By Danny Cohen ’15, Lead Columnist

Party like it’s 1985! That is the last time the American League Champion Kansas City Royals reached the playoffs. They were the World Champions that year; this year they weren’t as lucky, losing to the San Francisco Giants in 7 games . However, the Royals have proven that organizations can bounce back from years of misery and ascend to MLB supremacy. “I think they Royals have been so surprising in this year’s postseason because of how fresh and new they are,” proclaimed Miles Park ’16.

Not only has the franchise not been in the postseason for decades, this year’s breakout team is filled with exciting players who have yet to display their talent on the national stage.” The Royals are winning while in the bottom half of the MLB in terms of payroll. Since 2002, after Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane coined the sabremetric method, “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 the 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.

“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, Newark Academy baseball superstar. “Teams like the Royals acquire talent when they are young and are able to develop the players.”

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. The Royals’ ace this season, James Shields, made half of what Greinke is paid with the Dodgers; two of the most important players in the Royal’s postseason success, 3B Mike Moustakus and Cain, made less than 1 million dollars this year.

While Kansas City followed 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, (in the top 10 in On Base Percentage 6 of those 8), they have won only 1 playoff series in that time frame.

The Royals during the 2014 regular season, on the other hand, were in the bottom half of the league in On Base Percentage, hitting the fewest home runs, and stealing the most bases in the MLB. According to Miles Park ’16, “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 in the Orioles. Mike Gibbons ’16 explains their remarkable success: “The Royals proved in the playoffs doing the little things to win is more important than hitting home runs.”

While the 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.