club going forward.

He might also need to do a better job of keeping his emotions in check. The Royals’ bench briefly emptied as Perez and Infante touched home plate, because Strickland appeared to yell something at Kansas City’s catcher. Strickland said after the game that the dustup was merely a misunderstanding.

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3. The Royals had two singles, a double, and a walk in the first inning — production that typically yields more than one run when the pitcher does not benefit from a double play or an out on the bases. Fortunately for Peavy, his battery-mate, Buster Posey, gunned down Alcides Escobar attempting to steal second after a leadoff infield single. That would ultimately prevent the hosts from putting a crooked number on the board.

Kansas City’s team speed was a hot topic heading into the World Series, after Jarrod Dyson, Terrance Gore, and Co. wreaked havoc on the A’s, Angels, and Orioles to the tune of 13 stolen bases in eight games. Two games into the Fall Classic, it hasn’t been a factor: Neither side has swiped a bag, and the Royals are 0-for-1.

4. To the extent that head-to-head experience against a pitcher matters to hitters, the Royals had a distinct advantage on Wednesday. They’d collectively logged 190 plate appearances against Peavy, many of them during the 33-year-old’s time with the White Sox. None of the Giants had ever stared down Ventura.

Given Butler’s past encounters with Peavy, it should come as no surprise that the designated hitter played a pivotal role in Game 2. Butler had faced the righty 37 times and gone 14-for-33 (.424 average) with a double and three home runs. His 1.214 lifetime OPS off of Peavy was tops among right-handed batters who’ve seen him more than 25 times, nearly 100 points better than the next-best mark, held by Albert Pujols (1.122).

Butler singled home Cain to tie the game in the opening frame, and his presence in the on-deck circle likely sealed Bochy’s decision to go to the bullpen. The 28-year-old cashed in a belt-high mistake from Machi to become the first Royal to notch tying and go-ahead knocks in the same postseason contest since George Brett did it in Game 3 of the 1985 ALCS.

5. After shutting down the Rangers in the deciding Game 5 of the 2010 World Series and contributing critical innings out of the bullpen en route to the Giants’ 2012 title, Tim Lincecum had an uneventful first two rounds of the 2014 postseason. Uneventful, mostly, because he hadn’t seen the mound.

The right-hander did not appear in Game 1, but he made headlines anyway by missing the pregame introductions. Bochy revealed on Tuesday that Lincecum was throwing up before the series opener, though he felt better shortly after first pitch and could have been used if necessary.

On Wednesday, Lincecum finally made his 2014 playoff debut in mop-up duty. He cruised through the seventh and retired the first two Royals batters in the eighth, before slipping on a follow-through and calling for the trainer. Lincecum left the game with what Bochy later said was lower-back tightness, and his status for the rest of the series is unclear. Since the Giants made it this far without using their erstwhile ace, they likely would not miss a beat if one of Erik Cordier, Juan Gutierrez or George Kontos were to replace him on the roster.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

By Daniel Rathman

In the last 56 World Series that began with the road team earning a 1-1 split, there has been no home-field advantage for the hosts in Game 3. They were 26-30 at the start of play on Friday, including the 2002 affair between the Giants and Angels, in which San Francisco took one of two in Anaheim, but fell in its return to AT&T Park and eventually lost in seven games.

Now, they are 26-31.

Manager Ned Yost and the Royals did not play by the National League book in Game 3. They did not steal, hit-and-run or bunt, even in a close game. They did not pinch-hit, pinch-run or make a double switch, even though their starter left with nobody out in the sixth. And yet, they prevailed by a final score of 3-2.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. The 458th major-league start of Tim Hudson’s career marked his first time toeing the rubber in a World Series game. When he kicked and dealt to Royals leadoff man Alcides Escobar, he handed over what had been the league’s longest drought among active pitchers to the Mets’ Bartolo Colon, who is at 436.

He also handed the Royals a runner in scoring position, with a fastball that sailed high and tempted Escobar enough for the shortstop to swing at the first pitch and hammer it off the base of the left-field wall for a double. Two productive ground balls later, the Royals were up, 1-0.

2. While the Giants stuck with the same eight regulars who led them to the pennant, the Royals — stripped of designated hitter Billy Butler — made a change. Norichika Aoki rode the pine, as Yost bumped Alex Gordon up to the no. 2 spot in the order, slid Lorenzo Cain over to right field and deployed the much rangier Jarrod Dyson to cover AT&T Park’s spacious gap in right-center. Dyson, previously utilized in a pinch-runner and defensive-replacement role, hit eighth in the revised lineup.

The returns on those moves were mixed.

On the one hand, Cain’s superb defense spared visiting starter Jeremy Guthrie two early-inning hits, which might have sparked a game-tying rally. On the other, Dyson’s feeble bat in the no. 8 slot may have cost the Royals a chance to add on before Hudson settled in. As the adage goes, you can’t steal first base, and Hudson ended the second inning by getting Dyson to bounce into double play with runners at first and second to keep it a one-run game.

