Sometimes, we get to smile when constructing these MLB Monday pieces, and today is one of those moments. We like it when teams that have been unjustly defeated return to conquer the devils and the odds to win it all; this season is one of those years. The Kansas City Royals won their second World Series, 30 years after winning their first one in 1985, which perhaps they didn’t deserve at the time. Justice? Maybe.

2015 World Series MVP: Salvador Perez, C, Kansas City (original); Johnny Cueto, SP, Kansas City (revised)

The Royals defeated the New York Mets in five games to win the Fall Classic in dominating fashion, one year after losing the title matchup in seven games. Catcher Salvador Perez (.364 BA, 2 RBI, .846 OPS) was voted the MVP; we’re not so sure this wasn’t a symbolic gesture for the clubhouse leader of a spunky team from a small television market in the Midwest, in truth. Perez hit well, but overall, his play wasn’t super special.

The issue is that we’re not sure who else to pick: on the hitting side, no one seems to have performed extraordinarily well, and on the pitching mound, the only guy to post more than 9 IP received 2 “no decisions” in his starts, although he threw solidly. The Royals outscored the Mets, 27-19, overall, so we’d assume the offense did the serious work here, yet … the team RBI/WPA leader hit under .200 overall.

The Kansas City closer notched just one save, while the best pitching performance was turned in by the Game 2 starter, who went 9 innings and didn’t get a second start. The Royals won two games in extra innings (Game 1, Game 5), yet we’re going to go with that Game 2 starter, who took on the Mets young ace and dealt a 1-run, 2-hit masterpiece: Johnny Cueto. His .556 WHIP for the game was excellent, of course.

And the psychology of winning Game 2 at home after escaping Game 1 in 14 innings by a single run is huge; teams that lose long overtime games often struggle mentally after that, and the Mets were no exception. But they had their “Wonder Kid” on the mound, and he could have carried the game all by himself. Yet he could not, because Cueto was dealing. This is a rare thing for us to choose a single-start pitcher, but we’re doing it.

2015 ALCS MVP: Alcides Escobar, SS, Kansas City (original, confirmed)

The Royals beat the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS across six games, as the Blue Jays were making their first appearance in this round since 1993. Kansas City shortstop Alcides Escobar (.478 BA, 5 RBI, 1.134 OPS) won the MVP vote; he played clean defense, too. No other position player can match this, so what about the pitching staff? No starter won twice, and generally, the pitchers spread out the achievements. Confirmed!

2015 NLCS MVP: Daniel Murphy, IF, New York (original); Jeurys Familia, CL, New York (revised)

The Mets swept the Chicago Cubs by a combined score of 21-8, and infielder Daniel Murphy (4 HRs, 6 RBI, 1.850 OPS) won the NLCS MVP vote. We’re suspicious of Murphy’s performance in a free-agent postseason at age 30 with a career .755 OPS to this point—and a .930 OPS in the next 342 regular-season games after this from age 31-33. Murphy hit just 14 homers in 130 games during the regular season, yet in the playoffs?

He ended up hitting 7 HRs in 9 postseason games before the Royals shut him down in the Series. Something never felt right about this at the time: Murphy was mediocre from 2008-2015 with the Mets, and he was facing the void after another ho-hum season (.770 OPS) at age 30. Yet after this postseason explosion, Murphy secured $61.5M in contracts for the rest of his career. That’s a lot of money for an average infielder.

Thus, we’re proceeding under the assumption he cycled up at some point after his last random drug test during the 2015 regular season, where that .770 OPS was his best since his age-26 season, too. We will give our hardware here to closer Jeurys Familia (3 saves, 0.923 WHIP). When you close three times in a sweep, you have value to your team, even though the overall scoring gap between the teams seems rather big.

2015 AL MOTY: Jeff Banister, Texas (original, confirmed)

This is one of those moments where we don’t even know who the winner of this award was/is: Texas Rangers Manager Jeff Banister (plus-5 PPP) won the vote as his team won the AL West. It was an odd year as no skipper in the AL East posted a break-even or positive PPP mark. Royals Manager Ned Yost also posted a plus-5 PPP, but his team won the AL Central by 12 games and were the defending league champs. Okay then.

The Rangers had to fight off the Houston Astros by 2 games and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim by 3 games to win the division. While the Astros got a whopping minus-7 PPP effort from Manager A.J. Hinch—he of the future sign-stealing enterprise, which seeing this makes us realize why he resorted to cheating—the Angels were getting a plus-6 bounce from Manager Mike Scioscia, a previous winner here, of course.

So, we will confirm Banister’s vote win, without even knowing much about him hitherto. For the record, this was his only managerial job, and he won the AL West two years in a row to start his tenure. But he fell to third place in 2017—probably thanks to the Houston cheating scandal—and fifth place in 2018 before being canned with 10 games left to go in the regular season. Surprisingly, he never managed a team again. Rough.

2015 NL MOTY: Joe Maddon, Chicago (original, confirmed)

Despite winning the AL MOTY nod from us in 2013, Manager Joe Maddon ended up with the Cubs in 2015—and won the NL MOTY vote with a plus-7 PPP effort, even though Chicago finished third in the NL Central Division with 97 wins. Tough division, right? The Cubs did have a 13-game cushion for that last wild-card slot, but Maddon still had the highest PPP mark of any manager in the league overall. Confirmed.