Mike Moustakas walked with the bases loaded in the 11th inning Wednesday night, giving the Kansas City Royals a come-from-behind 4-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers.

Billy Butler singled to lead off the inning against Kameron Loe (2-2), and Eric Hosmer drew a walk before Jeff Francoeur ripped a single to left field.

Third base coach Eddie Rodriguez threw up the stop sign on the lumbering Butler as he rounded third base, leaving them loaded for Moustakas, who walked on five pitches from Jose Veras to give the Royals a confidence-building victory.

Tim Collins (3-0) worked around a walk of his own in the 11th to earn the win for Kansas City, which came back from a 3-1 deficit with two outs in the ninth inning to force extra innings.

Alcides Escobar provided the damaging blow with a two-run triple off closer John Axford.

— Associated Press —

Much of the crowd at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday night had no doubt turned out to see the Brewers’ Zack Greinke face his former team for the first time.

By the sixth inning, their attention had shifted squarely to the Royals’ Luis Mendoza.

He carried a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before the Kansas City bullpen bailed him out of trouble, and Billy Butler’s go-ahead single in the eighth inning gave all those fans reason to celebrate with a 2-1 victory over Milwaukee.

”Every inning it’s like, ‘OK, no hits this inning.’ Of course I knew it was a no-hitter,” said Mendoza, who has shuffled between the bullpen and rotation much of the season.

”You have to keep it a close game,” he said, ”because Greinke’s a great pitcher.”

The only real mistake Greinke made was to Alex Gordon leading off the game. He sent a pitch soaring over the right-field wall to give Kansas City the early lead.

Gordon came through again when he faced Francisco Rodriguez (0-4) leading off the eighth. His double put him in scoring position, and a sacrifice bunt by Chris Getz moved him to third, giving Butler the chance to bring him home with a base hit to center field.

Jonathan Broxton came in for the ninth inning and put runners on the corners with one out, but struck out pinch hitter George Kottaras and got fellow pinch-hitter Brooks Conrad to ground out to shortstop, ending the game and wrapping up his 15th save of the season.

”Some closers are like that,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. ”They come into the game and at the end of the day, he gets the job done.”

Mendoza certainly got the job done.

He didn’t allow a hit until Ryan Braun singled leading off the seventh, and then he walked Aramis Ramirez. Aaron Crow came in and limited the damage to Rickie Weeks’ tying single, and Greg Holland (2-2) survived a shaky eighth inning to get the game to Broxton.

The victory snapped the Royals’ four-game losing streak.

”We ran into one of the better pitchers in baseball, if not the best on any given night,” Butler said. ”You can argue Mendoza out-pitched him.”

Greinke was chosen by the Royals in the first round of the 2002 draft, and they stuck by him through the well-documented personal issues that forced him to leave the game for a while.

He returned to become one of baseball’s best pitchers, going 16-8 with a 2.16 ERA in 2009 to win the American League Cy Young Award. He regressed only slightly the following year, and was eventually dealt to Milwaukee after the 2010 season.

The Royals picked up their starting shortstop, Alcides Escobar, along with outfielder Lorenzo Cain and minor league pitcher Jake Odorizzi in the deal. Yet many still wonder whether they were wrong to trade away one of their best homegrown pitchers.

Greinke certainly gave those folks some fodder in his return to Kauffman Stadium.

”Yeah, it was exciting,” Greinke acknowledged afterward. ”When I woke up, I was probably a little more excited than usual.”

After serving up Gordon’s sixth career leadoff homer, Greinke allowed only one hit over the next four innings, striking out the side in the fourth. He didn’t allow a runner to reach second base until the fifth, and then left him stranded there by recording three straight outs.

His low-90s fastball and pinpoint command was precisely what Royals fans remembered.

Mendoza gave them something entirely unexpected.

The underwhelming right-hander, who had been shuttling between the starting rotation and the bullpen most of the season, set Milwaukee down in order in the first inning.

He didn’t allow a runner until walking Weeks with two out in the second, and that was it until he hit Norichika Aoki on the foot leading off the fourth inning.

