It’s no fun to lose, especially the closer you get towards winning a championship. It’s so disappointing to Mets fans to be down 3-1 in the World Series, especially since the series could easily be 3-1 in the other direction. The hardest thing of all is listening to the insufferable national broadcast. Because they don’t have a history with either team, they latch on to one or two story lines and everything gets fed through that filter, whether it makes sense or not.

We keep hearing about the relentless Royals. Hey, hats off to the Royals for being a win away from a World Series victory. They’ve come through when they needed to and it’s easy to see how the “relentless” angle has taken center stage. But in a complex world, the answers are rarely so simple and the lack of showing the other half of the story is a little exasperating.

Yes, the Royals are cashing in during key moments. But another part of that is that they are getting pitches right in the heart of the strike zone. It’s a lot easier to be clutch when the other team keeps feeding you pitches either belt high or in the middle of the plate and sometimes even both. If the Royals were hitting pitches on the black, then they would completely deserve the accolades. But at some point, we have to examine the pitches they are hitting.

Here come five images, all captured in Game 2 during the four-run fifth inning against Jacob deGrom. The Royals strung a bunch of hits together, but let’s look at the location of these pitches.

Belt high

Bellybutton height, dead middle

Thigh high, dead middle

Thigh high, all plate

Bellybutton height, dead middle

And it’s not just deGrom. This already has a bunch of images but let’s look at a couple from Jeurys Familia, too. The first one is the game-tying home run in Game 1.

And here’s the pitch that turned into the hit that drove in the go-ahead run Saturday night.

Both of those were right down Broadway.

Again, kudos to the Royals for getting the big hits when they need them. But let’s also see these as examples of Mets’ pitchers not hitting spots and leaving balls in good hitting zones. It’s at least as much poor pitching as it is good hitting.

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