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The Wednesday baseball playoffs game thread: ALCS Game 5, NLCS Game 4

There are two baseball games today and there may not be any baseball at all tomorrow. Do you want to see the Royals finish off the Blue Jays? Are you pulling for the Mets sweep? You might get both, like it or not.

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

It is entirely possible that there will be no baseball between today and the start of the World Series. That would be five days of baseball-less time, and about the only good thing you can say about that is it would get us prepped for the baseball-less months to come.

The Blue Jays are backed up against the wall. They've avoided being swept but have otherwise not seemed especially competitive in any of the games they have lost. They had to have a position player pitch yesterday, for crying out loud. What kind of sad sack loser team gets into the ALCS and then has to have a position player pitch? Do you even deserve to be here, you worthless jerks? If this is how you're going to play you could have just let Texas in this spot instead.

The Cubs are also backed up against the wall. They lost the games with their good starting pitchers and now they are trying to avoid being swept with Jason Hammel on the mound. When people start saying, "Well, maybe we can do what the 2004 Red Sox did," then you're in trouble. That's where the Cubs are. They probably deserve better than this, but as you know, deserve got nothin' to do with it.

The kid from Rookie of the Year (grown up now) is going to Chicago tonight to try to bring the Cubs luck. That sounds like a joke but it's not. Maybe he can at least bring them enough good luck to have them avoid being swept.

Here's today's schedule:

4:07pm Eastern: Royals @ Blue Jays (Kansas City leads, 3-1)
Starters: Edinson Volquez (KC), Marco Estrada (TOR)
TV: Fox Sports 1

8:07pm Eastern: Mets @ Cubs (New York leads, 3-0)
Starters: Steven Matz (NY), Jason Hammel (CHI)
TV: TBS

Today's Lineups

KANSAS CITY ROYALS TORONTO BLUE JAYS
Alcides Escobar - SS Ben Revere - LF
Ben Zobrist - 2B Josh Donaldson - 3B
Lorenzo Cain - CF Jose Bautista - RF
Eric Hosmer - 1B Edwin Encarnacion - DH
Kendrys Morales - DH Chris Colabello - 1B
Mike Moustakas - 3B Troy Tulowitzki - SS
Salvador Perez - C Dioner Navarro - C
Alex Gordon - LF Kevin Pillar - CF
Alex Rios - RF Ryan Goins - 2B
Edinson Volquez - RHP Marco Estrada - RHP