by Michael Duca

KANSAS CITY–The thing that jumps out at me is were going to know fairly early in these games whose going to win them. There shouldn’t be a lot of lead changing hands late in the game. You got statistically one of the if not the best bull pen back ends in baseball history with the Royals against statistically one of the if not the best post season bullpens with the Giants.

Javier Lopez the Giant reliever has not allowed a lot of runs since John Kennedy was in office. Lopez and the Giants who faced the St.Louis Cardinals in the NLCS faced Cards pitcher Matt Carpenter who was clearly the Cards best hitter coming down the stretch and probably all season. It’s going to come down to the middle of the game.

It’s going to come down to whether or not if they can get the starters out before the bullpens can get to their lockdown position. That means getting to the Royals starters in the fourth or fifth innings at the latest. The Giants don’t have the seventh, eighth, ninth inning guys, that are as devestating as Kansas City does but but they got more guys in the sixth inning as KC does.

Not the line up persay but the innings for the bullpen seventh, eighth and ninth innings are stronger for the Royals than it is for San Francisco. The sixth inning maybe the fifth inning are stronger for the Giants than they are for KC certainly for no other team in the playoffs and maybe no other team in baseball has a pitcher like Giant reliever Yusmeiro Petit.

Petit has been kind of the secret weapon that Giants manager Bruce Bochy has unleashed only when needed but Petit has answered the called as anybody possibly could. In the running game the Royals in the ALCS didn’t try to run very much against the Baltimore Orioles and Bochy said it best first of all it’s not on your catcher it’s on your pitching staff that needs to make it more difficult for the Royals.

If you look at the Giants starters Madison Bumgarner 42 percent of the time had attempted base stealers thrown out. Pitcher Jake Peavy’s numbers are almost as good from the right side, Tim Hudson doesn’t hold runners on very well, Ryan Vogelsong doesn’t hold runners on very well, the Giants pitching staff knows how to draw in their running game.

The Giants didn’t neutralize it worth squat when they went back to KC in August the Royals ran wild on them. They stole eight bases in one game you obviously can’t let that happen the Giants were also swept by the Royals in that series. Bochy explained that as simply as possible how you stop the KC running game “don’t put guys on.”

Michael Duca is covering the 2014 World Series for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

photo credit: google images