ALDS Game 1 – Kansas City Royals @ Los Angeles Angels – Thursday October 2nd

Now that the Blue Jays’ season is over I’m going to predict some of the baseball playoffs. My first baseball playoffs prediction on this site will be tonight’s game 1 of the American League Division Series between the wild-card game winning Kansas City Royals at the AL West division champion Los Angeles Angels.

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  Kansas City Royals (89-73) @ Los Angeles Angels (98-64) – Game 1

The Kansas City Royals made it to the ALDS via their wild card game 12-inning win 9-8 at home versus the A’s on Tuesday night. The Royals trailed 6-2 going in to the bottom of the 8th and that’s when their rally began. The team scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 8th to pull within 1 run. Then in the bottom of the 9th right fielder Norichika Aoki hit a sacrifice fly to drive in pinch runner Jarrod Dyson for the tying run. All seemed lost when the team gave up a run in the top half of the 12th but in the bottom half of the inning 1st baseman Eric Hosmer hit a game-tying home run and then a Salvador Perez single drove in pinch hitter Christian Colon for the winning run. Reliever Jason Frason picked up the win. It was an exciting finish for a team that hasn’t been in the postseason since 1985. Their starting pitcher tonight is left Jason Vargas. During the regular season Vargas had a 11-10 record with a 3.71 era and 128 strikeouts in 187 innings pitched. He had an 0-3 record in his last 4 starts. The Los Angeles Angels won the AL West division by a whopping 10 games over the A’s. They finished with the best record in the majors. Luckily for them the division title was already wrapped up as they lost their last 3 regular season games. The Angels only managed to score a total of 5 runs in those 3 losses. The team is led on offense by center fielder Mike Trout. During the regular season Trout led the team in home runs (36), rbi’s (111), on-base % (.377), slugging % (.561), and runs (115). The pitching staff was led in wins by right-handed Jered Weaver. Weaver finished with an 18-9 record with a 3.59 era and 169 strikeouts in 213.1 innings pitched. In his last start, at Seattle on September 26th, he had his 3 game winning streak snapped as he was saddled with the loss while pitching 6 innings while giving up 4 earned runs on 9 hits.

Kansas City was 47-34 on the road this season. Los Angeles was 52-29 at home this season.

The Royals and Angels each had 3 wins in their 6 meetings this season.

Prediction: As emotional and uplifting as the Royals wild card win was they may come back to earth a bit in game 1 of this series. The Angels offense is high powered as they scored the most runs in the majors this season.

Take the Angels 1.56 (Bet365)

Angels

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