KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The fact that the Royals seemed to be finally hitting their stride was not lost on manager Ned Yost as he left his office, ambled down the tunnel and peered out into the rain on Monday.

“When you’re playing well,” he said, “you don’t like rainouts.”

Still, Yost acknowledged that there were benefits to having the game against the New York Yankees postponed, a decision made about two hours before the scheduled first pitch. He was already planning to rest catcher Salvador Perez, and guys such as Omar Infante who have been scuffling will also get the day off.

“There are pros and cons to it,” Yost said.

The game will be made up Aug. 25 at a time to be determined.

Yost said he plans to slide his rotation back one day. Left-hander Jason Vargas, who was supposed to finish up the four-game series against New York, will now start the opener of a two-game set Tuesday against Cleveland. Right-hander Yordano Ventura is on the mound Wednesday.

The Royals are off on Thursday, giving everyone another chance to rest.

Meanwhile, Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka flew ahead to Seattle in anticipation of starting Tuesday, but manager Joe Girardi also plans to push his rotation back a day. That means left-hander Vidal Nuno will start the opener against the Mariners and Tanaka will pitch Wednesday.

There have been signs the last couple weeks that Kansas City is starting to come out of its early season funk, though, and that resurgence has roughly coincided with some changes to the coaching staff when the team was in Toronto. Pedro Grifol was removed as the hitting coach and the job given to Dale Sveum, who once helped to tutor Milwaukee’s young power hitters.

“They’ve done a better job with their approach, getting pitches up, putting good swings on them. When you have a team you believe in there’s a point where it’s going to click somewhere,” Yost said. “Maybe it clicked in Toronto, I don’t know.”

Since leaving Toronto, the Royals have won five of their last seven games. Twice they’ve piled up eight runs, which matched the third-most they’ve scored in any game all season.

That’s the kind of turnaround the Yankees would like to see.

The Bronx Bombers will be taking their slingshot offense to Seattle and Oakland to continue what has already been a disappointing trip. The Yankees won the opener against Kansas City 4-2, but then struggled again to score runs in an 8-4 loss on Saturday and a 2-1 defeat Sunday.

“The one thing you can’t do is you can’t necessarily change everything,” Yankees manager Jo Girardi said. “You look at what guys have done in the past, you look at what guys are doing this year, and you try to piece together what you feel is the best lineup every day.

“We’ve struggled the last three or four weeks scoring runs. We know we need to score more,” he continued, “but guys are going through a time. You just have to ride it out a little bit.”

The Yankees, in the bottom half of the league in several offensive categories, have failed to score more than four runs each of their past 10 games, winning just three times in that stretch.

“You are usually not as bad as you look when things are going bad,” said Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, who was 0 for 4 on Sunday. “It’s like you’re usually not as good as you look when things are going good. But we’ve got to turn it around.”

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — James Shields would have been wise to pop some Dramamine, Ned Yost some antacids.

The Royals’ ace survived six shaky innings mostly of his own doing Sunday, and the Kansas City offense supplied just enough offense against Hiroki Kuroda to squeak out a 2-1 victory.

“Shields had to grind it out again and again,” said Yost, his manager, who spent the entire game on edge, “and he made it through some choppy waters.”

Even without any motion-sickness medicine.

The Royals have won the last seven games that Shields (7-3) has started, and he’s earned the win in four of those. The veteran right-hander may have lasted only six innings in this effort, but he gave up only six hits to the punchless Yankees and allowed one unearned run.

“They’re always tough,” said Shields, who faced the Yankees for the 30th time, more than any other club. “They make good at-bats. It’s always a grind whenever you face them.”

Aaron Crow escaped a jam in the seventh inning, and Wade Davis recorded the 500th strikeout of his career during a perfect eighth before Greg Holland survived a shaky ninth for his 18th save.

The All-Star closer gave up a leadoff single to Ichiro Suzuki and then sent him to second on a wild pitch. Holland kept his cool, retiring Brian Roberts on a fly out, pinch hitter Mark Teixeira on a groundout and then striking out Brett Gardner to end the game.

“Shields battled his butt off,” Crow said. “You want to make sure he gets the win.”

The Yankees failed to score more than four runs for the 10th consecutive game, though the not-so-aptly-named “Bronx Bombers” certainly had their share of chances.

Not just in the ninth inning, either.

New York stranded runners on first and second in the first inning. It loaded the bases with nobody out in the second and failed to score. Jacoby Ellsbury led off the third with a double and was left on third base. And Roberts was stranded after a fourth-inning double.

“Somehow we’ve got to find a way to get it done,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.

In all, 10 of the first 12 outs Shields recorded were with runners in scoring position. The Yankees finished 1 for 17 with runners in scoring position.

“It was a game of missed opportunities,” Derek Jeter said. “We had a lot of opportunities. Gives those guys credit. We’ve seen Shields for years now and he’s as good as they come, especially with guys on base. He bears down.”

