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Kansas City Royals: Evaluating Postseason MVP Winners

By Aidan Setter

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It still almost doesn’t seem real that the Kansas City Royals are World Series champions.

Before the start start of the postseason, I made a prediction about who I thought would ultimately become the MVP for the Royals this postseason. I predicted that Eric Hosmer would be the man because of his ‘clutch gene’. Here’s what I said,

"Big Hos has improved year-in and year-out. He made monstrous postseason plays last year, and I sincerely believe he will make even more this year. He is a clutch hitter, fantastic first baseman and a leader."

While he did make some phenomenal plays, he still made a few bad errors especially in the World Series. If you really think about it, those errors just prolonged games, they didn’t have an effect on the ultimate outcome of the game.

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Hosmer also scored the game tying run in Game 5 off of, World Series MVP, Salvador Perez‘s RBI. It was a gutsy play that showed Hosmer’s athleticism, clutch factor and baseball intelligence. Oh and not to mention, the play had some luck. It was an incredible play made but an incredible player, but while he had some notable moments, he wasn’t the MVP.

The MVPs were Alcides Escobar (ALCS) and Salvador Perez (World Series). While they did actually take home the hardware, you could’ve given those MVP awards to just about everyone on the Kansas City Royals team.

Lorenzo Cain had that long hit streak, Alex Gordon made clutch hit after clutch hit, Johnny Cueto pitched a stellar Game 2 in the World Series and basically everyone in the lineup did something incredible in that insane Game 4 comeback against the Houston Astros. Even Kendrys Morales could have won MVP despite not starting in three games.

Since Escobar and Perez were actually declared MVPs this year let’s take a look at both of their postseasons.

Alcides Escobar

Alcides Escobar proved why, in my opinion, he is the best shortstop in baseball throughout the ALCS.

He had a batting average of .478, an on-base average of .481 and a slugging percentage of 1.134. Escobar made it clear that he deserved the MVP. Don’t even forget about the amount of incredible defensive plays he made as well. Time and time again, Alcides Escobar had Derek Jeter like moments.

Esky carried this hot streak from the ALCS into the World Series. He hit an  leadoff inside-the-park home run on the very first pitch thrown to him by Matt Harvey. Incredible. Esky turned into a monster leadoff hitter this postseason and it couldn’t have been more fun to watch.

Salvador Perez

Not only did Salvy get hit by a ball pretty much every inning, he hit well also. Perez had a .364 batting average, .391 on-base percentage and .455 slugging percentage.

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Words can’t even describe how valuable Salvador was in the in the postseason altogether. While his stats were fantastic, he does the things that don’t count as stats. He calms pitchers down, he leads his teammates, he celebrates wins unlike any other player I have seen.

At just the young age of 25, he has already won a World Series MVP. If you think about it, he is at the start of his prime. This may be biased, but I think he is the best catcher in the game. You can’t feel anything but happiness for him. He deserved it.

Next: All Time Franchise Leaders in Triples

While my prediction of Eric Hosmer wasn’t accurate, Hosmer still played a large part in helping the Kansas City Royals win their first World Series in 30 years.

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