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Almost exactly 12 months ago, Salvador Perez stepped to the plate in Game 7 of the World Series. It was the bottom of the ninth, there were two outs, the Royals were trailing by one and the tying run stood on third base, 90 feet away.

You know what happened next: Perez popped a Madison Bumgarner offering into foul territory, Pablo Sandoval squeezed it and the San Francisco Giants celebrated in front of a crestfallen Kauffman Stadium crowd.

So close, and yet so far.

This year, the Royals stormed into the playoffs on a mission, with the bitter taste of unfinished business lingering in their mouths. Now, they’re champions after defeating the New York Mets 7-2 Sunday night at Citi Field to claim the franchise’s first Commissioner’s Trophy in 30 years.

There are heroes littered across the roster. There’s Edinson Volquez, who overcame the death of his father to pitch two gutsy games. There’s Alcides Escobar, the light-hitting shortstop who transformed into a quasi-Reggie Jackson. Or how about forgotten utility man Christian Colon, who broke a 2-2 tie in the top of the 12th inning, in his first at-bat of the postseason? 

No one, however, better embodied the Royals’ never-say-quit attitude than Perez, who won a well-deserved World Series MVP trophy before bathing in champagne.

Yes, Perez had solid numbers in the Fall Classic, hitting .364 with a couple of doubles and two RBI. More than that, though, the 25-year-old three-time All-Star provided a backbone, a beating heart behind the dish, if you’ll allow for a little schmaltz.

As battered as any regular catcher would be this time of year, and then some, Perez kept strapping on the gear and getting in the squat, deftly handling the Royals staff—including its lights-out bullpen—night after night. He took bats off the hand, balls off the collarbone and simply refused to cry “uncle.”

That’s as apt an analogy as you’ll find for the 2015 Royals. Of K.C.’s 11 victories in these playoffs, eight were of the come-from-behind variety. In seven of those contests, they trailed by two or more runs.

In Game 5 against New York, the Royals were baffled for eight frames by Matt Harvey, the Dark Knight, who had his full array of pitches working and carried a shutout and standing ovation into the ninth.

Kansas City, though, as it has done so often, clawed back. Eric Hosmer doubled home Lorenzo Cain after Cain walked. Hosmer advanced to third on a groundout, then scored with a bit of gutsy baserunning—and an errant throw by first baseman Lucas Duda—on a soft chopper by, who else, Perez.

Perez was also a key part of the Royals’ 12th-inning rally, leading off with a base hit before being lifted for pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson, who ultimately scored the decisive run before Kansas City piled on and sent Mets fans streaming for the exits.

“It’s unbelievable,” Perez told Fox’s Erin Andrews immediately after accepting his MVP trophy. “We feel like a family here. We knew we were going to do something special this year.”

Here’s something else the Royals have known for some time now: Perez will be out there, no matter what.

According to STATS data cited by Chris Fickett of the Kansas City Star, Perez entered Game 5 having caught an MLB-record 2,713 innings between 2014 and 2015, including the postseason. Add 11 more after Sunday’s clincher. 

Best of all for the Royals, Perez is signed through 2019, including a series of affordable team options that begin in 2017, meaning he’s a part of the club’s future as well as its recent, glistening past.

Back in June, the Kansas City Star‘s Vahe Gregorian highlighted what makes a big league backstop such a unique animal:

The catcher is susceptible to getting hurt from an infinite array of means and angles, from sudden bat backlashes to the grinding wear-and-tear of squatting and throwing to the bruising from blocking balls and shock of ever-looming foul tips.

That’s why the position attracts a different sort of temperament.

“He’s a bulldog out there,” outfielder Alex Gordon said, per the Associated Press. “There’s really no ball that could hurt him.”

That’s surely an overstatement. Even a guy as tough as Perez winces now and again. At the moment, though, he’s feeling no pain.

One year after coming agonizingly close to the ultimate prize, he and the Royals got there. They made it back to baseball’s biggest stage, laughing at the odds again and again. And this time, they didn’t relent.

So that’s the buzzword for this Kansas City squad—relentless. And nobody wears it quite like Sal Perez: backstop, warrior and, now, World Series MVP. 

All statistics current as of Nov. 1 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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The Kansas City Royals are about to party like it’s 1985.

After winning their first World Series championship in 30 years against the New York Mets, the Royals will hold their victory parade Tuesday in Kansas City at noon CT, per Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star.