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3. Guthrie rendered that setback moot by silencing the Giants through the fifth, but Hudson matched him batter for batter, as they combined to retire 20 in a row. Guthrie himself was the 20th out in that streak, but his sixth-inning ground out preceded an Alcides Escobar single and Alex Gordon double that made it 2-0 before Giants manager Bruce Bochy could warm up a reliever. Hudson got Cain to ground out and departed in favor of Javier Lopez, who matched wits with Eric Hosmer in what would be the biggest at-bat of the game.

The chess match between lefty specialist and lefty hitter lasted 11 pitches, and on the 11th — a full-count, get-me-over fastball that signaled Lopez would rather go after Hosmer than use an open first base to take on Mike Moustakas — the first baseman roped a single that put the Royals up by three.

They’d need that insurance tally to hold off a spirited Giants rally that chased Guthrie in the sixth and put Kelvin Herrera on the ropes. In the end, Hosmer helped Guthrie not only to get the win, but also to make history in the process.

Guthrie is the first starting pitcher to be credited with a “W” in the postseason after recording no more than 15 outs and notching zero strikeouts since the New York Giants’ Hugh McQuillan in Game 3 of the 1924 World Series. The catch: McQuillan pitched just 3 2/3 innings in that contest, so he only got the win because that game predated the five-inning requirement.

4. Yost’s plan to go from Guthrie to the “HDH” crew of Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland got derailed when Herrera walked Hunter Pence to begin the last of the seventh. The right-hander fanned Brandon Belt, but Yost opted to use lefty Brandon Finnegan with the like-handed Travis Ishikawa and Brandon Crawford due up.

In doing so, Yost made Finnegan the first pitcher in baseball history to appear in the College World Series — for Texas Christian University — and the major-league World Series in the same year. The 17th-overall pick in the June draft, Finnegan retired pinch-hitter Juan Perez on a fly ball and struck out Crawford to strand Pence at first and keep the Royals on top 3-2.

5. Davis and Holland teamed up to go six up, six down to crush any Giants’ hopes of an 11th-hour comeback. In doing so, they gave the Royals their first World Series lead in franchise history.

The Royals won the pennant in 1980, but they lost the first two games of that World Series to the Phillies and only managed to tie it before going down in six. They captured both the pennant and the world championship in 1985, but that series went the distance, and the Cardinals squandered 2-0 and 3-1 advantages.

Now, in their third trip to the Fall Classic, the Royals are up 2-1 against a Giants franchise that has lost eight straight World Series when starting with a 1-1 split.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

By Sam McPherson

The Kansas City Royals had the San Francisco Giants right where they wanted them in Game Three of the 2014 World Series: trailing going into the late innings. In the endgame, it was vaunted Kansas City closer Greg Holland versus the heart of the Giants’ batting order in the ninth: catcher Buster Posey, third baseman Pablo Sandoval and right fielder Hunter Pence.

Eight pitches later, the Royals had a 3-2 victory — and a 2-1 World Series lead.

When the Fall Classic has been tied at one game apiece, the winner of Game Three has gone on to win the Series 37 times out of 55, but all this win does for Kansas City is guarantee that — at worst — the Royals might get to go home before this championship best-of-seven matchup is over.

No one counts the Giants out, obviously, but this is a strange place for this core group that has never even come close to trailing in a World Series before now.

The Royals scored a run in the first and two in the sixth — all off San Francisco starter Tim Hudson — to take a 3-0 lead, and the Giants battled back with two runs of their own off Kansas City starter Jeremy Guthrie in the bottom of the sixth. And then, it was all up to the Royals bullpen to make sure the lights went down in the city by the bay.

What the Royals Must Now Do in Game Four

This is a tough one; the worst Kansas City could do in these three games at AT&T Park was win one game. They’ve done that. Now, the pressure is off the Royals somewhat, and they can be even more aggressive in Game Four.

That means running on the base paths and taking some chances. They didn’t need to do those things in Game Three, because they scored enough runs off Hudson to get the mid-game lead and then win the game. With the lead, the Royals can get conservative. No more need to do that, perhaps.

In the end, Kansas City just needs to keep doing what it has been doing: playing stellar defense, getting clutch hitting and pitching lights-out baseball.

It’s pretty straight-forward, actually.

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What the Giants Must Now Do in Game Four

Win. It’s that simple.

If San Francisco can win Game Four, they know they have Madison Bumgarner on the mound for Game Five on Sunday night. And that favors the Giants. But they have to hit a little bit more, of course.

The heart of the San Francisco. order went 1-for-11 on Friday night, and that will have to improve. Pinch-hitter Michael Morse came through with the seeing-eye double in the sixth inning, but the Giants offense was mostly quiet in this one.

