KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Jeremy Guthrie, Wade Davis and Greg Holland combined on a four-hitter and the Kansas City Royals rallied in the ninth inning to beat the Chicago White Sox 3-1 Wednesday night and avoid being swept in their three-game series.

The White Sox had scored 14 runs and hit five home runs in the first two games.

Guthrie, who is winless in seven starts since an April 9 victory over Tampa Bay, left after seven innings with the score 1-1. He gave up three hits, walked two and struck out two.

Wade Davis (3-1) struck out two in a flawless eighth and has tossed 10 scoreless innings in his last nine appearances. Greg Holland logged his 13th save in 14 chances, but not before giving up a single to Dayan Viciedo and walking Adam Dunn in the ninth.

The Royals snapped a 1-1 tie in the ninth when Nori Aoki scored on Billy Butler’s sacrifice fly. Aoki started the one-out rally with a bunt single on a two-strike count. He advanced to third on Alcides Escobar’s single. Eric Hosmer was walked intentionally to load the bases, and Aoki scored on Butler’s fly to right.

Danny Valencia then walked on five pitches, scoring Escobar with the second run of the inning.

Paul Konerko, who leads all active visiting players with 149 RBIs at Kauffman Stadium, singled to left in the second to score Alexei Ramirez for the Chicago’s run.

The Royals tied it in the third when Aoki’s groundball single to left scored Pedro Ciriaco.

The Royals wasted a chance to take the lead in the fourth when they loaded the bases with one out on singles by Butler, Valencia and Lorenzo Cain. Ciriaco, however, rolled the first pitch back to the mound and left-hander Jose Quintana started an inning ending double play.

Quintana (2-4) took the loss, charged with three runs on eight hits over 7 1/3 innings.

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Adam Dunn hit a three-run homer and the Chicago White Sox defeated the Kansas City Royals 7-6 on Tuesday night.

Andre Rienzo (4-0) limited the Royals to two runs and five hits over six innings. He struck out a career-high eight.

The Royals’ record dropped to 5-15 against American League Central opponents.

Gordon Beckham and Conor Gillaspie, who each had three hits, singled before Dunn homered in the eighth off right-hander Aaron Crow, who had allowed two three-run homers in his past two appearances.

Beckham has hit safely in 13 of his past 15 games, while Gillaspie increased his average to .347.

Royals rookie right-hander Yordano Ventura (2-4) took the loss, allowing four runs and seven hits, including a Tyler Flowers home run, in six innings.

Ventura threw three wild pitches in the White Sox three-run fifth, the last one allowing Beckham to score.

Danny Valencia doubled home Billy Butler and Alex Gordon with the first two Kansas City runs in the second.

White Sox relievers Scott Downs and Frank Francisco combined to retire only one of the six batters they faced in the eighth as the Royals scored three runs. Gordon and Cain had RBIs, while Cain scored on a Francisco wild pitch.

Zach Putnam restored order by retiring pinch hitter Mike Moustakas on an infield popup and Nori Aoki on a ground ball that shortstop Alexei Ramirez made a diving stop with runners on the corners.

Ronald Belisario, who threw 21 pitches and two innings Monday, gave up a run in the ninth, but earned the save.

Gordon’s two-out single scored Butler, who had doubled. Jarrod Dyson ran for Gordon and stole second. Belisario struck out Cain on three pitches to end the game.

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Alexei Ramirez homered and drove in four runs, Dayan Viciedo and Paul Konerko also went deep and the Chicago White Sox climbed out of a five-run hole before holding on for a wild 7-6 win over the Kansas City Royals on Monday night.

Zach Putnam (2-0) worked two shutout innings in relief of Scott Carroll, and Ronald Belisario also threw two scoreless innings before Scott Downs and Jake Petricka bailed out Matt Lindstrom.

Lindstrom, normally the White Sox closer, gave up a leadoff single to Nori Aoki in the ninth, then appeared to hurt his foot fielding a sacrifice bunt by Alcides Escobar that resulted in an error. Downs entered and struck out Eric Hosmer, then Petricka picked off pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson at second base before getting Billy Butler on a groundout to end the game.

Jason Vargas (4-2) squandered the rare five-run lead the Royals’ pop-gun offense gave him. He allowed all seven White Sox runs in 4 2/3 innings, his shortest outing of the season.