Royals Championship Parade Info

When: Tuesday, Nov. 3

Where: Beginning on Grand Boulevard and ending at Union Station

Time: Noon CT

TV: Fox Sports Kansas City

Live Stream: TBD

The parade will start on Grand Boulevard at the Sprint Center in the Power and Light District. It’s expected to be 2.3 miles long and will conclude with a rally at Union Station. Jeff Rosen of the Kansas City Star provided a map and route of the parade:

Fox Sports Kansas City will carry the parade in its entirety, as will Fox 4, according to VisitKC.com. 

When the Royals last won the World Series, it required a historic comeback for the ages in 1985. Kansas City trailed 3-1 against the St. Louis Cardinals and came back to win in seven games. Thirty years later, the Royals provided some magic again Sunday night against the New York Mets in Game 5.

The Royals scored twice in the top of the ninth and capped off the comeback with five runs in the top of the 12th to win 7-2 and clinch the championship. Salvador Perez earned World Series MVP honors.

Over 300,000 Kansas City citizens attended the Royals’ last parade in 1985, according to the Associated Press.

There’s a good chance that Tuesday’s crowd will top that number as fans decked in blue and white get to celebrate an improbable championship with their Royals. And to think—this will all start again when the Royals open the 2016 season at home April 4 against the same Mets.

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The Kansas City Royals captured their first World Series title in 30 years with a 7-2 win in 12 innings over the New York Mets on Sunday night, and catcher Salvador Perez walked away with MVP honors following his sensational championship display.

Perez went 1-for-5 in Game 5, but his RBI groundout to third base in the top of the ninth scored Eric Hosmer and allowed Kansas City to send the game to extra innings. 

The Royals catcher finished the World Series with a team-high eight hits—three of which came in Saturday’s Game 4 win—and two RBI, while batting .364 as he became the first catcher to take home the hardware since the Toronto Blue Jays‘ Pat Borders in 1992, according to ESPN Stats & Info.

StatsCentre added that Perez became the seventh catcher in MLB history to earn World Series MVP honors, while MLB.com’s Richard Justice pointed out that Perez joined Pablo Sandoval (2012) as the only Venezuelan-born players to accomplish the feat. 

MLB snapped a shot of a giddy Perez in the locker room while he was accepting his trophy: 

ESPN Stats & Info noted Perez’s performance in this year’s Fall Classic served as redemption for how the 2014 edition ended:

“I already forget about last year,” Perez told reporters following the win, according to ASAP Sports. “So I just enjoy the moment now. In 2015 Kansas City is No. 1. Who cares about what happened last year?”

As Baseball Tonight explained prior to Game 5, Perez’s play behind the plate over the past few seasons has been tremendous:

The Royals had worthy MVP candidates galore—including Alcides Escobar and Eric Hosmer—but Perez’s consistency with the title on the line was hard to ignore. According to Justice, Perez played every inning of the World Series before manager Ned Yost removed him for a pinch runner in the 12th on Sunday night. 

The 25-year-old recorded a hit in every game of the World Series, and without his poise behind the plate, Kansas City may not have reached the championship plateau.

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To examine the data, skim over the analytics and listen to the brains that have firmly entrenched themselves in every single major league front office, clutch does not exist.

It is not tangible. It is not readily quantifiable. Players do not perform better, over time, in certain situations. Other players do not fold, over time, in the same ones.

“Clutch” does not exist.

But then there are the Kansas City Royals, a team that has come from behind to win seven postseason games this October, and over the last two postseasons one that has used that improbable and usually ineffective strategy to earn 10 of their 21 total playoff victories. The Royals have a patent on late-inning heroics lately, from their dominant bullpen throwing up zero after zero to their defense saving hides to the offense finding ways to take extra bases and plate winning runs.

That was the formula they again used Halloween night to come back from a two-run deficit, taking Game 4 of the World Series 5-3 over the New York Mets at Citi Field. The win gave the Royals a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, with all three victories being pulled out after they had fallen behind.

Comeback Kids did it again! Royals’ 7th come-from-behind postseason win. #TakeTheCrown #Royals pic.twitter.com/tEbQqJdl65

— Jason Lamb (@jasonlambkc) November 1, 2015

“That’s just what our team does. We feel like if we can keep the game close, we’re going to find a way to win it,” Royals manager Ned Yost told reporters in his postgame press conference. “Our bullpen is so dynamic, they give us a chance to win those type of games.

