Royals manager Ned Yost and outfielder Jeff Francoeur both had been ejected long before the ninth inning of Thursday night’s game against Milwaukee, so they had to settle for watching its dramatic conclusion on television.

They both saw Brayan Pena deliver an RBI single to tie the game.

Neither of them saw Jarrod Dyson cross home plate with the winning run.

“I don’t know what happened! They didn’t do a real good job of showing it on TV,” Yost said with a broad smile in the moments afterward. “Frenchy and I were watching it on TV and started pushing each other, and all of a sudden, Dyson is sliding across home plate.”

Pena had rounded first base when Brewers shortstop Edwin Maysonet cut off the throw from left field, and he made the mistake of firing to second base. That allowed the speedy Dyson to take off for home, his slide giving the Royals a 4-3 victory and three-game sweep.

“Ned had to pull me back because I was going to run out there and celebrate,” Francoeur said. “He had to remind me that you can’t go back down there after you’ve been thrown out.”

The wild ninth inning began when Mitch Maier reached first base while striking out on a wild pitch against Brewers closer John Axford (1-3), who also blew a save chance the previous night.

Milwaukee had pulled ahead in the eighth when Carlos Gomez singled off Luke Hochevar, and Maysonet laid down a sacrifice to get him into scoring position. Pinch-hitter Cody Ransom singled to left off reliever Jose Mijares to give Milwaukee the lead.

The run put Shaun Marcum in line to pick up his fourth straight win — at least, until everything unraveled for the second straight night for Axford.

He allowed Escobar’s two-run triple in the ninth inning on Wednesday night, and the Royals went on to win the game when Mike Moustakas drew a bases-loaded walk in the 11th inning.

“Even when I felt good today and was hitting my spots, except for one bad pitch, it still didn’t work out in my favor,” Axford said. “I felt great. Everything was coming out straight, everything was coming out fine.”

For a while, everything was going just fine.

Axford struck out Maier to lead off the ninth, but the pitch in the dirt skipped away and Maier went to first base. Axford rallied to retire Moustakas and Alcides Escobar.

That brought up the light-hitting Dyson, who managed to draw a walk. Pena came in to pinch hit for Humberto Quintero and singled to left, the start of a bizarre ending to a ballgame.

“I was trying to make good contact, put the ball in play,” Pena said. “I knew we had some speed on the base paths. I just tried to make something happen.”

Tim Collins (4-0) worked the ninth inning to pick up the win for the Royals, who wrapped up a three-game sweep to build some momentum for their upcoming road trip.

Ryan Braun and Aramis Ramirez each homered for Milwaukee, which got 7 2/3 innings from Shaun Marcum in one of his best performances of the year. The only real mistake he made was the two-run homer he served up to Eric Hosmer in the seventh inning.

“We played a good game until that last inning,” Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. “Same thing. We let it get away again.”

Francoeur and Yost had both ended up in the clubhouse by the fourth inning.

The outfielder was ejected in the second inning by plate umpire Dan Iassogna for arguing a called third strike, and Yost was tossed when he started arguing with Iassogna over a bunt attempt by the Brewers’ Nyjer Morgan a couple of innings later.

It was a particularly embarrassing ejection for Francoeur, who is the namesake of a promotion for Thursday night home games. Fans can purchase tickets for $21 — his jersey number — and receive a T-shirt, drink coupon and seat in the “Frenchy Quarter” section overlooking right field.

Several hundred fans wearing the yellow shirts booed as Francoeur was ejected.

“I might have to invite them all out for a `Frenchy Quarter’ Wednesday,” he said.

— Associated Press —

The Kansas City Royals announced Thursday the club has signed second-round draft choice Sam Selman, the 66th overall selection in the 2012 First-Year Player Draft.

The 21-year-old Selman is a 6-foot-3, 185-pound left-hander from Vanderbilt University.  Selman was 9-3 for the Commodores in 2012, his junior season, with a 3.55 ERA in 17 games, including 13 starts.  The native of Austin, Texas, where he graduated from St. Andrews High School, helped lead Vanderbilt to the NCAA Regionals where they lost to North Carolina State.

The Royals have now signed 28 of the club’s 40 selections from last week’s First-Year Player Draft, including all of the top 11 picks.

— Royals Media Relations —

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 —