Royals ready to regroup at home

For the first time since their first playoff game, the Royals face elimination.

Another loss ends the season, just as it did in the one-game AL wild-card shootout with the Oakland Athletics a month ago. The Royals survived that night in improbable fashion, and it will take something special to become the World Series champion.

The Royals, falling to the Giants 5-0 on Sunday, have fallen behind 3-2 in the best-of-seven series and have to win twice in Kauffman Stadium, on Tuesday and Wednesday, to wear the crown.

“We know what it’s like to be down,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “We’ll battle back.”

Baseball history over the long haul is against them, although shorter term instances provide hope.

In World Series history, the 43 previous winners of the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead has gone on to capture the series 28 times (65 percent).

It happened last year, when the Red Sox, who fell behind the Cardinals 2-1, swept the final three games to take the World Series in six games.

But over the past three decades, the trend actually has favored the trailing team, which overcame the one-game deficit to win the series.

In 2011, the Cardinals trailed the Rangers 3-2, staged an incredible rally and captured game six behind David Freese’s heroics: a two-run triple that tied the score in the ninth and a home run that won it in the 11th. The Cards then captured game seven.

The Giants led the Angels in the 2002 World Series with the series shifted to Anaheim, and the Angels staged an amazing rally in game six, overcoming a five-run deficit in the seventh inning, before going on to a game seven triumph.

These Giants, who are bidding for a third World Series championship in five years, have already been extended further than in their previous trips. In 2010, they took the series from the Rangers in five games, and two years later they swept the Tigers.

But now the scene shifts to an American League park with the designated hitter. The Royals changed things up for the three games at AT&T Park. Regular DH Billy Butler got only one at-bat, and the Royals started Jarrod Dyson in center field, limiting the time of usual starter Nori Aoki.

Now, it’s back to Kansas City, where the Royals have lost only one game in the postseason.

“We get back home, Billy will be back in the lineup, we’ll play in front of 40,000 of our fans,” third baseman Mike Moustakas said. “Let’s see what happens.”

Lineup tweak – After going with the same lineup except for the pitcher’s spot in Games 3 and 4, KC manager Ned Yost changed his batting order slightly for game five against Giants lefty Madison Bumgarner.

Salvador Perez moved ahead of Omar Infante and Moustakas into the No. 5 spot, hitting between Hosmer and Moustakas, who both hit left-handed.

“We were trying to split up with Bumgarner,” Yost said. “We moved Moose down one spot and moved Salvy up two spots, because he had pretty good at-bats against Bumgarner last time.”

Another California coach – Yost isn’t the only Royals coach with ties to the greater Bay Area region. Royals first-base coach Rusty Kuntz played for back-to-back NCAA Division III championship teams at Cal State Stanislaus in Turlock, Calif., about 100 miles east of the San Francisco Bay.

Kuntz credits his then-coach, Jim Bowen, with providing his preparation ethic as a coach.

“Jim could tell you where to play everybody, how to pitch them and which pitchers were slow to the plate. He taught us a lot along the way,” Kuntz, who was on the 1976-77 Warriors’ title teams, told the nearby Modesto Bee.

“At the time I remember thinking, ‘What the heck is this guy doing?’ and then all of the sudden you get in his shoes, and you realize how important that detail was.”

Yost, a Giants fan as a youth, grew up in Dublin, Calif., near Oakland on the East Bay.

This story was originally published October 27, 2014 at 6:15 AM with the headline "Royals ready to regroup at home."