“It’s a team that just looks for a little crack. If we find a little crack, they’re going to make something happen. It’s amazing how they do that. And they do that in a number of ways.”

That they do.

Years of living at or near the bottom of the major league standings earned the Royals a flood of high draft picks. And because they had little to play for when they did find themselves with a bona fide major league star, they were able to trade him for young players they deemed future stars.

Now, many of those players are the core of this dynamic Royals roster. While it might not be consistently capable of shutting down opponents with starting pitching or thumping them with overwhelming power, it plays the best defense of any team in the sport while not striking out and pitching with uncanny deft out of the bullpen.

The bullpen is the highlight of the list. Often a mistakenly overlooked part of many clubs, the Royals paid special attention to their group and built it to throw hard and with an ability to strand runners. Over the last two seasons combined, only the Pittsburgh Pirates have a better bullpen ERA and left-on-base rate than Kansas City, according to Fangraphs.

And now, a year after posting a 2.74 ERA and 70 strikeouts in 62.1 playoff innings, Kansas City’s relievers have a 2.76 ERA with 83 strikeouts in 58.2 innings while the only soft spot has been them allowing nine home runs, though they have gone through the Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays, the two top power-hitting teams in the majors based on home runs.

On Saturday, the relievers gave the Royals five innings of one-run production. And closer Wade Davis, arguably the best reliever in the sport with his major league-leading 0.97 ERA over the last two seasons, threw two innings to close out the Mets and put the Royals on the brink of the World Series title that escaped them last fall.

“He’s the best,” Royals left fielder Alex Gordon told MLB Network after the game. “He’s been doing it for two years, and he just steps up in big situations and gets it done. He did it again tonight.”

But a team needs to score to come from behind to win, and in the fateful three-run eighth inning that led them to the victory, the Royals drew two walks and did not strike out once. They capitalized on a fielding error and got a couple of singles to plate their runs before handing the ball to Davis for a second inning.

During the regular season, the Royals were the only major league team not to strike out 1,000 times, and they also had the second-fewest walks in the majors. And with the game on the line, they continued to do what they typically do well and they stepped up a part of their game they typically do not rely on.

“But the most important thing is they put the ball in play,” Yost told reporters. “They make things happen by putting the ball in play, and it’s just a phenomenal group.”

Most of what the Royals do can be measured, quantified. It has a number that correlates to their success. We know why and how they win. We know where they succeed and fail.

But what they seem to do during the postseason, that is a little less certain. They win when you do not expect them to win. They force you to never give up on them because recent history tells us we’d be stupid to do such a thing, and time after time they prove the faith to be justified.

They show that maybe “clutch” actually does exist.

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NEW YORK — Measured against the New York Mets’ staff of flamethrowers, Chris Young’s fastball can be timed with a sundial.

His fastball is soooo slow, Kansas City infielders often excuse themselves for dinner as he winds up and then return to their positions before the ball crosses the plate.

His fastball is soooo slow, it makes Kansas City’s award-winning, slow-cooked barbecue seem like fast food—the ribs smoking in so much less time than Young’s non-smoking “heater” moves.

His fastball is soooo slow, rumor has it that manager Ned Yost does his taxes in the Royals dugout while everyone waits for the ball to get to the batter.

Listen. Don’t mention any of this to the man himself. The velocity topic grows old with Young, and you can’t blame him.

Because here he is again, ready to start Game 4 Saturday as the Kansas City Royals look to re-establish their momentum in this World Series, and there is so much more to the man than his 6’10” height and pedestrian fastball jokes.

In making his first World Series start at age 36, Young will pitch with his father in his heart and his college coach in the stands.

He will pitch after missing the entire 2013 season, part of a three-year battle to overcome shoulder problems.

He will pitch seven seasons after an Albert Pujols line drive drilled him square in the face, which sent him toward surgery and an uncertain future.

And he will pitch, as always, with the smarts and determination that have allowed him to throw that fastball right by the skeptics for most of his career.

“It’s very cool to be here,” Young told Bleacher Report during a conversation in the Royals dugout recently. “It’s very rewarding.”

It also is bittersweet, finally stepping into a World Series for the first time in his 11-year career. Because his father, Charles, 70, passed away in late September from multiple myeloma.

Charles always was Chris’ biggest fan, and this summer he loved watching the Royals. They are the best team Chris ever played on. The two talked often, and his father was excited over what October would bring.

