The Royals’ 25-man postseason roster has 12 changes on it from last season, and without the makeover they probably wouldn’t have won their second straight American League Championship Series on Friday night at Kauffman Stadium.
That was particularly true with the additions of Kendrys Morales, Chris Young, Ryan Madson, the postseason version of Alex Rios and Ben Zobrist, whose first-inning home run stirred Kauffman Stadium to a life it never lost in the Royals’ 4-3 victory over Toronto in the decisive and nerve-wracking Game 6.
But this all has sprouted foremost from the core of players who came of age here, players whose early struggles left skeptics expecting they’d just add to the generation of futility that had engulfed the franchise.