While congratulating the Royals in securing a World Series berth for the success-starved Kansas City fan base, Russell Carleton of Baseball Prospectus, writing at Fox Sports’ Just a Bit Outside, makes the important point that the team’s three months of winning isn’t a blueprint for other teams to rush out and follow:

Point 2: The Royals hit the fewest home runs and struck out the fewest times in MLB.
Again, both are true, although I somehow doubt that was by design. I’m assuming that the Royals were hoping that Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler and Mike Moustakas would all be hitting 30 home runs a season by now, rather than the 33 total that they combined for (9, 9, and 15, respectively) this year. While it’€™s perfectly reasonable that the Royals would look for hidden value, it would seem silly for a team to not pursue value if it’s available, and — I can’t believe I’m saying this — home runs are valuable. The fact that the Royals struck out the fewest times was certainly nice, but the Royals were merely a league-average team when it came to getting on base, suggesting that they simply made outs in other ways.
Some have pointed to the fact that the Royals lack of power as a rejection of “big ball” in favor of “small ball” even though the Royals had only 33 sacrifice bunts all year, just above the American League average. For what it’s worth, contrary to earlier research, bunting is actually something of a break-even strategy and if you do it right (and don’t fall in love with it) it can provide value.
Verdict: The Royals seem to have won in spite of their power outage. I gather that there’s a small faction of baseball fans who see the Royals’€™ lack of home runs as something morally noble. While the Royals have shown that a team can get to the World Series without a big bopper, a big power hitter can still provide value, too, and teams would be silly to get rid of one to try to follow some sort of Royal Line of Success-ion. You work with what you have.

Perhaps the real lesson from the Royals’ recent success is to keep the young ones on the 25-man roster staying clear of Clash of Clans and other attention-grabbing video games. Here’s Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star:

The sight unnerved Rusty Kuntz as he entered the visitors’ clubhouse at Fenway Park on July 20. The Royals had just dropped their third game in a row, silenced by Boston ace Jon Lester, and had fallen below .500 for the first time in a month. They had tumbled from first place in their division and appeared content with floundering through the season’s second half.
When Kuntz walked inside the room, he saw a scene that had become all too familiar in recent weeks: a collection of Royals with their heads down, eyes locked on their iPads. The game was called “Clash of Clans,” and for a period of time this summer, its excessive usage by members of this club exasperated the coaching staff.
“At that time, in that situation, it’s really disappointing,” said Kuntz, the team’s first-base coach. He added, “You just got to a point where you go, ‘What’s the priority here? Is this just three hours out of your time, spent away from what you’re actually being interested in?
’We’ve got to find a way to get this changed, so that the priority is the game, and all this other stuff is secondary.’”
Over the next three months, the Royals evolved into a well-oiled machine built for October, a club undefeated in these playoffs and the hosts of game one of the World Series on Tuesday against San Francisco.

Hmmm, who knew that a video game featuring a wizard with Michael Lonsdale looks and Comic Book Guy voice could be as harmful to a clubhouse as beer and fried chicken?

After another suboptimal postseason performance on the mound, James Shields has demonstrated that he’s unworthy of the “Big Game” moniker. (David Schoenfield, ESPN SweetSpot: “Before his World Series Game 1 start, he had a career postseason ERA of 5.19 in nine starts. He’s now allowed 28 hits and 15 runs in 19 innings this postseason, after his early exit Tuesday.”) A healthy measure of sympathy is requested, however, since according to McCullough, the front-line starter recently revealed that he passed a kidney stone (shifts uncomfortably in chair) sometime during the American League Championship Series.

More here, here, and here.