Now, Chris will take the ball for Game 4, just as he did for three shutout innings of relief while earning the win in Game 1, feeling his dad’s presence even closer than usual.

“I like to think that he’s here,” Young said. “It’s life. He took so much enjoyment watching our team play. He will be in the stadium.

“It’s just different.”

The relief outing the other night to finish a wild, 14-inning Game 1 makes your blood run cold just thinking about it. A couple of hours before the game, Kansas City manager Ned Yost quietly approached Young and told him he may need the right-hander to make an emergency start.

There’s a personal situation with Edinson Volquez, Yost told Young.

Volquez’s father had died earlier that day, at home in the Dominican Republic. His wife had asked the Royals to hold the news from Edinson until after he made his start. Yost honored that request, though with today’s social media, you never know. That’s why Yost put Young on notice. Had Volquez somehow found out and not been in an emotional state to pitch that night…

“I know the pain he’s going through right now,” Young said that night after working three scoreless relief innings in a 5-4 victory that Volquez did start. “It’s hard. It’s really hard.

“I feel his pain.”

That Young is even here on baseball’s biggest stage is one of those remarkable hardball stories that the game keeps delivering. The Pujols line drive, in May 2008, was gut-wrenching to watch. As Young was helped off of the field, blood gushed from his nose. The ball struck him on the bridge of the nose up toward the forehead, fracturing his skull.

He came back. But then came the shoulder problems.

It took three years before doctors finally zeroed in on the cause: thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition in which a rib pinches off a nerve running to the shoulder. So he underwent surgery to remove part of the rib, missed all of 2013 and then went 12-9 with a 3.65 ERA in 30 games (29 starts) for Seattle in 2014.

Still, he went unsigned as a free agent this spring until early March, when the only interested team, the Royals, called.

What most clubs didn’t know was that Young, for the first time in years, finally was able to spend an entire winter focusing on his workouts instead of his rehab.

When Royals general manager Dayton Moore approached Yost with the idea of signing Young after spring training started, the manager couldn’t believe the pitcher was still available.

“At that point, I liked the starting pitching we had,” Yost said. “But I remember Bobby Cox saying in Atlanta, you can never have too much starting pitching. Get as much as you can, because over the course of the year you’re going to need it.”

Along with Kendrys Morales, Alex Rios and even pitcher Franklin Morales, Yost said Young “was one of the great signs we had.”

Young worked both out of the rotation and as a reliever for the Royals this year, going 11-6 with a 3.06 ERA in 34 appearances (18 starts). Among pitchers who worked at least 100 innings, he handcuffed opposing hitters to the lowest batting average (.202) in the American League and the fourth-lowest in the majors.

Also among pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched, Young allowed the fourth-fewest hits per nine innings (6.64) in the majors.

“Gosh, it’s hard to say what he’s meant to us,” Royals pitching coach Dave Eiland said. “He’s been worth his weight in gold.

“There are a lot of reasons we won the division and we’re here today, and one big reason is Chris.”

All of this with a fastball this season that averaged 86.4 mph and a slider that he mixes in with the sneakiness of a cat burglar.

“This is a guy who, more than anybody I’ve ever been around, trusts his stuff and throws every pitch with conviction,” Eiland said. “He thinks he can get an out with every pitch.”

“Thinks” is the key word in that last sentence. Young earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics at Princeton University, graduating in four years despite playing both baseball and basketball. His senior thesis was a study of the impact of Jackie Robinson on racial stereotypes in the realm of media.

While Young doesn’t throw lightning bolts like the Mets staff, he is aces at outfoxing hitters and nailing specific locations. Plus, the fact that he’s 6’10″—tied for the second-tallest player in MLB history (behind only Jon Rauch, 6’11”)—leads to much deception as he delivers the ball. From the perspective of hitters, the ball is released closer to the plate than they are accustomed to and from different angles.

“The way he throws, I think he hides the ball very well,” Mets shortstop Wilmer Flores said. “That’s why he gets outs.”

On Saturday, while he will feel the power of his father’s presence in the stadium, Young also will have a rooting section in the seats: his wife, Liz, the granddaughter of Lester Patrick, namesake of the NHL’s Patrick Division and the Lester Patrick trophy, and their three children, Cate (seven), Scott (five) and Grant (three). His college coach at Princeton, former big leaguer Scott Bradley, also will be there.