The White Sox got their production from the long ball even without Jose Abreu, the majors’ home run leader, who went on the disabled list Sunday with inflammation in his left ankle.

Carroll, who grew up just north of Kauffman Stadium in Liberty, certainly had a rude homecoming for the White Sox. He allowed the first five batters he faced to reach base, did not get an out on his first 30 pitchers and trailed 5-0 by the second inning.

Vargas, his Royals counterpart, made sure it didn’t matter.

The White Sox got three runs back in the third, when Ramirez hit a 2-2 pitch for his sixth homer, matching his total from last year. They got another back in the fourth, when Viciedo sent a 1-2 pitch over the wall to make it 5-4.

Kansas City scraped out a run in the bottom half on Hosmer’s RBI single, but the White Sox completed their comeback during a messy fifth inning that ended with Vargas on the bench.

It began with a single by Adam Eaton and another by Gordon Beckham, who was thrown out trying to reach second. Ramirez then made it 6-5 with a groundout, but apparently thought he was safe as he was tagged sliding past the bag. Replays showed he missed the base by about 2 feet.

It turned out to be a moot point. Adam Dunn walked moments later, and Konerko followed with Chicago’s third homer in three innings, a two-run shot that gave the White Sox the lead.

That was it for Vargas, who had been on a roll coming into the game. He won his previous two starts and held high-powered Colorado to two runs in a 3-2 victory his last time out.

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Alex Gordon had two firsts Sunday: six RBIs and a curtain call.

Gordon went 4 for 4 with a pair of three-run homers and a career-high six RBIs as the Kansas City Royals beat the Baltimore Orioles 8-6.

Gordon drove a 1-1 pitch from Ubaldo Jimenez (2-5) out to right with two outs in the fifth with Nori Aoki and Billy Butler aboard. Gordon, who led the Royals with 20 home runs last year, had gone 134 at-bats without a home run.

Gordon homered in his next at-bat, a three-run shot off left-hander Troy Patton in the seventh after Eric Hosmer walked and Butler doubled for his third hit.

The Kauffman Stadium crowd then gave Gordon a lengthy standing ovation, calling him out of the dugout. Gordon said he had “never” had a curtain call.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Gordon said. “They told me just to go wave my helmet. They just started yelling at me. I was downstairs enjoying the moment. They told me to come up and give the crowd a wave. It was my first. Hopefully, it’s not the last. It was pretty cool. It’s something I want forget.

“It’s fun when we play like this and the crowd starts doing what they do. It makes it really exciting.”

It was Gordon’s third career multi-homer game. His six RBIs matched a Royals’ season high. His four hits matched a career high, the 10th time he has accomplished that.

“Even though I was making good pitches, they found a way to hit the ball hard. I felt really good and I made a lot of good pitches,” Jimenez said. “They had a good approach. I threw a lot of sinkers down and they found the hole every time. They had a really good game. There’s nothing I can do but move on.”

Gordon’s second homer turned out to be necessary. Adam Jones hit a three-run homer off Royals reliever Aaron Crow in the ninth. It was the first runs Crow allowed in 20 relief appearances and 17 innings.

Greg Holland got the final two outs for his 12th save in 13 appearances.

James Shields (6-3) picked up his fifth win in six starts, holding the Orioles to three runs and nine hits over seven innings. Shields won back-to-back starts at Kauffman Stadium for the first time.

Shields settled down after a three-run third when he gave up five hits, including four straight to open the inning.

“The difference (was) I was getting my ground balls and they found holes,” Shields said of the third inning. “I was making my pitches, trying to get a double play that inning and they were just finding some good holes.”

Jimenez, who was 2-0 with a 0.46 ERA in his first three May starts, was pulled after five innings. He permitted five runs on eight hits with one walk and seven strikeouts.

“The pitch to Gordon was uncharacteristic,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. “He had, really, just the one (bad) pitch to Gordon. He tried to go down and away, and it came back in and came into a sweet spot. He hadn’t walked anybody to that point, either. Except for one pitch I thought he was good. After the first inning he was pretty crisp.”

Nick Markakis singled home J.J. Hardy, who had three hits, and David Lough in the Orioles’ third. Manny Machado, who had three hits, had a sacrifice fly in the third to score Jonathan Schoop for the other run off Shields.

Butler singled home Aoki with two outs in the first for the first Kansas City run. Lorenzo Cain’s single in the fourth scored Gordon with the other Royals’ run.

— Associated Press —