While the Yankees were struggling to find a clutch hit, the Royals managed to string together the only real success they had against Kuroda (4-4) with two outs in the second inning.

Hot-hitting Salvador Perez, who cracked a three-run homer in an 8-4 win Saturday night, got things going with a single. Cain’s base hit drove in the first run and Moustakas, in the throes of another major slump, added another single to make the score 2-0.

That was all the Royals could muster against Kuroda, who had been unbeaten in his last six starts. He allowed five hits and two walks while striking out three in seven innings.

New York finally scored in the sixth, when Yangervis Solarte hit a double and reached third base on a passed ball. Suzuki drove him in with a groundout to shortstop.

But given a chance to tie the game, the Yankees kept coming up empty.

Their failure in the ninth inning came after Gardner sent a triple to the wall with one out in the seventh. Crow rebounded to get Jeter on a ground out, and then struck out Ellsbury with a full-count pitch to leave the tying run 90 feet away.

“When guys are scuffling it seems like they are scuffling in bunches. When you get hot it seems like a lot of guys are hot,” Jeter said. “These are the times you’ve got to keep swinging. The only way to get out of it is swing out of it.”

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Royals ball boy earned himself plenty of TV time on Sunday when he fielded a fair ball down the first base line and handed it innocently to a fan in the first row of seats.

The ball had been roped down the line by the Yankees’ Brian Roberts in the fourth inning, and first base umpire Mike Estabrook clearly ruled it fair. But the ball boy evidently failed to notice the signal, and he scooped it up and turned to give it away in one motion.

Meanwhile, Royals right fielder Nori Aoki had run over to point out that it was a fair ball.

It probably didn’t make much difference. Roberts would likely have held at second base, where he ended up as a result of the ground-rule double.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Whenever a Royals pitcher has issued a walk lately, the runner has usually scored. So when Ned Yost’s own guys worked a pair of walks against the Yankees on Saturday night in the sixth inning of a tied game, the often-dour manager had an optimistic thought.

“Let’s turn it around this time,” Yost said.

Salvador Perez did just that.

The big catcher belted a three-run homer into the bullpen in left field, and Eric Hosmer added a solo shot later in the game, sending Kansas City to an 8-4 victory over New York.

“I’ve said all along, I thought we have home-run power,” said Yost, whose team has hit just 26 homers — by far the fewest in the majors. “It’ll manifest itself in time.”

Alex Gordon, Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar and Nori Aoki drove in a run apiece as the Royals bounced back from an offensively inept performance in a 4-2 series-opening loss Friday night.

Aaron Crow (3-1) retired one batter in the sixth in relief of starter Danny Duffy, and breezed through the seventh to earn the victory. Kelvin Herrera and Michael Mariot finished it off.

David Phelps (1-4) allowed seven runs on 10 hits and two walks in 5⅔ innings.

“Frustrating is the PG-rated word for it,” he said. “I was pitching decent going into later parts of games, but it’s tough to win ballgames when you give up four runs in the sixth and seventh inning. It’s frustrating.”

Yangervis Solarte drove in a pair of runs for New York, and Carlos Beltran — who’s been bothered by an ailing elbow and is still relegated to designated hitter duty — got an RBI with his first hit since coming off the disabled list Thursday.

“It’s like starting over for me,” Beltran said. “One day, two days is not going to do it, any difference. Basically you have to play every day and with playing time that will come. I cannot tell you [when]. I wish I could know.”

The Royals struck first when Billy Butler and Gordon led off the second inning with back-to-back doubles, and Cain and Escobar provided run-scoring singles for a 3-0 lead.

It took the Yankees until the sixth to answer.

Derek Jeter started the rally with a single and Mark Teixeira kept it going with a two-out walk. Beltran followed with an RBI double against his former team, and Solarte tied the game 3-all when his sinking liner to center field dropped just beyond Cain’s outstretched glove.

Duffy, who appeared bothered by lengthy waits for television breaks between innings, was eventually removed after allowing three runs on five hits and three walks in 5⅔ innings.

The Royals made sure to pick him up.

Butler and Gordon worked walks to start the bottom half of the sixth, earning Phelps a visit from Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild. It didn’t do any good. Two pitches later, Perez sent a no-doubt homer into the bullpen in left field to restore the Royals’ three-run lead.

“We needed that,” Perez said. “It’s not been easy, but it’s coming.”

Cain tripled later in the inning, and Aoki’s RBI single knocked Phelps from the game.

“We just scored three runs. That’s the worst kind of team error right there,” Phelps said. “To go out and we have all the momentum right there and in nine pitches gave it right back.”

It was another poor outing by the Yankees right-hander, who moved from the bullpen into the rotation last month. Phelps has lost four straight decisions, allowing 16 runs in the past three.

Hosmer’s homer leading off the seventh was his first since May 5, a span of 130 at-bats, and Brian Roberts tacked on a run off Mariot in the ninth inning that proved to be moot.

“You’ve got to keep battling back,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “We’re still fighting.”

— Associated Press —