The Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals are playing the AL wild card playoff game on Tuesday night and the matchup is live from TBS and streaming online with a live stream from TBS.com and MLB.com, while radio is on ESPN and the game starts up past 8 pm ET from Kauffman Stadium as the American League postseason gets underway with Jon Lester and James Chiefs pitching for KC.
The Royals are in the playoffs for the first time in over 20 years, while the Athletics nearly blew their spot in the postseason and now are trying to advance on the road in the one game playoff. The Athletics were leading the league in wins for a while and they totally nosedived in the second half, but they were able to hang in there and now they could be a sleeper team for the American League pennant. The Royals are cashing in on their young talent and they are in the playoffs for the first time since last winning the World Series.
The playoffs start with the AL wild card and things will continue with the NL Wild Card game on Wednesday and that has the Pirates taking on the San Francisco Giants in Pittsburgh.
Many see the Athletics season and the moves Billy Beane made as a failure already, but he took a calculated risk and the outcome has not yet been reached. The team added Lester for just this specific reason and if they win this and make it through to the World Series, it would have been worth it. The gamble for Beane is that pitching is more important than runs in a sense and that is why he dealt a power bat for Lester.
Oakland comes into the playoffs after a horrible second half, but they can put a stop to that right now and they had Josh Donaldson lead in everything and he was amazing this year. Donaldson leads the offense and Sonny Gray helped the team get in with a great start against the Rangers that clinched it. The Royals come in as the sleeper and they are the underdogs despite being at home, as they have not been to the playoffs in nearly 30 years.
The Royals won one more game than the Athletics and they had Shields as their leader in the rotation and they need someone like Alex Gordon or Billy Butler to step up in this game. The Royals have one of the best bullpens in baseball and they may need it on Tuesday depending on how the game goes. The Athletics have much more postseason experience than the Royals, but Shields has pitched in Big Games before and now he has a chance to show off that Big Game James moniker again.
The other playoff teams apart from the wild card teams are the Washington Nationals and the LA Angels as the top seeds, while the ALDS has the Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles. The NLDS has the LA Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals and the winners of those series and then the wild card winners against the top seeds will shake out to fill the Championship Series spots. The World Series starts on October 21 and this year the American League has home field advantage.
Check here for the Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals live coverage from MLB and TBS.