By the time Mendoza had shut down Milwaukee in order the next two innings – and had thrown just 64 pitches – there were some rumblings that Mendoza could be on his way to pitching the fifth no-hitter in franchise history, and the first since Bret Saberhagen more than 20 years ago.

Things got a bit shaky in the seventh, though.

Kansas City nearly got out of trouble with runners on the corners when Taylor Green flied out to Gordon in left, and his pinpoint throw down the line doubled up Braun trying to score. But Weeks came through with his RBI single on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the inning to tie the game.

Setting the stage for Butler’s go-ahead single in the eighth.

”They had an opportunity, and they came through. Butler got a hit,” Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. ”That was it.”

— Associated Press —

With a left-hander on the mound, the Kansas City Royals didn’t want to throw Andrew McCutchen a strike.

“We didn’t care if we walked him,” manager Ned Yost said.

Sound strategy, poor execution.

McCutchen homered and drove in three runs, A.J. Burnett won his fifth consecutive start and the Pittsburgh Pirates finished their first sweep of an AL team in more than a decade by beating the Royals 3-2 Sunday.

McCutchen hit an RBI double in the first inning and hit a two-run homer in the third. That gave Burnett (6-2) and three relievers enough support for the Pirates to win their fourth in a row despite having only three hits from all their other players.

“The fact that McCutchen was the one who hurt us, that’s the fact I’m very concerned about,” Kansas City catcher Brayan Pena said.

McCutchen has feasted on left-handers, improving his average to .463 against them after two hits in his first two at-bats against Bruce Chen.

Alex Gordon and Alcides Escobar each had two hits for the Royals, who have lost four in a row and six of eight.

This was the 50th interleague series the Pirates had played since taking three in a row from the Cleveland Indians on June 15-17, 2001.

Since May 25, the Pirates have the best record in the majors at 12-3.

“This weekend was outstanding,” Burnett said. “We are playing good ball now and we are hitting on a couple of cylinders and it’s fun to watch.”

Burnett allowed two runs on five hits and two walks with six strikeouts in 7 1/3 innings. Pittsburgh has won his past seven starts.

Burnett had a no-hitter through 5 1/3 innings until Gordon singled with one out in the sixth. He did not allow a baserunner until Eric Hosmer drew a two-out walk in the fourth or a run until Escobar’s two-out double scored Pena in the seventh.

That snapped a streak of 20 consecutive innings without an earned run at PNC Park for Burnett. He is 4-0 with a 1.27 ERA at home this season.

“He had good tempo and good rhythm today on a hot day, and he was really efficient with things,” Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle said. “It was a very, very solid performance all across the board for A.J. today.”

Tony Watson came on with runners at first and third and one out in the eighth, allowing Gordon to score on a Hosmer fielder’s choice.

Juan Cruz walked the bases loaded but struck out Mitch Maier for the final out of the eighth.

With closer Joel Hanrahan unavailable because he had appeared in the past three games, Jason Grilli worked around trouble in the ninth for his fourth career save and first of the season. With two on and no outs, Grilli stuck out Gordon and Johnny Giavotella to end the game.

Pittsburgh improved to 17-10 in one-run games.

McCutchen entered the game with 15 hits in his past 27 at-bats against left-handers. Despite going hitless over the first two games of the series, he made it 17 for 29 over the course of the first three innings.

“I hadn’t been feeling that great the past few days, but after a few times out in the cage, I was able to put a show forth today,” McCutchen said.

His first-inning double to right drove in Alex Presley, who led off the inning with a single. With Neil Walker on and two outs in the third, McCutchen lifted a 1-2 pitch from Chen into the left-field bleachers for his 11th homer of the season.

“He’s leading everybody hitting left-handers,” Yost said. “We really tried, even in the first inning, we didn’t want to throw him a strike.”

Chen (5-6) allowed three runs on four hits and a walk with five strikeouts in five innings. He came into the game with five wins in his past six starts but fell to 0-4 in his career at PNC Park.

The Royals have lost 24 of their past 33 games against NL teams.

— Associated Press —