By the way, Sandoval had his postseason consecutive-games reaching base streak snapped, and that may be all you need to know about the San Francisco night.

What we do know definitively now is that the Giants won’t win the World Series this year in AT&T Park. If they beat the Royals in the Fall Classic, it’ll happen back in Kansas City.

Game Four Outlook

First off, the forecast is for rain on Saturday, so there is a chance that could impact the game. Second, the pitching matchup for Game Four definitely favors the visiting Royals.

It’ll be Jason Vargas (2.38 ERA this October in 11 1/3 innings) for Kansas City against Ryan Vogelsong (5.19 ERA this October in 8 2/3 innings). The Royals will look to bounce Vogelsong early and hand the game over to their bullpen again.

The Giants will look to scratch out runs and get their rhythm back: After scoring seven runs in Game One, San Francisco has scored just four runs in the last 18 innings of the World Series.

Expect another close game on Saturday night, just like Friday night. Whichever team gets the early lead will be in the driver’s seat, obviously.

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Sam McPherson is a freelance writer covering all things Oakland A’s. His work can be found on Examiner.com.

By Daniel Rathman

Friday’s Game 3 was a relatively tidy, 3-2 affair. Both starters were crafty and efficient, working into the sixth and benefiting from quality defense. Both managers used only their four most trustworthy relievers. For the Royals, the game went precisely as planned.

What a difference a day makes.

There was nothing tidy about Saturday’s Game 4, in which the sides combined for 15 runs on 28 hits. Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong was done before the end of the third. His counterpart, Jason Vargas, got the hook with nobody out in the fifth. There was an error, a host of defensive misplays and a month’s worth of infield and ducksnort singles. Ten different players occupied the no. 9 slot in the Giants’ batting order. But when the dust settled, exactly four hours after Vogelsong’s first pitch, the hosts celebrated an 11-4 romp that evened the series at two games apiece.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. Vogelsong sandwiched two strikeouts around a Lorenzo Cain single to post a goose egg in the opening frame. In doing so, he became the first pitcher in the series to hold the opposition scoreless in the top of the first. Moments later, the Giants manufactured a run, as Gregor Blanco walked, moved to second on a wild pitch, stole third and scored on an RBI ground out by Hunter Pence.

The early narrative: good fundamental baseball by an experienced postseason team. The top of the third inning, in which Vargas batted twice, flipped that script.

Vargas, who flied out to center, made the loudest contact of the frame, and the Royals scored four times nonetheless. With one out and Alcides Escobar at first, Alex Gordon grounded a possible double-play ball to first baseman Brandon Belt, whose throw to second was good enough to complete the fielder’s choice but too high for shortstop Brandon Crawford to make a relay back to first to execute the twin killing.

The inning could have ended there.

Instead, it continued with a squibber by Cain that was hit just softly enough that Crawford could not get him at first. Then, Eric Hosmer hit a slow bouncer between Belt and second baseman Joe Panik; Belt elected to field it ahead of Panik, but Vogelsong was late covering first, and the Royals tied the game. Vogelsong, evidently rattled by the miscue, walked Mike Moustakas to load the bases, and then gave up back-to-back singles.

By the time emergency reliever Jean Machi punched out Vargas on a borderline 3-2 offering with the bases loaded, the Royals were up 4-1.

2. It was easy, at that point, to second-guess manager Bruce Bochy’s decision to start Vogelsong over Madison Bumgarner, who would have been on three days’ rest, and Yusmeiro Petit, who had transitioned to a full-time relief role in October after serving as a swingman during the regular season. By the end of the game, with Bumgarner lined up to start tomorrow’s Game 5, Bochy looked like a genius.

As the Giants chipped away at the Royals’ three-run edge, Petit did more than his fair share to enable the comeback. He retired the visitors in order in the fourth, and then — after Bochy decided against using a pinch-hitter — Petit flared a single into center field.

The right-hander became the first reliever to log a hit in the Fall Classic since Al Leiter did it in 1993. Petit’s single was inconsequential, because Gregor Blanco popped out to strand both runners, but the two scoreless frames he turned in after it were pivotal.

A journeyman who came to the Giants on a minor-league deal in 2012, Petit is now the first major-league pitcher ever to notch three or more scoreless innings in three separate relief outings in the same postseason.

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3. After the Giants surged ahead, 7-4, in the last of the sixth, they turned to former Royal Jeremy Affeldt to protect the lead. That’s been a flawless plan dating back to Game 3 of the 2010 World Series.

The southpaw retired the side on 12 pitches, his 21st consecutive scoreless relief outing in the playoffs, a National League record. Mariano Rivera, who held foes off the board 23 straight times, is the only pitcher in major-league history who boasts a longer run of postseason impeccability.

4. Friday night was one to remember for Royals reliever Brandon Finnegan, who became the first pitcher ever to appear in the College World Series and major-league World Series in the same calendar year. Saturday night, on the other hand, was one that the southpaw will be eager to forget.

