{"id":34131,"date":"2015-10-18T08:04:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T15:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/little-hit-big-win\/"},"modified":"2015-10-18T08:04:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T15:04:46","slug":"little-hit-big-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/little-hit-big-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Little hit, big win"},"content":{"rendered":"

KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 <\/strong>The Kansas City Royals kept waiting for Blue Jays ace David Price to give them some hope.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be Toronto\u2019s leaky defense that provided it.<\/p>\n

After managing one hit over six innings, Ben Zobrist\u2019s easy fly that somehow fell for a hit began a five-run rally against Price in the seventh inning Saturday. The Royals rolled the rest of the way to a 6-3 victory over Toronto and a 2-0 lead in the AL Championship Series.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed to catch a break,\u201d the Royals\u2019 Alex Gordon said, \u201cand Zobrist\u2019s ball was it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luke Hochevar wiggled out of a jam to keep Kansas City in the game, and Danny Duffy and Kelvin Herrera got the ball to closer Wade Davis, who had to survive a shaky ninth to preserve the win.<\/p>\n

Davis gave up a leadoff single and walked pinch-hitter Cliff Pennington, but bounced back to strike out leadoff man Ben Revere and MVP candidate Josh Donaldson. Jose Bautista then flied out to right to give Davis his third postseason save and the Royals another postseason comeback win.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur guys never quit,\u201d Royals manager Ned Yost said. \u201cThey keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though they looked foolish flailing at Price\u2019s pitches \u2014 until the lazy fly ball by Zobrist changed everything. They proceeded to string together four singles and a double in their go-ahead inning, getting run-producing hits from Gordon, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Alex Rios, along with an RBI groundout from Kendrys Morales.<\/p>\n

It was a monumental collapse for Price, who had at one point recorded 18 straight outs. He fell to 0-7 in seven postseason starts, including a loss to Texas in their AL Division Series.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave up hits at the wrong time,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt good. It\u2019s a very scrappy team. They put the ball in play. They continued to battle. It\u2019s just a tough loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the reigning AL champs have won nine straight ALCS games dating to their memorable seven-game series against Toronto in 1985 \u2014 the year they won their only World Series. The record is 10 straight wins set by Baltimore in the 1960s and \u201870s.<\/p>\n

Now, the Blue Jays head home for Game 3 on Monday night in dire trouble. All but three of the previous 25 teams to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven era have won the series \u2014 though Toronto did rally from the same hole to beat the Rangers in five games in the division round.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been here before,\u201d shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said, \u201cbut it\u2019s not a place we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

For most of the afternoon, it appeared the Blue Jays would forge a 1-1 tie.<\/p>\n

Ryan Goins drove in a run off Ventura in the third, snapping an 18-inning scoreless streak by Royals pitchers. Edwin Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki added to the lead in the sixth.<\/p>\n

The way Price was carving up the lineup, a 3-0 advantage looked to be enough.<\/p>\n

The only bad pitch he threw the first six innings was his first, which Alcides Escobar swatted for a leadoff single. Price threw first-pitch strikes to 12 of 14 batters at one point, and struck out the side in the sixth inning, giving no indication he was about to implode.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just needed to catch a break,\u201d Moustakas said. \u201cPrice was throwing the ball unbelievable. We got the early hit and he was kind of cruising. We just needed to find a way to get a runner on base so we could do what we can, keep the line moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mistake came when Zobrist sent a popup to shallow right field to start the seventh, and Goins gave chase from second base and Bautista from right field. Both wound up letting it drop for a single, and for the first time all game, a sellout crowd at Kauffman Stadium began to stir.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put my glove up and pretty much was saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to make this play,\u2019 and then I didn\u2019t make the play,\u201d Goins said, \u201cso it\u2019s on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lorenzo Cain followed with a clean single to extend his postseason hit streak to 11 games, matching a franchise record. Hosmer\u2019s single got the Royals on the board, and Morales added an RBI groundout up the middle, before Moustakas came up. In a 2-for-25 slump and without an RBI this postseason, he pulled a tying double to right field to set the crowd of 40,357 into a frenzy.<\/p>\n

Gordon\u2019s double gave Kansas City the lead. Rios added another single off reliever Aaron Sanchez to close the book on Price, who was dinged for all five runs in one disastrous inning.<\/p>\n

The last time he allowed five runs in an inning was May 8. The opponent: Kansas City.<\/p>\n

The Royals tacked on another run off the Toronto relief corps in the eighth, but it was hardly necessary. Kansas City\u2019s own shutdown bullpen made certain the lead would stand up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got to get a win under your belt,\u201d Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. \u201cIt won\u2019t be easy, no doubt about that. But you get one win out of the way it can turn things around in a hurry.\u201dries <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 The Kansas City Royals kept waiting for Blue Jays ace David Price to give them some hope. It turned out to be Toronto\u2019s leaky defense that provided it. After managing one hit over six innings, Ben Zobrist\u2019s easy fly that somehow fell for a hit began a five-run rally against Price […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":34132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34131"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}