In fact, Bradley, whose nine-year MLB career spanned from 1984 to 1992, flew to Kansas City for Games 1 and 2 at Young’s request. 

“Oh, man, he’s so positive and optimistic,” Young said. “He was a great fit both for my basketball and academics. He accommodated me any way he could.”

How much does Bradley mean to Young? Seventeen years after recruiting him, the pitcher’s middle son is named, in part, for the Princeton coach.

Now here he is, forever Young, a great fit with the Royals.

“In spring training what really stood out was the focus and determination,” Young said of his teammates. “These guys had a hunger I didn’t quite expect. I thought these guys went to the World Series last year and maybe they’re going to rest on their laurels a little bit, and it was the exact opposite.

“I came in and said, ‘Whoa. These guys want to win the World Series.’ And they expect to and believe they can. It had a different feel than any spring training I had been at with any other club. It was evident from day one to me.”

Just like Young, they are not waiting around. They are looking to make something happen.

Just don’t ask about his velocity. He’s heard it all before.

“I could care less about velocity,” said that man who could author the book on it. “I care about results.”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

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NEW YORK — One by one, these hitters who make up the relentless Kansas City Royals lineup are reducing this game to its smallest common denominator.

“You can’t get hits unless you put the ball in play,” third baseman Mike Moustakas said following the Royals’ 7-1 Game 2 rout of the New York Mets late Wednesday night, which gave Kansas City a 2-0 lead as this World Series heads back to Queens.

No truer words were ever spoken.

The Royals are winning in a completely different way than the dominant New York Yankees of 1998 to 2000 and the Boston Red Sox of 2004. Those beastly champions worked hard at driving the rival starting pitcher out of the game by grinding out at-bats and running up pitch counts.

Their goal was to exhaust the poor starter by midgame and then expose the soft spots in their opponent’s bullpen.

Kansas City’s approach behind Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, Eric Hosmer and Co. could not be more different.

And in case the Mets thought the Royals were kidding by, say, Escobar’s penchant for swinging at first pitch fastballs, well, whoops. When he ripped Matt Harvey’s first-pitch fastball for an inside-the-park home run to start Game 1, the only questions were how and why Harvey delivered exactly what everyone in the baseball world knew Escobar was looking for.

“I’m going to continue to be aggressive,” Escobar said after delivering a triple in Game 2.

With the Royals having built a lineup with no weak links, every inning starts out as a potential rally. They are like kids at a birthday party taking whack after whack at a pinata. Maybe it is the next whack that will make the candy fall out.

“We definitely like to swing early in the count,” Hosmer said. “I think we have good game plans going in.”

He noted that the American League Central Division has several hard throwers, such as Cleveland‘s Corey Kluber, Detroit‘s Justin Verlander and the Chicago White Sox‘s Chris Sale, which helps the Royals stay tuned up. He praised hitting coach Dale Sveum’s aggressive philosophy, which encourages the Royals to stay coiled and ready.

“All of that makes for a good fastball-hitting team,” Hosmer said.

But while it is one thing to be aggressive, it is quite another to pull that off while remaining a not good but great contact-hitting team from top to bottom.

The Royals struck out less than any other team in the majors this season, just 973 times. The Royals, in fact, were the only team to finish with fewer than 1,000 strikeouts.

This is what Jacob deGrom, the hottest pitcher going this October, ran into in Game 2.

In obtaining only three swings-and-misses, deGrom had his lowest total of the season. He reached several two-strike counts but finished with just two strikeouts.

Whatever he threw, and deGrom has four above-average pitches in his quiver, he could not put the Royals away.

“As a hitter, if you can spoil a pitcher’s pitch and fight it off and do that until they make a mistake, then you [can] try to do damage on it,” Hosmer said. “It can definitely get frustrating as a pitcher, especially if you’re hitting spots and guys aren’t budging and they’re not swinging at a curveball down that goes in the dirt or fighting your curveball up that’s in a money spot.

“I think the approach of a good hitter is to foul off pitchers’ pitches until they make a mistake.”

As the beleaguered Mets are seeing, Kansas City has a lineup stocked with good hitters.   

The American League average of 7.53 strikeouts per game in 2015 narrowly missed the record of 7.54 set in 2013. In fact, the AL average for strikeouts per game reached 7.33 in 2012 and has remained at least that high in each of the next three years (7.51 in 2014).

