Royals Resembling 2010 Rangers

The Kansas City Royals are undoubtedly the story of Major League Baseball right now.

It started with their long-awaited rise into contender status, their 12-inning win in the AL Wild Card Game to topple powerhouse Oakland, and then their three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Angels in the ALDS, the owners of the best regular-season record in the league.

For lack of a better term, the Royals have simply caught fire, and it's resembling a rag-tag, fun bunch of Texas Rangers from the 2010 season.

Remember that year, that great year in Arlington when the Rangers followed up a promising 2009 season with a division crown and by winning their first postseason series in club history by beating the Tampa Bay Rays in a decisive Game 5 on the road? It was all kinds of awesome.

Of course, the Rangers then went on to sink the Evil Empire by beating the Yankees in the ALCS and advancing to their first-ever World Series, which they promptly lost in five games. But hey, that year, making it to the World Series was a victory.

It was a young team that ran the bases with reckless abandon and with tons of aggression. It was a team without a true ace until they acquired Cliff Lee in July after they'd basically left the AL West in their wake already. It was a team with a young, fireballing closer (Neftali Feliz) and an electric setup man (Alexi Ogando) much in the mold of the Royals' closer (Greg Holland) and setup man (Wade Davis).

If the Royals can continue to resemble that 2010 Rangers team that finally broke through after years of raving about their elite farm system, those folks up in Kansas City are going to have an exciting October.

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