BALTIMORE — Speed ​​alone won’t get you to superstar status in baseball. Proof of Bobby Witt Jr.’s speed. is all over the place in his 10.4-WAR season – 31 stolen bases, 45 doubles, 11 triples – but that’s not why he’s a 10-win player. He is a 10-win player as he posted a 168 wRC+ while playing elite defense at a premium position.

“That’s what makes him so unique, because he has the power,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said after the game. “He has the bat-to-ball skills, but he also has the speed of getting infield hits, he can do a lot of different things. He is literally the total package when it comes to physical capabilities on the field.”

It was that speed that made the difference in Kansas City’s 2-1 victory over the Orioles on Wednesday night. The second close, low-scoring game in as many days extended Baltimore’s postseason losing streak to 10 games in 11 years. The Royals, now headed to the Division Series, have won nine of their past 10 postseason series, dating back 40 seasons.

But back to Witt’s legs. For all his other attributes, it’s important to remember that the presumptive AL MVP finalist is freakishly fast. Certainly, Jordan Westburg won’t soon forget it.

The Orioles second baseman went up the middle and made a diving stop on a grounder by Witt with two outs in the top of the sixth inning and runners on the corners. It was a great stop, made by the hair on his chin-chin-chin, a full-extension testament to Westburg’s commitment and his anticipation of a ball hitting at 110 miles per hour.

Westburg’s counterpart, Michael Massey, made a nearly identical play two innings earlier to rob Ryan O’Hearn of a likely RBI single and preserve a 1-0 lead, and at the time I thought Massey’s stop was a season-changing one.

The difference: O’Hearn is a slugging DH with a 64th percentile sprint speed. Witt, one of the fastest players in the league, if not the fastest, took ass out of the box and beat Westburg’s throw. Not much, but he beat it. That effort, which could have come from any Punch-and-Judy speedster instead of the most dangerous hitter the Royals have had since George Brett, extended the inning and allowed Kyle Isbel to score the go-ahead run from third base .

It was Witt’s second game-winning RBI in as many career postseason appearances.

With a 1-0 Royals win on Tuesday and a 2-1 Royals win on Wednesday, it would be fair to assume both games had similar contours. That wasn’t really the case. A man-on-man pitcher’s duel in Game 1 led to a buffet of missed opportunities in Game 2. Traffic on the bases was constant. Both starters, Seth Lugo and Zach Eflin, continually flirted with danger but didn’t take it home. Neither lasted five innings, though each allowed just one run.

The Royals and Orioles combined to score three runs, but left 21 men on base and went 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, both Royals singled on stealthy groundballs. In fact, the two clubs combined to go 4-for-23 with runners in scoring position. All four hits were singles. One of those was Witt’s game-tying infield hit in Game 2; the other three reached a maximum speed of 150.5 km per hour. The Orioles’ only hit with runners in scoring position in the series, a knock by Cedric Mullins in the fifth inning of Game 1, didn’t even score a run.

The Royals, who waited until the sixth inning to score on Tuesday, drove home their first batter of the afternoon on Wednesday. Massey led off the game with a double, advanced to third base on a grounder to the right side by Witt, who was deep in his Freddie Patek tribute act all afternoon, and then scored on a single by Vinnie Pasquantino.

Eflin and Lugo traded outs over the next four innings, but unlike Game 1, when Cole Ragans and Corbin Burnes might as well have thrown to empty batters’ boxes, gaps continued to appear. The Orioles, who have scored one run in 18 innings of a home playoff series, will spend all winter tossing and turning over the ineptitude of their offense — and they should — but they stood at the point to reach Lugo.

Unlike pitchers who might keep something in reserve early in the game to provide a different look on subsequent trips through the order, Lugo threw eight different pitch types to his first nine batters. And it was just enough. The Orioles had baserunners in the first and second inning. They put two men on with one out in the fourth, got them both into scoring position with two outs and came away with nothing thanks in part to Massey’s acrobatics.

Mullins, Baltimore’s lone offensive bright spot in Game 1, crushed a home run to start the fifth inning, and Than the Orioles went to work for a rally. A single, walk and a fielding error by Lugo loaded the bases with no one out and brought in 40-homer man Anthony Santander, an Orioles lifer playing what could be his last game in black and orange , to the plate.