Those four seasons are the only times since the advent of the AL in 1901 that team strikeouts per game were at 7.0 or higher.

The Royals in 2015 checked in at 6.00.

“Playing in this big ballpark (Kauffman Stadium) we’ve had to do some things, had to change our swings a little bit,” Moustakas said. “Not trying to go up top all the time [at high pitches, attempting to hit them a long ways], just trying to get base hits and make solid contact.

“Our motto in this clubhouse has always been keep the line moving, and we do a pretty good job of that by getting the next guy up.”

Center fielder Lorenzo Cain said: “We’re not afraid to hit with two strikes. A lot of guys cut their swings down to put the ball in play, and see what happens.

“We’d rather put it in play because a lot of [our] guys can run, and you never know…”

Still stung by their Game 7 loss to San Francisco in last year’s World Series and chapped that the highly respected Baseball Prospectus projected them to go 72-90 this season, the Royals set out from their first workout this spring to do some damage. Not just intent on proving they were no one-hit wonder, the Royals envisioned all spring and summer returning to exactly where they are now.

They are a no-nonsense team that is all about results. Ben Zobrist learned that as soon as he stepped into the clubhouse after the Royals acquired him from Oakland in July.

The Royals and Athletics waged an ugly, three-day brawl in Kansas City in April, and though Zobrist did not instigate it and was not in the middle of it, things could have been really awkward when he landed in Kansas City.

Instead, they weren’t.

“Not really,” Zobrist said. “I talked to [Kansas City closer] Wade Davis about it a little bit because Wade is a former teammate in Tampa Bay, and he said as ugly as some of that was early in the season, it kind of brought the team together. It kind of made them become more of a team.

“For me, nobody ever made me feel uncomfortable about that situation. We just kind of laughed about it and that was it.”

Laughed, and then went out to hit, of course.

What else?

Keep the line moving, they say. And they are.

On the ropes against Houston in the division series, a Royals team that trailed in each of the five games roared back to win.

Against Toronto in the championship series, same approach.

“We’ve won the same way every time,” said veteran Jonny Gomes, who is not on the playoff roster after being acquired from Atlanta in August. “That being said, it’s not a fluke.”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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The Kansas City Royals didn’t trade for Johnny Cueto to beat the Boston Red Sox in August or the Baltimore Orioles in September.

Good thing, too, because Cueto gave up 15 runs in those two games.

Doesn’t matter now, does it?

Doesn’t matter that Cueto had a 4.76 ERA in his 13 regular-season starts for the Royals. Doesn’t matter that he can crumble in big-stage starts on the road.

All of the above may well hurt his case as a free agent this winter, but all that counts for the Royals is that the two times they really needed Cueto, he delivered, and he delivered big.

He beat the Houston Astros in the decisive Game 5 of the division series, giving up two hits in eight innings. He beat the New York Mets in Wednesday night’s important Game 2 of the World Series, giving up two hits in nine innings in a 7-1 victory at Kauffman Stadium.

As my buddy C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer tweeted going into the ninth inning:

He’s right. With their big lead in the American League Central, the Royals didn’t need Cueto to pitch like an ace in the regular season. They’ve needed him to be an ace two times—in Game 5 against the Astros and again on Wednesday.

He delivered both times. Sure, he mixed in a bad one in Game 3 of the ALCS, giving up eight runs to the Toronto Blue Jays.

But as Royals manager Ned Yost said Wednesday, “He’s had one bad start and two tremendous starts.”

If the bad start at the Rogers Centre raised some questions, it also provided the Royals with one very important answer as they planned their World Series rotation. Cueto pitched Game 2, and he’ll pitch Game 6 if the series gets that far.

Neither of those starts would be on the road.

So when Cueto ran into trouble in the fourth inning Wednesday, walking two of the first three batters he faced and getting frustrated with Mark Carlson’s strike zone, he didn’t hear the sing-song “Kway-toe! Kway-toe!” that haunted him in the 2013 Wild Card Game in Pittsburgh or last week in Canada.

All he heard was catcher Salvador Perez, reminding him to just follow his mitt.

“Keep aggressive, please,” Perez repeated after the game to Fox’s Erin Andrews.

Cueto gave up a run on Lucas Duda’s bloop single, but the Mets didn’t get another baserunner until Cueto walked Daniel Murphy with two out in the ninth. He finished off the first complete-game two-hitter in the World Series in 20 years (Greg Maddux threw the last one in 1995) and just the second in 44 years—and the first World Series complete game by an American Leaguer since Jack Morris’ 10-inning shutout in Game 7 of 1991’s Fall Classic.

