KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Collin McHugh and the Houston Astros beat the Kansas City Royals at their own game Thursday night, relying on sharp pitching and stingy defense for a 5-2 victory in the opener of their AL Division Series.

Pitching around a 49-minute rain delay, McHugh (1-0) allowed four hits, including a pair of solo homers by Kendrys Morales. He lasted six innings before turning the game over to his bullpen, which scattered three runners over the final three frames.

Tony Sipp, Will Harris and Oliver Perez got the game to Luke Gregerson, who was part of Oakland’s wild-card collapse in Kansas City last year. He handled the ninth to earn a save.

George Springer and Colby Rasmus went deep for the homer-happy Astros, but they also scored via the same sort of small ball the Royals used in reaching the World Series last season.

Game 2 is Friday, with lefty Scott Kazmir on the mound for Houston against right-hander Johnny Cueto in a matchup of pitchers traded during the season.

Yordano Ventura (0-1) yielded three runs on four hits and a walk in two innings for Kansas City, but did not come back following the delay. Chris Young served up Springer’s home run with one out in the fifth, but tossed four otherwise solid innings of relief.

The Astros, who struggled so mightily on the road this season, have apparently solved their woes just in time. They beat the Yankees 3-0 in New York in Tuesday night’s wild-card game, then took care of a Royals club built specifically for spacious Kauffman Stadium.

“That’s a young, athletic team, and they played really, really good defense,” Kansas City manager Ned Yost said.

Houston’s win also made it the first time since 1970 that visiting teams won baseball’s first four postseason games, STATS said. The other two times it happened were 1906 and 1923.

The Astros wasted no time getting Ventura in trouble, loading the bases with nobody out in the first inning. Ventura settled down to retire the next three batters, but Rasmus and Evan Gattis provided RBI groundouts to give Houston a 2-0 lead.

Jose Altuve tacked on another run in the second with a single to right.

The Royals answered in the bottom half, just as rain started to fall, when Morales ripped McHugh’s 89 mph fastball down the right-field line.

The rain became a downpour as the inning progressed, and lightning sent fans scurrying for the concourse.

The tarp was pulled onto the field between innings.

When the game resumed, the Royals sent Young to the mound rather than Ventura.

“It was pushing 60 minutes there,” Yost said. “He was just settling in when it started to rain.”

Astros manager A.J. Hinch stuck with McHugh even though he hadn’t thrown a pitch for nearly an hour.

Morales got the better of McHugh again in the fourth, driving a 1-1 pitch over the wall in right. Morales became the first Royals player with two homers in a postseason game since George Brett against Toronto in the 1985 AL Championship Series.

Unfortunately for the Royals, Morales was the only hitter who could solve McHugh. That left Kansas City, the darling of last year’s postseason, facing a crucial Game 2 on Friday, when another defeat would leave the team on the brink of elimination.

Rasmus also homered in the wild-card game at Yankee Stadium. He has six homers and 11 RBIs in his last nine games.

Houston ranked second in the majors with 230 homers this year, two behind Toronto.

MAN DOWN

Even the Royals’ grounds crew had a rough night. One of the workers responsible for rolling out the tarp during the delay tripped and fell. The tarp kept rolling right over his legs, and he screamed in pain. There was no word on the extent of his injury.

UP NEXT

Two pitchers procured with October in mind square off in Game 2. The Astros send out Kazmir, obtained in a July trade with Oakland, to face a team he has dominated in the past. The Royals counter with Cueto, acquired from Cincinnati a few days later. Cueto has struggled in his previous postseason appearances.

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — When the Houston Astros had recorded the final out in Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, they flooded onto the field in a wild celebration, all their years of losing finally a memory.

It looked a whole lot like the scene in Kansas City a year ago.

Now, the long-suffering Astros will try to accomplish what the once-beleaguered Royals did by building on their wild-card victory over the Yankees. They visit Kansas City to begin a best-of-five AL Division Series against the Royals on Thursday night at Kauffman Stadium.

“It kind of reminds us of us last year,” Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas said after a light workout Wednesday afternoon, “young and hungry and out there trying to prove to everybody that we deserve to be here.”

The Royals certainly accomplished that 12 months ago.

After ending a 29-year postseason drought, the plucky bunch of youngsters swept all the way to the World Series, where they fell in seven games to the San Francisco Giants. But it was the Royals’ dramatic, extra-inning victory over the Oakland Athletics in their AL wild-card game that instilled in them a belief that they could play with anybody in baseball.

