With the Royals winning the World Series, it’s time to retire the term “Yosted” and give Dayton Moore a key to the city

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Looking back, what may be most surprising about the Kansas City Royals’ World Series Championship is that they almost got eliminated from the playoffs during the American League Divisional Series.

It was October 12 when most Kansas Citians got ready to resume their usual work and personal routines as the Royals looked like dead fish against the Houston Astros in Game 4 of the ALDS. Everyone knows now how the Royals beat back what seemed like inevitable defeat that afternoon in Houston.

Then they would repeat these comebacks so many times since then that anyone who thought that the Royals didn’t have a chance in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series on Sunday was either a New York Mets fan or someone who hand’t really been paying attention.

The Royals won their first championship since 1985 with a 7-2 victory over the Mets. Like so many other times in this postseason, it looked like the Royals might head back to the clubhouse to absorb another seemingly surefire loss.

But this Royals squad was assembled with so few vulnerabilities that their championship seemed assured when they erased a two-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth inning in New York. The Royals grappled with a sublime performance from Mets ace pitcher Matt Harvey for eight previous innings.

Harvey convinced manager Terry Collins to pitch another inning. It was an inning too far for him.

Much will be made in the coming days about how a player overcame his manager to make an ill-fated decision.

But the discussion should be about the type of team that the Royals front office built and the way Ned Yost managed the squad to a World Series title. This team was so resilient and had so many strengths that their championship should hardly come as a surprise.

Take the go-ahead run in the 12th inning. Catcher Salvador Perez singled to right field to open the top of the 12th against Mets reliever Addison Reed. Yost sent speedster Jarrod Dyson in to run for Perez, at which point the lead took on the inevitability of clockwork. 

Dyson would steal second, a virtual given since the Mets had no answer from behind the plate to the Royals speed on the base pads. And when you have batters who will stubbornly foul off pitch after pitch to avoid a strikeout, how could the Mets keeps the Royals off the scoreboard in the 12th inning? 

During that inning, like so many other critical junctures during this post season, it just seemed like there was nothing the other team could do against these Royals.

Dyson would eventually reach home off a Christian Colon single. It’s all the Royals would need, even though they poured on four more runs to bury the sad-sack Mets, a well-constructed team in their own right but one that squandered so many chances in the World Series.

Once the ball was dropped into Royals closer Wade Davis’ hands, there was no way back in for the Mets.

It was like that all series long. The Royals didn’t hit especially well, but they made the most of their opportunities. Their pitching was otherworldly.

And it all resulted from the painstaking construction of a franchise in ruins, one that had become used to futility since their glory days in the 1980s. By building a team through a strong farm system (Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon, among others) and smart, timely trades (Ben Zobrist comes to mind), the Royals have created a blueprint for how other small-market franchises can overcome the financial excesses of teams like the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.

This Royals squad was a team with so few glaring weaknesses that general manager Dayton Moore may go down as the best front-office man in this city’s professional sports history to this point. And Yost, who has had an uneasy relationship with Royals followers, deserves this city’s respect.