By Danny Cohen ’15, Lead Columnist

“Party like its 1985!” 1985, of course, is the last time the American League Champion Kansas City Royals reached the MLB playoffs. They went on to win the World Series that year. This past season, the Royals that organizations can bounce back from years of misery and ascend to MLB supremacy. “ I think the Royals have been so surprising in this year’s postseason because of how fresh and new they are,” proclaimed Miles Park ’16.” He went on to say, “not only had the franchise not been in the postseason for decades, this year’s breakout team is filled with exciting players who had yet to display their talent on the national stage.” The Royals are winning while being in the bottom half of the MLB in terms of payroll (Los Angeles Times). Since 2002, after Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane coined the sabremetric method called “Moneyball”, more and more low value, small market teams have achieved success and many high spending teams have disappointed their fans.

In 2014, for example, 3 out of the top 5 highest spending teams, the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies, failed to reach to playoffs. The same number of teams in the bottom 5 reached the playoffs as the top 5, with the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates earning Wild Card births (Los Angeles Times). “Many of the teams that try to buy talent negotiate high priced, long-term contracts with players who are over the age of 30, said Mike Gibbons ’15. “Teams like the Royals acquire talent when they are young and are able to develop the players.”

In fact, in 2010 the Royals traded ace Zack Greinke, this year’s highest paid player in the major leagues, to the Brewers in return for then prospects and current stars SS Alcides Escobar and CF Lorenzo Cain (Los Angeles Times.) The Royals ace this season, James Shields, made half of what Greinke was paid with the Dodgers. Additionally, two of the most important pieces in the Royal’s postseason success, 3B Mike Moustakus and Cain, made less than 1 million in salary (ESPN).

While Kansas City followed the Oakland in terms of achieving success without spending a lot of money, their style of play is almost the opposite. Beane’s Moneyball approach emphasizes that reaching base and staying on base are most important and thus stealing bases and sacrifice bunts are contradictory to the team’s best interests. Even though the A’s have been remarkably successful in the regular season, making the playoffs in 8 out of the last 14 years, (being in the top 10 in On Base Percentage 6 of those 8), they have won only 1 playoff series in that time frame (ESPN).

The Royals during the 2014 regular season, on the other hand, were in the bottom half of the league in On Base Percentage, hit the fewest home runs, and stole the most bases in the MLB (ESPN). According to Miles Park, “Kansas City plays differently than most of today’s teams with speed, defense, and bullpen pitching prioritized over offensive power.” They may have barely snuck into the playoffs, but Manager Ned Yost’s unorthodox game-plan propelled them, ironically, over the A’s in the Wild Card game and into a record 8 game-winning streak to begin the postseason, including sweeps of the MLB best Angels and the top home run hitting team the Orioles. Mike Gibbons explains their remarkable success: “The Royals proved in the playoffs doing the little things to win is more important than hitting home runs.” While Royals are shocking the sports world because they are winning at an unprecedented rate after losing for so long, the way that they are doing it is also extraordinary.