It wasn’t the best game Cueto has ever pitched. He had a two-hit shutout against the Washington Nationals in July, with 11 strikeouts. He had a three-hit shutout last year, when he was a 20-game winner with a 2.25 ERA.

He was one of two true aces on the trade market in July. The other was David Price, who went to Toronto and had a great regular season followed by an underwhelming October.

Cueto got his underwhelming out of the way early on in his stay with the Royals, back when they didn’t need him. He always knew what the real goal was.

“That’s what they brought me here for was to help win a World Series,” Cueto said. “And that’s what I’ve worked for.”

The Royals have a real chance now to win a World Series. It’s certainly not over—Mets fans will point out that their 1986 champions lost the first two games at home, and Royals fans will remember that their 1985 champs lost the first two—but Cueto’s performance Wednesday has the Mets in a real bind as they head back to Citi Field.

Yes, the Mets are going home, but they’ve already lost two games started by Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom. The two real kids in the rotation, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, start the next two contests. Both are talented, but with neither likely to pitch deep into a game, the pressure will be on the Mets’ shaky middle relief and on the slumbering offense.

Game 2 was the one in which the pitching matchup supposedly favored the Mets, with the dominating deGrom against the inconsistent Cueto. Instead, Cueto was the one who dominated.

“This is why they got him,” Pete Rose said on the Fox postgame show. “This is the Johnny Cueto we knew in Cincinnati.”

This is the Johnny Cueto the Royals traded for. No matter what, that trade now stands as a total success.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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The Kansas City Royals will face the New York Mets in Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday night, but they could be without one of their key postseason contributors for some of the Fall Classic.

Infielder Ben Zobrist may go on paternity leave at some point during the best-of-seven showdown. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports noted that Zobrist’s wife, Julianna, is due to give birth to the couple’s third child on Nov. 10.

Rosenthal also shared some comments from the second baseman: “If she goes into labor and I’m playing, she’s not going to tell me. Obviously if something happens, something dangerous, I’m gone—that’s the priority. She said if I’m playing and everything is fine, she’s probably not going to let me know until after the game.”

If the World Series goes the full seven games, the decisive contest would occur in Kansas City, Missouri, on Wednesday, Nov. 4.

According to Mike Axisa of CBSSports.com, there is no paternity list in the postseason, which means the Royals would be forced to play with a 24-man roster if Zobrist were to miss any games.

Kansas City acquired Zobrist before the trade deadline from the Oakland Athletics, and he hit .284 with seven home runs and 23 RBI in 59 games for his new team. He has been even better in the postseason, with a .326 average, two home runs and 10 runs in 12 games, and he is known for his ability to play multiple positions.

The Royals added rookie infielder Raul Mondesi Jr. to their postseason roster in part so they have something of an insurance policy should Zobrist miss any time. While the 20-year-old Mondesi has never appeared in a game above Double-A, he is fast enough to cover ground in the middle infield in place of Zobrist and make an impact on the basepaths, as he had 19 steals in 81 minor league games this year.

If Mondesi does appear in a game, he will become the first player in the modern era to make his MLB debut in the World Series.

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On Monday, the Kansas City Royals announced their pitching rotation for the World Series, which begins Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium against the New York Mets. 

Playing against a Mets team stacked with young power pitching, Kansas City will counter with veteran Edinson Volquez for Game 1, according to Mike Axisa of CBSSports.com. He’ll be matching up against New York’s Matt Harvey.    

Volquez went 13-9 this season with a 3.55 ERA in his first year with the Royals. This postseason, though, he hasn’t quite been on his game, going 1-2 with an ERA of 4.32.

The Royals will be hoping he can repeat his performance from Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, where he shut out the Toronto Blue Jays over six innings, allowing two hits and striking out five. 

Now that Royals manager Ned Yost released his rotation, here is a look at the probable pitching matchups for the World Series:

It was better late than never for Yost to release his rotation. He even called himself a “punk” on Sunday for not disclosing his arms for the Fall Classic, per David Brown of CBSSports.com. 

Giving Volquez the start for Game 1 gives Johnny Cueto two possible starts at home, one in Game 2 and another in Game 6 if necessary. Cueto’s last start on the road was in Toronto during Game 3 of the ALCS, where he allowed eight runs in just two innings before being pulled. 