The 4-4 game got out of hand on Finnegan’s watch, as the Giants scored thrice in the sixth and put two on with nobody out in the seventh, forcing Kansas City skipper Ned Yost to call on Tim Collins. Unfortunately for Finnegan and the Royals, Collins allowed both inherited runners to score and tacked on two more by throwing away a bunt and coughing up a pair of doubles.

Finnegan wound up with five hits and two walks on his line in just an inning and two batters of work. He’s the first postseason reliever ever to permit at least that many knocks and walks without recording more than three outs.

If there’s a saving grace for the Royals from Saturday’s defeat, it’s that Collins mopped up the bottom of the eighth. The diminutive lefty was charged with two runs in as many innings, and he needed 39 pitches to get six outs, but Yost may have Collins to thank if things turn out better for Kansas City tonight.

Had Collins unraveled in the eighth, Yost would have been forced to turn to one of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, or Greg Holland, on whom he’s leaned repeatedly throughout the month. After a night off, all three should be fresh for the late innings of Game 5.

5. In the first five postseason assignments of his storybook career, Vogelsong did his part, delivering five or more innings while limiting foes to zero or one run.

His last two performances did not live up to that résumé.

In Game 4 of the NLCS, the Cardinals got to the 37-year-old for four runs in three innings, but Petit and the offense bailed Vogelsong out. Yesterday, Vogelsong didn’t even survive the third, but Petit and the bats picked him up again.

On a night when Petit did the yeoman’s work and the offense came alive, San Francisco’s starter was blessed with an all-important distinction: The Giants are 7-0 when Vogelsong toes the rubber in the playoffs. No other senior-circuit starter has ever set the stage for that many victories without digging his club an insurmountable hole in at least one defeat.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

By Sam McPherson

Down 4-1 early in Game Four of the World Series on Saturday night to the Kansas City, the San Francisco Giants responded with 10 unanswered runs to gallop away with an 11-4 victory, tying the Fall Classic at two games apiece.

After two straight wins by the Royals in the best-of-seven matchup, the Giants bats finally came alive in front of the home crowd. And on Sunday, San Francisco sends their best pitcher to the mound, probably for the last time this season. Madison Bumgarner and James Shields will reprise their Game One battle, which was another very one-sided affair in favor of the Giants.

San Francisco is hard to put away, as the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals found out in 2012 when both had the Giants pinned to the wall. We all know how that ended up. Now, this World Series becomes a best of three, and there will be a Game Six back in Kansas City on Tuesday night.

The Royals can shrug this one off as one of those nights, as every pitching move they made seemed to backfire, as six different San Francisco hitters drove in runs Saturday night. The Giants just want to maintain the home-crowd momentum they recaptured in Game Four and carry it over to Sunday — and back to Kansas City after that.

MadBum’s Last Stand

Bumgarner has pitched a total of 256 innings this year, regular season and postseason combined. That’s a lot of mileage on an arm, and this will definitely be his last start of the postseason barring some odd weather delays when the Series returns to Kansas City. He’s never thrown more than 223 innings before in his short career: This is uncharted territory for him.

The Giants have run starters Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum into the ground with their recent October successes, and maybe it’s Bumgarner’s turn to carry the load for this otherwise-mediocre rotation. Does he have one last sterling performance in him? San Francisco surely is hoping so.

Strangely, all three of Bumgarner’s postseason career losses have come at home. His one career postseason win at AT&T Park was Game Two of the 2012 Series against the Detroit Tigers.

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Where Is “Big Game” James?

How does one get a moniker like “Big Game” anyway? Shields hasn’t been particularly good for the Royals this October, in truth. And his career postseason ERA is an unsightly 5.74 over 53 1/3 innings. He’s been entirely hittable in the postseason for his career, giving up 68 hits and 14 walks over 10 starts in October for the Tampa Bay Rays and now the Royals.

His 3-5 record in the playoffs isn’t impressive either, of course. This year, the Oakland Athletics hammered him in the American League Wild Card Game, and after he was effective against the Los Angeles Angels in the Division Series, the Baltimore Orioles also took him to the woodshed in the League Championship Series.

The entire nickname seems to be based on the single postseason start he didn’t allow any runs: Game Two of the 2008 Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. Even then, he gave up seven hits and two walks in just 5 2/3 innings. If Shields doesn’t win Game Five, that “Big Game James” nonsense will need to be retired immediately.

Game Five Outlook

It’s hard to pick against Bumgarner in this one, since he’s been so good this postseason. But if you’re going to beat the lefty, AT&T Park is the place to do it. He was just 7-6 with a 4.03 ERA there during the regular season, although his postseason ERA at home this October is a more respectable 3.00 over 15 innings.

Shields has one quality start in four this postseason; the Giants lit him up for five runs on seven hits in just three innings back in Game One. We know the Royals bullpen is money, but it’s time for Shields to show he is, too.

