Dayton Moore's discovered a new market inefficiency this offseason, and he was going to exploit it if it killed him. You see, giving up up home runs kills rallies. Rallies win baseball games. No rallies? No wins.
If ever there were a game in which this strategem was executed to a T, it was tonight. James Shields allowed just two hits tonight. It was a herculean effort. Sure, he walked three Blue Jays, but if anyone has learned anything from Dayton Moore's Royals, it is that you cannot, I repeat, cannot win by walking. That means that you also can't lose by walking the other team.
Now that Dayton Moore has discovered that it doesn't actually matter when a Royals pitcher gives up a rally-killing home run, we can lean back, fingers interlocked behind our heads, and just watch the Royals win and win and win.
Did the Royals win tonight? No.
That is not what matters though. Sure, James Shields left a change-up up. Sure, Jose Bautista hung dong with aplomb. Sure, it plated two runs, the last one being the deciding run in the game. That does not matter. You know what the Blue Jays failed to do after that home run was allowed? Score a run. That's right. That home run killed all of their remaining rallies.
If we want to blame someone (and really we can't because this all played out to perfection), the fault must be laid at the feet of the Blue Jays. I mean the Royals got on base. They had eight hits. I suppose you could blame Billy Butler. After all, he walked three times, and you cannot walk your way to victory. But really, it wasn't any Royal's fault that the Royals lost. They came to play.
You know who is to blame? R.A. Dickey. He didn't let the Royals have their big hit. The Royals only scored one run off of last year's N.L. Cy Young winner. If he hadn't been lucky enough to work around the seven base runners he allowed, the Royals totally would have won.
This loss can't be because of anything the Royals did, right?