It’s been a long time coming for the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals, but one of the two will end a treacherous title drought in the 2015 World Series.
The Royals came suffocatingly close to doing just that this time last year, when they took the San Francisco Giants the distance in a seven-game championship series. While they haven’t won the title since 1985, the Mets won it in 1986 and haven’t been back to the promised land since.
No matter how this one shakes out, a long time of suffering will end for a rabid fanbase. Let’s take a look into everything for the 2015 World Series.
2015 World Series Dates and TV Info
World Series Preview
They came so close in 2000 during the Subway Series and have flirted with contention once or twice since then, but the New York Mets finally appear to have found that championship gear.
It all begins on the back of some stellar pitching. While the rest of baseball tries to throw $30-million-a-year contracts at the biggest arms in the game, the Mets have proven you can grow a top-caliber rotation on your own.
Per Spotrac, the rotation of Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey is costing the Mets no more than $614,125 per player. Not only is the trio proving the best value in sports, but they’re also looking like one of the best rotations ever assembled, per J.J. Cooper of Baseball America:
New York needed every bit of that standout pitching throughout part of the season when the bats simply weren’t coming together, and that’s put the Mets alone in history, as John Buccigross of ESPN reported:
Of course, now things are coming together quite well in the Mets lineup. Trade-deadline acquisition Yoenis Cespedes is knocking the cover off the ball, while Daniel Murphy is in the midst of an all-time record six straight postseason games with a home run.
Tasked with slowing down that lineup—and finding a way to get past that scary pitching—are the Kansas City Royals.
As much as Kansas City struggled with Houston’s Dallas Keuchel in the American League Division Series, the Royals showed a daunting lineup isn’t to worry about. Against by far the most prolific offense in baseball in the American League Championship Series, Kansas City took down the Toronto Blue Jays by scoring in bunches.
It marked the Royals’ second straight AL pennant, as MLB Network showed:
Both clubs have shown throughout this exciting postseason that they can rise up above stiff challenges and also soundly beat clubs that have it going. It should make for a star-studded clash come Game 1 in Kansas City, when the Royals will begin their two-game homestand before turning to the Big Apple for three more.
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