Like most postseason games, this is just a coin flip — but if it goes to extra innings, and we may be due for one of those, the edge has to go to the Giants with the home-field advantage of batting last. Although that didn’t seem to bother the Royals in the Division Series against the Angels, of course.

So as noted, Game Five will be decided by the proverbial flip of the coin — the baseball gods tossing.

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Sam McPherson is a freelance writer covering all things Oakland A’s. His work can be found on Examiner.com.

By Daniel Rathman

Until Sunday, the most recent complete-game shutout in the World Series belonged to Josh Beckett, who led the Marlins past the Yankees in Game 6 in 2003. Less than one month after announcing his retirement, Beckett has passed that torch. Its new owner is Madison Bumgarner, who four-hit the Royals in a 5-0 Game 5 win.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. When Bumgarner took the hill, he became the third starter in major-league history to log six starts in a single postseason. When he left it to receive a hug from catcher Buster Posey, he became the third starter in major-league history to strike out eight without walking a batter in a playoff shutout.

Curt Schilling (2001) and Chris Carpenter (2011) previously made up the former club. Josh Beckett (2007 ALDS) and Cole Hamels (2010 NLDS) comprised the latter. With his 117-pitch gem last night, the 25-year-old Bumgarner became the first to earn membership cards to both.

2. While Bumgarner outclassed and overshadowed his counterpart, James Shields pitched well. The right-hander carried a 7.11 postseason ERA into Game 5, but he scattered eight hits over six innings of two-run ball, an outing much more befitting of his nickname, “Big Game James.”

The Royals’ vaunted late-inning relief corps was actually responsible for more of the Giants’ damage than their starter. Manager Ned Yost opted to use Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis in a futile bid to keep the game within striking distance as Bumgarner chased history. Both threw 24 pitches, 16 of them for strikes, and neither escaped unscathed.

Herrera was fine in the seventh inning, when he coaxed a double-play ball from Buster Posey to erase a walk drawn by Joe Panik, but he gave up two singles after Yost curiously left him in for the eighth. The skipper called for Davis to come to the rescue, and the right-hander’s night began with a strikeout of Brandon Belt.

Up next was the light-hitting Juan Perez, playing with a heavy heart. Perez heard earlier in the game about the passing of 22-year-old Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras, who was killed in a car crash in the Dominican Republic. He entered as a pinch-runner in the sixth inning, replaced Travis Ishikawa in left field, and then, batting for the first time in the eighth, came as close as anyone has this year to taking Davis deep.

Davis remains homer-free through 91 2/3 total innings this year, but he allowed both of Herrera’s runners to score, and then was charged with an unearned tally on a single by Brandon Crawford. The double was Perez’s first extra-base hit since September 13.

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3. All five of the Giants runs on Sunday were driven in by players who’d collected just one total RBI in the first four games of the series. Crawford picked up his first three — on a ground out in the second, and singles in the fourth and eighth — and Perez grabbed two on the aforementioned two-bagger to go with his sacrifice fly in Game 4.

On a night when leadoff man Gregor Blanco went 0-for-5 and the middle of the order notched nothing but singles against Shields and the Royals’ relievers, down-order production accounted for the bulk of Bumgarner’s support. The left-hander didn’t need much on Sunday, but the Giants’ lineup will be much tougher for Yordano Ventura to contend with in Game 6 if Ishikawa (2-for-3) and Crawford stay hot.

4. The 6-7-8 hitters in the Royals order, meanwhile, went 1-for-8 with four strikeouts, including Billy Butler’s pinch-hit appearance in the eighth. They shouldn’t feel too bad, because the top of the order, Alcides Escobar and Alex Gordon, was hitless in eight at-bats.

Bumgarner adhered to the pitching adage “get ahead and stay ahead” regardless of the hitter in the box. Twenty-five of 31 Royals batters saw first-pitch strikes and only two saw three balls without filling the count. Bumgarner’s opponents are in big trouble when they fall behind, as they hit just .207/.239/.332 this year after 0-1 counts. For comparison, Zack Cozart, the league’s worst qualifying regular by OPS in 2014, finished at .221/.268/.300 overall.

5. San Francisco’s ace has gobbled up at least seven innings in every start this postseason, and Sunday’s masterpiece was his second four-hit shutout of the month. At 47 2/3 total frames, Bumgarner sits two outs shy of Schilling’s 2001 record of 48 1/3 playoff innings in a single year.

Toeing the rubber again this October would give Bumgarner a chance to match Schilling. But it would also mean taking the mound just two full days removed from a 117-pitch output and put the lefty’s all-time-best (min. 25 innings) 0.29 career World Series ERA on the line.

Asked after the game if he’d be ready to go in relief in an all-hands-on-deck Game 7, Bumgarner replied, You know it.”