The past decade has been quite tough for Orioles fans. Thanks to front office ineptitude, followed by ownership neglect disguised as a half-decade tank job, the Orioles went eight years between home playoff games. At last year’s ALDS against Texas, where the games took place on a weekend and Baltimore was a heavy favorite, there was an unstoppable excitement among the crowd.

This time, after being frustrated last October, the atmosphere was a little more subdued. Because this was a large ballpark in a small town on a weekday afternoon, there were about 6,000 empty seats in Camden Yards for Game 2. But more than that, the glad-to-be-here was gone. The public wouldn’t settle for another runner-up.

Instead, they begged for a reason to explode. Lugo, the man of a million pitches, slid a 90-mph four-seater straight down the pipe to Mullins, who may not be the 30-homer threat he was a few years ago but is hitter enough to make such a to shoot a meatball into the pipe. the chairs.

At the same time, decades of catharsis poured from the stands. When the Orioles loaded the bases and chased Lugo within the next four batters, it only got louder. This was the moment. Evidently. Baltimore’s star-studded offense was about to explode like an unclogged pipe.

The optimism lasted only a few moments. Reliever Angel Zerpa managed to strike out Colton Cowser on a pitch that actually hit the Orioles outfielder, which turned out to be a season-ending hand injury. Adley Rutschman followed. The star catcher had been in a slump for half a season and had crushed a ball earlier in the game that would have gone over almost any wall in the park except the 400-foot mark in deep center field. That’s where he put it.

Rutschman grounded out to Witt to end the inning. No further damage, and a few minutes later the man called in after Rutschman ran the final run of the series was picked once.

The Orioles retired runners with two outs in both the seventh and eighth innings, but the bases loaded, no out situation they wasted in the fifth… well, they’ll have to wait until April before they do another one of those see a good opportunity.

The Royals pride themselves on their pitching and defense. “That’s what we as Royals preach,” Witt said. “We play defense, run hard, are aggressive, so that’s what we have to do to keep winning.”

And you could argue that this sweep is a triumph of Kansas City’s run prevention. Witt and Massey were excellent defensively, Ragans electric in his first postseason start. The Royals’ bullpen had been a problem for most of the year, and other than Lucas Erceg, I didn’t have much confidence in him making it into the series. In 7 2/3 innings of work spread over two games, those relievers were fantastic. Flawless, you might say, as they didn’t allow a single run to cross the plate on their watch.

I’ve been impressed by Pasquatino’s toughness, Massey’s perseverance and Quatraro’s steady hand on the wheel as a manager getting his first taste of post-season action. We’ve already seen an underdog Royals team turn into a postseason juggernaut over the past decade. Why not two?

“I think this is the start of something special,” Witt said. “Like I keep saying, we didn’t come this far to get this far, so we’re going to keep chasing it and keep trying to create our own legacy.”

As much as the Royals have seized this opportunity with both hands, there is a clear contrast with their opponents, who did many things well in this series. Baltimore’s pitching was championship quality. The Orioles made several excellent defensive plays and continued to string together tough at-bats even if they weren’t rewarded.

But for the second time in as many years, this team, the product of five years of frustrating preparation, went out in the first round against a heavy underdog after winning 0-2 at home. They don’t need anyone to remind them of being disappointed. Their two franchise players, Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, will forever be linked to Witt for one reason or another. And while both kept their heads on the field, their frustration was visible in the press box after each unproductive out.

The tank gave the Orioles a ridiculously talented core that has been great so far in October. Now Burnes, Santander and John Means will be free agents this season. Mullins can walk within a year. Is it rude to point out that Rutschman, who unlike Witt was only signed at the Rapture, is only three seasons short of his walk date?

We’ll see in the upcoming series how much of the Royals’ magic lasts. Their story is half written at best. But the Orioles are closing the book on 2024 at a moment of great importance. They’re not cute anymore. They are no longer the young upstart with more babyface and blonde All-Stars than they have lineup spots for. They are a club that is quickly approaching a moment of put up or silence.

The fans are begging for a reason to cheer. How long do they have to wait?