KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Edinson Volquez planned to pitch the Toronto Blue Jays inside in Game 1 of their American League Championship Series, just as he did during their contentious series earlier this season.

Then, after chatting with Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez, he changed his mind.

“We know they got a lot of pull hitters over there, and power hitters, and he told me, ‘How you feel pitching down and away?’ And I said, ‘I feel sexy tonight,'” Volquez recalled. “And he was like, ‘All right, we’re changing the plan right now. We’re pitching those guys away.'”

They never touched him all night.

Volquez combined with three relievers on a three-hitter, Perez hit a soaring home run off Toronto starter Marco Estrada, and Kansas City rolled to a 5-0 victory Friday to open the best-of-seven series.

“Tonight was the Volquez show. He was tremendous,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “He shut down a good-hitting team, I know that. His ball was ducking and darting everywhere.”

Volquez (1-1) ramped up his fastball to 97 mph to slice through a potent Blue Jays offense, never allowing a runner past second base over six innings. His only trouble occurred when he walked the first two batters in the sixth, but he wiggled out of it without any damage.

The Royals’ bullpen finished off the club’s eighth consecutive ALCS victory.

“There was a lot of energy,” said Volquez, who had been 0-3 with an 8.76 ERA in three career postseason starts. “I don’t know. I was just making my pitches.”

Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain drove in runs off Estrada (1-1), while Eric Hosmer and Kendrys Morales tacked on two more off LaTroy Hawkins to put the game away.

The Blue Jays’ three hits were their fewest ever in a postseason game. They were shut out five times in the regular season.

As if the outcome wasn’t bad enough for them, designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion left in the eighth inning to get X-rays on the middle finger of his left hand. The initial report was a strain of the ligament, and Encarnacion was listed as day-to-day.

“He’s been battling this thing,” Gibbons said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

A source told ESPN’s Marly Rivera that Encarnacion received a shot to diminish swelling of the finger. Encarnación is “hopeful” he can play in Game 2.

The Royals will try to take a 2-0 series lead when they send Yordano Ventura to the mound on Saturday. Toronto will counter with former Cy Young Award winner David Price.

“Hopefully things change to our favor tomorrow,” Toronto catcher Dioner Navararo said.

The teams entered the series with plenty of history.

To start with, the defending AL champs beat Toronto in the 1985 league championship series, then beat the St. Louis Cardinals for the Royals’ only World Series triumph. But far more recently were the tense, benches-clearing game that the teams played at Rogers Centre in August.

Volquez was right in the thick of things.

He kept pitching the Blue Jays inside, finally hitting Josh Donaldson with a fastball. Tensions escalated as the game went on, with Toronto reliever Aaron Sanchez returning the favor by hitting Escobar to trigger the first of two benches-clearing scuffles.

Afterward, Volquez said Donaldson was “crying like a baby” over his inside approach. And to nobody’s surprise, Donaldson was booed lustily by the Kansas City crowd on Friday night.

That was the only reason for the packed house to boo, though.

After squandering a scoring chance in the first inning, the Royals jumped ahead in the third. Alex Gordon led off with a double, Escobar sent an RBI double down the right-field line, and Cain’s two-out single helped Kansas City — so accustomed to playing from behind — to a 2-0 lead.

Perez added his third homer of the postseason on the first pitch he saw in the fourth, the cheering of the throaty, flag-waving crowd reaching a crescendo as it passed over the wall.

As shaky was Estrada was, Volquez was downright stoic as he circled the mound.

He did not allow a hit until his 56th pitch, when Chris Colabello chopped a single up the middle with two outs in the fourth. It snapped a postseason hitless streak of 10 2/3 innings for the Royals, one out shy of matching the record set by the New York Yankees in 1939.

The biggest of the Blue Jays’ big bats made the quietest outs, too.

Jose Bautista went down looking in the fourth inning, and Encarnacion struck out looking in the sixth. Donaldson managed a walk off Volquez but little else, while Tulowitzki — one of the Blue Jays’ big deadline acquisitions — went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts.

“It is extremely important to win the opener,” Hosmer said. “There’s only so many crazy comebacks you can pull off in a postseason. It was nice to get out to a lead tonight.”

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Johnny Cueto delivered a masterpiece on his biggest stage yet, pitching eight dominant innings Wednesday night and leading the resilient Kansas City Royals to a 7-2 victory over the Houston Astros and back to the American League Championship Series.

Cueto allowed two hits, a single by Evan Gattis followed by Luis Valbuena’s second-inning homer, before retiring the final 19 batters he faced. He struck out eight without a walk in the kind of clutch performance the Royals expected when they traded for him.

When Wade Davis breezed through the ninth, the Royals poured onto the field to celebrate.

The defending AL champs will host the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1 on Friday night. The teams have met once before in the ALCS with the Royals winning in seven games in 1985 — they would go on to beat the St. Louis Cardinals for their only World Series triumph.

“Johnny Cueto was unbelievable,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “He knew the magnitude of this game. I think we all did. And he came out from the first pitch and had everything going.”

Still, the Royals trailed 2-1 in the fifth when Alex Rios led yet another comeback with a go-ahead, two-run double. Eric Hosmer and Ben Zobrist also drove in runs, while Kendrys Morales capped the festive night with a three-run homer off Dallas Keuchel in the eighth to put it away.

“The good version of Johnny Cueto is really tough,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “Hats off to him. He pitched a great game. … We didn’t scratch much off him.”

Collin McHugh (1-1), who won the divisional series opener for Houston, allowed three runs in four-plus innings. His bullpen fared little better just two days after it blew a four-run, eighth-inning lead to send the series back to Kauffman Stadium for Game 5.

Kansas City has now won 10 of its last 13 playoff games at home.

The Astros actually seemed poised after their meltdown Sunday, bolting to the lead in front of a charged Kansas City crowd thanks to a rare series of Royals defensive lapses.

With two outs in the second, Gattis sent a slow hopper down the line that third baseman Mike Moustakas fielded cleanly. But with plenty of time, his throw across the infield went wide, and first baseman Eric Hosmer had the ball pop from his glove trying to make a swipe tag.

On the next pitch, Valbuena sent his two-run homer streaking into the Astros bullpen.

It wasn’t until the fourth that Kansas City got a run back, on back-to-back singles by Cain and Hosmer. But by the fifth, the Royals had figured out McHugh’s darting curveball.

Salvador Perez was hit by a pitch, and Alex Gordon hit a ground-rule double to right. Hinch brought in Mike Fiers in relief, and Rios sent a double bouncing down the chalk of the third-base line, scoring two runs and giving the Royals the lead.

Following a sacrifice bunt, Zobrist’s lazy sacrifice fly made it 4-2.

That was plenty of support for Cueto, who was acquired from the Reds for a package of left-handed prospects just before the July 31 trade deadline precisely for moments like this.

Mixing quick-pitch fastballs with hesitation changeups, Cueto made the Astros look foolish most of the night. He jawed with Houston outfielder Carlos Gomez, strutted around like a Wild West gunfighter, and had the unmistakable swagger of an October ace.

After all, Cueto was finally proving that he was one.

His star turn came after going 0-2 in his first four playoff starts, including a forgettable outing in Game 2 against Houston. He allowed four runs in six innings in that game, though Kansas City’s offense and its stingy bullpen ultimately bailed him out.

There was no need for any help this time. Cueto was good enough on his own.

“He didn’t make a bad pitch all night,” Yost said. “He came in after the eighth inning and was lobbying to go back in the ninth. He was unbelievable.”

— Associated Press —