Read more from 5 Things You Missed.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

Before the Royals went down three games to two, leaving themselves with no path to victory besides forcing and prevailing in a winner-take-all Game 7, their manager, Ned Yost, admitted to secretly hoping that the 2014 Fall Classic would go the distance.

On Tuesday, the Royals granted their skipper’s wish with a decisive 10-0 beat-down of Jake Peavy and the Giants. Kansas City scored seven times in the second inning, induced a double play to get out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the third, and never looked back.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. Kauffman Stadium has long been a house of horrors for Peavy, who took the loss there in Game 2 and entered last night 1-6 in eight starts at the Royals’ home yard. The 33-year-old’s 6.50 ERA in Kansas City, amassed primarily during his stint with the White Sox, was the worst authored by any pitcher with at least 40 innings of work at the venue.

Peavy stranded runners at the corners in the first inning, but the Royals quickly snatched any momentum the right-hander built up with four hits in five batters to begin the second. A ducksnort, a line-drive single, a sharp grounder down the first-base line that got underneath a diving Brandon Belt for a double, a ground ball to Belt on which the Giants squandered an opportunity to record an out and a hard grounder past a diving third baseman Pablo Sandoval put an early end to Peavy’s night.

Moments after Peavy extended a dubious all-time record with his ninth consecutive postseason start of fewer than six innings, he watched all three of the runners he left score on Yusmeiro Petit’s watch. The carnage: five runs in 1 1/3 innings — including the biggest single frame in Royals postseason history — bumping Peavy’s already-awful ERA at Kauffman Stadium to 7.28.

2. Perhaps addled by the long wait to return to the mound, Yordano Ventura committed the cardinal sin of walking the bases loaded with a seven-run lead. But the 23-year-old earned a reprieve by coaxing a 6-4-3 twin killing off the bat of Buster Posey, and the Giants scarcely threatened the shutout the rest of the way.

The flame-throwing rookie completed seven innings, permitting just three hits, walking five and fanning four. Ventura only notched six swings-and-misses, but he was effectively wild in the third inning and simply effective in the other six. The Giants’ only extra-base hit was a second-inning double by Hunter Pence — and that ball was slapped down the first-base line. Ventura’s command and control left a bit to be desired, but he overcame those shortcomings with pure stuff that the Giants could not square up.

In doing so, Ventura became the first pitcher age 23 or younger to toss seven or more scoreless frames in a World Series game since Madison Bumgarner did it in 2010 and 2012. He is also just the fifth Dominican-born starter ever to earn a World Series win.

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3. The Royals’ 10th and final tally came after the seventh-inning stretch, when the game was well in hand and the party was on at Kauffman Stadium. Third baseman Mike Moustakas launched a Hunter Strickland offering 391 feet to right field for his fifth home run of the postseason, a franchise record.

The bottom third of Yost’s order jump-started the second-inning rally and continued to produce throughout the evening. Batting seventh, eighth, and ninth, respectively, Salvador Perez, Moustakas and Infante each collected two hits. All nine of Kansas City’s starters had at least one by the end of the third inning.

Meanwhile, for Strickland, Moustakas’s shot was gopher ball no. 6 of the playoffs, an all-time major-league high for a single October. The first-year righty’s record, set when Omar Infante went deep against him in Game 2, is now even more likely to stand the test of time.

4. The sixth games of Fall Classics have long spelled trouble for the Giants, which might explain why they were so eager to down the Rangers in five in 2010 and sweep the Tigers in 2012. San Francisco’s most recent Game 6 blues came a dozen years ago, at Angel Stadium, where the Giants blew a five-run lead in the late innings with a chance to capture the organization’s first title since it moved west from New York.

Somewhat frighteningly for Giants fans, the 2014 Fall Classic has precisely tracked the 2002 battle with the Halos, in which San Francisco took Game 1 on the road, dropped Game 2 away and Game 3 at home, bounced back to take Games 4 and 5 at AT&T Park and dropped Game 6 in Anaheim. If history is destined to repeat itself, the Royals will prevail, like the Angels did, in Game 7 tonight.

5. While the Royals chased Peavy just four outs into the game, they weren’t able to force Giants manager Bruce Bochy to use one of his primary relievers. Likewise, the Giants failed to mount a sufficient threat to lead Yost to warm up Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis or Greg Holland.

As a result, both clubs’ best bullpen arms will be well rested for Game 7, and the Game 5 starters, Bumgarner and James Shields, are available to help out, too. Neither side needs much length from its starter tomorrow. With a full menu of matchup options at their disposal, the skippers will happily settle for as many scoreless innings as they can get.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

By Daniel Rathman

When play began last night, visitors were 0-9 in Game 7 of the World Series since 1982. But the 2014 Giants had a horse in their stable that none of the nine road clubs that preceded them could ride.

