The Royals batters are negating the strength of the Mets pitchers:

The same guy who racked up 27 strikeouts in three postseason starts, at times even without his best fastball, managed only two on Wednesday night — and those were both looking when deGrom fooled hitters with sliders.

More remarkably, he got only three swings-and-misses all night — and not a single one against the 54 fastballs he threw. This despite the fact that three extra days of rests since his Game 3 start against the Cubs seemed to refresh him a bit, with his velocity at 96-97 on the radar gun.

Balls thrown that hard tend to be tough to hit well, especially for batter trying to crush the ball. The Royals are not trying to crush the ball. If they can meet the ball, at that speed it flies off the bat. It’s Jujutsu.

This is exactly how the Angels beat the Yankees in 2002. In that series, the Yankees struck out 4.8 batters per nine innings after striking out 7.0 batters per nine inning in the regular season.