Much like Tuesday night in the Bronx seemed to galvanize the young Astros.

They clowned around before the first pitch, then took care of New York when it was time to get serious, before resuming their playful antics with a rousing 30-minute postgame party.

“You know, we did it in a little more dramatic fashion than they did,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of the wild-card win, “but they played a very solid game, took advantage of mistakes, excellent pitching and defense. Both teams play with a lot of passion and energy.”

In other words, both teams have a whole lot of fun.

“I don’t know if anybody else picked up on that, just as a fan watching what they were doing last year,” said the Astros’ Collin McHugh, who will start Game 1. “You can tell they have a fun clubhouse. I think that’s probably the closest similarity I can see with our team.”

There are others, though. Both endured long periods of ineptitude, underscored by 100-loss seasons. Both were painstakingly built through the draft. Both clubs put a premium on speed and defense. And both have formidable bullpens and stout rotations, with the Royals sending out hard-throwing Yordano Ventura to face McHugh in the series opener.

The similarities are hardly lost on Astros manager A.J. Hinch, who played for the Royals in the early 2000s, when the organization was in the depths of despair.

“I think both teams sense the opportunity might be there to make a run in October,” Hinch said. “Certainly, they’ve been a year or two ahead of us in this, I guess, move to the middle of relevant baseball with their run last year. But both really good clubs.”

Really young clubs, too. The average age of Houston for its wild-card game was 28 years, 343 days. The Royals were an average of 29 years, 51 days on Game 1 of last year’s World Series.

“They’re a young, energetic team, as we are too,” said Royals outfielder Alex Rios, who is in the postseason for the first time after 1,691 games. “But they’re also a team that has a lot of talent, so we have to go out there and play the same game we’ve been playing all season.”

The Astros and Royals are not mirror images of each other. Houston pounds home runs at the expense of strikeouts, while the Royals play to contact and grind out runs. The Astros greedily accepts walks while Kansas City swings away, regardless of the count.

Then there is the difference in their ballparks.

Kauffman Stadium is cavernous, the kind of place where home runs anywhere else turn into routine fly balls. Minute Maid Park is a bandbox where pop flies often carry the wall.

Oh, and there’s one more difference: The Royals played in the World Series a year ago. It may not be much of an edge in postseason experience, but it’s at least something.

“We had a good run last year, but that was last year,” Moustakas said. “This is a new season now, the best team is going to win. We have to find a way to beat that club.”

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Royals will start hard-throwing youngster Yordano Ventura in Game 1 of the AL Division Series, regardless of whether Kansas City plays the Yankees or Astros on Thursday night.

Royals manager Ned Yost announced his starter before Tuesday’s workout at Kauffman Stadium. Johnny Cueto will pitch the second game and Edinson Volquez will start Game 3, with the rest of the rotation to be announced only if Games 4 and 5 are necessary.

“For us, the last two weeks, three weeks, all three of those guys have been throwing the ball good,” Yost said. “Ventura has been excellent in his last six, seven starts. And we wanted to keep everybody on five days’ rest. We thought that would work out best for us.”

The 24-year-old Ventura weathered a roller coaster year that saw him briefly banished to Triple-A Omaha. But the star of Game 6 of last year’s World Series rebounded down the stretch, flashing his 100 mph fastball while going 4-1 with a 3.14 ERA in seven starts in September.

He allowed one run and four hits over seven innings — striking out 11 — on Saturday in Minnesota.

That string of success earned Ventura the Game 1 nod over the 29-year-old Cueto, whom many expected to anchor the Royals’ playoff rotation when he was acquired from Cincinnati in July.

But while Cueto has pitched better his last four outings, he went through a long slump in late August and early September. Throw in the fact he is just 0-2 with a 5.19 ERA in three playoff starts with the Reds, and the decision to start Ventura in the opener became clear.

Volquez, who will start Game 3 on the road, has lost both of his previous postseason starts.

“Really, your ace is whoever is pitching that particular night. Everybody on your playoff roster is there to help you win games,” said Royals general manager Dayton Moore when asked about Cueto starting Game 2. “We’re going to need everyone in our rotation.”

Yost was still considering the rest of his playoff roster Tuesday, though he did say it would not depend on whether New York or Houston wins the AL wild-card game. The bigger issue for Yost was finding the right balance between speed and power off the bench.

“We like the speed aspect. You like to have the extra bat, too,” he said. “But sometimes you have to choose between one or the other. We’ll make a final decision on that probably tomorrow.”

— Associated Press —