San Francisco inched out to a 3-2 lead in the top of the fourth inning on Wednesday, and Jeremy Affeldt protected that razor-thin margin in the bottom half of the frame. That’s when Madison Bumgarner got up in the bullpen. And after the Giants went down in order in the top of the fifth, their ace put the team on his back and carried it to the finish line.

Here are five things you didn’t know about the game.

1. While Bumgarner will be remembered as the hero, the Giants could not have downed the Royals without the 4-through-7 hitters in their batting order: Pablo Sandoval, Hunter Pence, Brandon Belt and Michael Morse.

Long before Sandoval squeezed Salvador Perez’s foul pop for the final out of Game 7, he sparked both of San Francisco’s run-scoring rallies with a hit-by-pitch in the second and an infield single in the fourth. Both times, Pence singled to move Sandoval into scoring position. In the second, Belt singled to load the bases ahead of sacrifice flies by Morse and Brandon Crawford. In the fourth, Belt sent a productive fly ball to right, enabling Sandoval to move to third, wherefrom he scored on Morse’s ensuing single.

Sandoval later added an opposite-field double off of Wade Davis, his record-breaking 26th hit of the postseason. Pence and Belt became the first duo to collect at least one knock in every game of a seven-game World Series since Hank Bauer and Billy Martin of the 1956 Yankees.

If Wednesday marked the last time Sandoval, an impending free agent, will ever don a Giants uniform, he could not have chosen a better way to go out.

2. As the 4-through-7 hitters did the heavy-lifting, the top three batters in the Giants order combined to go 0-for-12 with five strikeouts, and the bottom two went 0-for-6 with five more.

Joe Panik, who’d struck out just three times in the postseason before Game 7, took home a hat trick, but he atoned for it by starting an outstanding double play. Panik’s middle-infield partner, Crawford, also fanned thrice, but he chipped in a sac fly. Buster Posey, who went 0-for-4 with a pair of punch-outs, made all of his contributions in the squat, putting down the signs for the San Francisco staff.

The 2012 National League MVP, Posey went yard in the sixth inning of the deciding Game 4 of the Fall Classic at Comerica Park. That long ball off of Max Scherzer remains his most recent postseason extra-base hit.

Worn down from a long season of catching, Posey was batting .302 at the end of the NLCS, but all of his knocks were singles. He went just 4-for-26 in the World Series, and all four of those hits only got him to first base, too. At least early on, Posey didn’t lack for hard-hit balls, but he never split a gap or parked one into the seats.

Posey’s fourth and final at-bat on Wednesday was his 69th of the playoffs. When he grounded out to second against Davis in the eighth, he usurped David Eckstein’s perch atop the “leaderboard” for most at-bats logged in a single postseason without an extra-base hit.

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3. Royals manager Ned Yost caught a steady stream of flak throughout the regular season and early in the playoffs for his bullpen management — in particular, his reluctance to use Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland before their respective seventh, eighth and ninth innings. With no tomorrow to worry about, Yost pledged a “quick hook,” announced that Herrera would be the first man out of the Kansas City bullpen and declared that any of the big three relievers could be asked to go more than one inning.

Home starter Jeremy Guthrie put a dent in that plan by lasting only 3 1/3 innings, and Herrera came on and promptly surrendered what would prove to be the game-winning single by Morse. Fortunately for the Royals, that was the last thing the hard-throwing righty did wrong in Game 7. Herrera got out of the fourth, then breezed through the fifth and sixth, racking up four strikeouts in 2 2/3 innings. Davis did his part, too, with a pair of goose eggs in the seventh and eighth, and Holland held the line in the ninth.

But by time Herrera settled in, it was already too late. Bochy’s hook came much sooner than Yost’s, as he pulled Tim Hudson — the oldest pitcher ever to start a World Series game — with two outs in the last of the second. Jeremy Affeldt did what Herrera could not do: He stranded two runners. And then, like Herrera, he proceeded to work two more innings, eventually earning his first-ever World Series win.

In bridging the gap from starter to closer, Affeldt extended his streak of scoreless postseason appearances to 22, so close, yet — with the Fall Classic over — so far from Mariano Rivera’s record of 23.

4. The Royals went 11-4 in October. In the past, whenever a team won 11 games in the playoffs, it was rewarded with the world championship. Not this year.

Yost’s squad was the first wild-card team to reach and win three games in the World Series since the league went to the one-game playoff format to determine which of each circuit’s two wild cards would advance to the Division Series. Hence, with last night’s 3-2 defeat, the Royals became the first team in major-league history to win 11 postseason games without winning it all.

By the same token, the Giants are the first team ever to require 12 wins to capture the title. They, too, earned a spot in the Division Series with a wild-card-playoff win, on the strength of Bumgarner’s four-hit shutout. San Francisco’s first and last postseason victories both ended with its ace on the hill.

5. That wasn’t the plan coming in, of course. Bochy was only counting on 40-50 pitches from Bumgarner, which, he probably reckoned, would get the southpaw through three innings, or — if he were supremely efficient — some or all of a fourth.