The Royals’ back end of the rotation features a 24-year-old Yordano Ventura, who burst onto the national scene during last year’s postseason, and Chris Young, a 36-year-old veteran who is on his third team in four years. They’ll have to step up their performances if they want to outduel a New York Mets team that has a 2.81 ERA this postseason. 

If they can’t keep up with New York’s arms, the Royals are going to be in trouble this World Series. 

Stats courtesy of ESPN.com.

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Kendrys Morales hasn’t left his mark on the American League Championship Series—yet.

He’s 1-for-6 with a couple of RBI in two games, and more importantly, the Kansas City Royals have a commanding 2-0 series lead over the Toronto Blue Jays heading into Monday’s Game 3 north of the border.

But it feels like Morales is due for a Significant Moment—capital “s,” capital “m.” And that feeling, by itself, is an unexpected twist.

Backing up a bit: When the Royals signed Morales to a two-year, $17 million contract last December, the deal was greeted with something less than enthusiasm by the majority of K.C. fans, as Pete Grathoff of the Kansas City Star highlighted via a series of cherry-picked-yet-representative tweets.

The issue was twofold. First, Morales—who turned 32 in June—was coming off a dreadful 2014 campaign, during which he posted a .218/.274/.338 slash line in 98 games with the Minnesota Twins and Seattle Mariners.

Second, Morales was inked to replace Billy Butler, the beloved, lifetime Royals designated hitter who helped usher Kansas City to the World Series before bolting via free agency to the Oakland A’s.

Those were strikes one and two against Morales, a seemingly declining hitter on the wrong side of 30 supplanting a revered franchise hero.

Usually, this story would play out in a sad, familiar way, with Morales crashing and burning in semi-slow motion while the tepid cheers calcified into full-throated boos.

Instead, Morales raked, and the Royals rolled.

In 158 regular-season games, K.C.’s new DH slashed .290/.362/.485 with 41 doubles, 22 big flies and 106 RBI, all while playing half his contests in the AL’s third-least homer-happy yard, according to ESPN’s Park Factors statistic. 

“It’s kind of what we hoped for when we signed him, to bring a power component to the lineup, an RBI guy,” manager Ned Yost said in September, per MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan. “For him to bounce back after a couple of pretty tough years is phenomenal so far, with the doubles and RBIs. You feel good every time he walks up to the plate.”

So far in the postseason, he’s cracked three home runs and collected eight RBI. And the Royals, not coincidentally, are two victories shy of a second straight Fall Classic appearance. 

All of Morales’ jacks came in the division series against the Houston Astros, including a three-run bomb off ‘Stros ace Dallas Keuchel in the decisive Game 5.

That led MLB.com’s Jane Lee, among others, to invoke the free-agent Morales-for-Butler swap with a healthy dusting of 20/20 hindsight:

So what’s sparking this resurgence? During the regular season, Morales hit a higher percentage of balls in the air than he had in any season since 2009, per FanGraphs. And while he remains a free swinger, he posted the highest walk percentage of his career and his lowest strikeout percentage since 2010.

Really, last season’s dip could be explained by poor conditioning, as CBS Sports’ Dayn Perry pointed out, noting that in 2014, Morales didn’t sign with the Twins until June, “which threw off his entire training schedule.”

The Texas Rangers‘ Prince Fielder is likely the favorite for AL Comeback Player of the Year honors, with New York Yankees DH Alex Rodriguez also in the mix, polarizing history be damned. 

Morales, though, is the only one still standing in the postseason. That doesn’t count when it comes to regular-season awards, but it does in every other sense.

He’s far from the only weapon in a loaded Kansas City offense that has seen catcher Salvador Perez, outfielders Alex Gordon and Lorenzo Cain, first baseman Eric Hosmer and others chip in this October. Add K.C.’s speed, airtight defense and strong bullpen, and you’ve got the makings of a two-time AL champion.

The Royals are an experienced bunch, after all, one that came within a Madison Bumgarner of a ring last autumn.

Now, they’re two wins away from a return trip to baseball’s ultimate stage. And while sample-size alerts obviously apply, Morales is 2-for-3 with a double in his career against young right-hander Marcus Stroman, the Jays’ Game 3 starter.

In other words: As the ALCS heads to Canada, Kendrys Morales will be there—waiting to leave his mark.

All statistics current as of Oct. 18 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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