Bumgarner, who threw 117 pitches in Sunday’s Game 5, did not immediately have his best stuff or his crispest command, but he settled in quickly and was so relaxed that the telecast caught him yawning in the dugout as the Giants batted in the top of the seventh. He retired the side on nine pitches after the seventh-inning stretch, and after three frames on the bump, the 25-year-old’s pitch count was only 36.

Bochy let Bumgarner come back for the eighth, and 16 pitches later, he was back in the dugout. Fifty-two was over the skipper’s prescribed limit, but Bochy did not dare take the ball away from Bumgarner and place it in the hands of Santiago Casilla. Instead, he sent Bumgarner back out for his 14th inning in 75 hours. And 16 more pitches later — the last six of them under the stress of a runner at third, after poor outfield play by Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez turned a two-out Alex Gordon single into a triple — the Giants had their third championship in five years.

Bumgarner is seventh player ever to be named NLCS and World Series MVP in the same year. He’s the first pitcher in major-league history to throw a shutout and record a multi-inning save in the same World Series. He eclipsed Curt Schilling’s old record of 48 1/3 innings and kept right on rolling, all the way up to 52 2/3. And he became the first pitcher since Sandy Koufax to author at least four shutout innings in Game 7 of a World Series while pitching on two days rest.

But none of those facts or records guaranteed a championship.

For Bumgarner and the Giants, this one is the most important: He will forever be regarded as the hero in the first World Series Game 7 victory in the history of the franchise.

Read more from 5 Things You Missed.

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Daniel Rathman is a writer and editor for Baseball Prospectus. He has previously been a new media intern for New England Sports Network and served as editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily during the spring of 2012. Daniel is also a second-year urban planning student at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a research assistant at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

By Sam McPherson

The 2014 World Series will always be remembered for Madison Bumgarner and his seemingly unflappable left arm. He pitched the final five innings in a 3-2 win for the San Francisco Giants, as they claimed their third World Series title in five years. And this one was even more unlikely than the previous two.

The Giants won only 88 games in the regular season, nabbing the last wild-card playoff spot in the National League. But fueled by exceptional performances from unexpected sources — again — San Francisco once again is singing, “We Are the Champions” deep into the twilight of a fading Indian summer.

San Francisco beat two long-time trends in this game: It is the first time since 1979 that a team won Game Seven of the World Series on the road, and it’s the first time since 1975 that a team lost Game Six on the road but recovered to win Game Seven and claim the title.

And all it took to break those long-term trends was superhuman efforts from two key players on the Giants roster.

Bumgarner & Pence, Inc.

The one they call MadBum exceeded his previous single-season, career-high total in innings pitched by 46 2/3 innings this October — and those 46 2/3 innings were the best ones he pitched all year. Teams never let young players extend their career-high IP like this, because their arms fall off.

Bumgarner threw 270 innings in total this year, and he was lights out when he should have been losing feeling in his extremities.

Yes, he must be just that good. His World Series pitching records may last as long as former Giant Barry Bonds’ home-run records, and that will always give San Francisco fans something to crow about, even if the team falls below .500 again next season like they did after their last World Series title in 2012.

But don’t forget hitting heroes like right fielder Hunter Pence. He scuffled this regular season to the tune of a .777 OPS, but in the Series, he started hitting like Bonds. Pence must have taken the spring training tips the former Giant superstar shared last March to heart: Pence’s World Series OPS was a stellar 1.167 — very Bondsian, actually.

Pence’s career OPS is just .809, but in two Fall Classics for the Giants now, it’s just under the 1.000 mark (.996). It’s no wonder he’s beloved in the City by the Bay.

Thanks to these two high-rising October stars, San Francisco has another World Series flag to fly at AT&T Park.

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Royals Fall Short of the Throne

In the ninth inning, the Kauffman Stadium crowd was ready to believe: The Royals had a man on third, and the Kansas City team leader was at the plate with a chance to tie or win the Series. But catcher Salvador Perez popped out to end the game — and the season.

Kansas City played well enough to win, but in the end, the hitters couldn’t solve Bumgarner and his magic arm. Sometimes you just run into a player that’s hotter than you are.

The Royals and their small-payroll roster have nothing to be ashamed of, at all, however. The Giants outspent them by $60 million or so, and as is the baseball norm now, that money talks a lot in October. No small-payroll team has won the Series since 1997, and Kansas City took the big spenders all the way to the ninth inning of Game Seven before losing out.

History will show the Giants won the 2014 Fall Classic, but the Royals might have won the hearts of underdogs all across the nation.

Perhaps next season, it will be small-payroll teams from Oakland and Pittsburgh who give us a thrilling World Series.

And wouldn’t that be something?

Check out 5 Things You Missed from the World Series.

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Sam McPherson is a freelance writer covering all things Oakland A’s. His work can be found on Examiner.com.