KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ben Zobrist’s easy fly that somehow fell in for a hit began a five-run rally against David Price in the seventh inning, and the Kansas City Royals rolled to a 6-3 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Saturday for a 2-0 lead in the American League Championship Series.

Wade Davis survived a shaky ninth inning for Kansas City after Luke Hochevar and Danny Duffy were solid in relief of Yordano Ventura. Kelvin Herrera breezed through the eighth.

Davis gave up a leadoff single and walked pinch hitter Cliff Pennington but bounced back to strike out Ben Revere and MVP candidate Josh Donaldson. Jose Bautista flied out to right to give Davis his third postseason save and the Royals another postseason comeback win.

“Our guys never quit. They keep going,” Royals manager Ned Yost said.

The Royals had been held to one hit by Price before stringing together four singles and a double in their go-ahead inning. They got run-producing hits from Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon and Alex Rios, along with an RBI groundout from Kendrys Morales.

It was a monumental collapse for Price, who at one point had recorded 18 straight outs. He fell to 0-7 in seven postseason starts, including a loss to Texas in their AL Division Series.

Meanwhile, the reigning AL champs have won nine straight ALCS games dating to their memorable seven-game series against Toronto in 1985 — the year they won their only World Series. The record is 10 straight wins set by Baltimore in the 1960s and ’70s.

Now the Blue Jays head home for Game 3 on Monday night in dire trouble. All but three of the previous 25 teams to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven era have won the series — although Toronto did rally from the same hole to beat the Rangers in five games in the divisional round.

“You got to get a win under your belt,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “It won’t be easy, no doubt about that. But you get one win out of the way, it can turn things around in a hurry.”

For most of the afternoon, it appeared the Blue Jays would forge a 1-1 tie.

Ryan Goins drove in a run off Ventura in the third, snapping an 18-inning scoreless streak by Royals pitchers, and Edwin Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki had RBIs in the sixth.

The way Price was carving up the lineup, a 3-0 lead looked to be enough.

The only bad pitch he threw the first six innings was his first, which Escobar swatted for a leadoff single. Price threw first-pitch strikes to 12 of 14 batters at one point and struck out the side in the sixth inning, giving no indication he was about to implode.

“We just needed to catch a break,” Moustakas said. “Price was throwing the ball unbelievable. We got the early hit, and he was kind of cruising. We just needed to find a way to get a runner on base so we could do what we can, keep the line moving.”

The Royals finally got it thanks to a costly defensive lapse.

Zobrist sent a popup to shallow right field to start the seventh, and Goins gave chase from second base and Bautista from right field. Both wound up letting it drop for a single, and for the first time all game, a sellout crowd at Kauffman Stadium began to stir.

“I felt like we needed to catch a break,” Gordon said, “and Zobrist’s ball was it.”

Cain followed with a clean single to extend his postseason hit streak to 11 games, matching a franchise record. Hosmer’s single got the Royals on the board, and Morales added an RBI groundout up the middle before Moustakas came up. In a 2-for-25 slump and without an RBI this postseason, he pulled a tying double to right field to set the crowd of 40,357 into a frenzy.

Gordon’s double gave Kansas City the lead. Rios added another single off reliever Aaron Sanchez to close the book on Price, who was dinged for all five runs in one disastrous inning.

The last time he allowed five runs in an inning was May 8. The opponent: Kansas City.

The Royals tacked on another run off the Toronto relief corps in the eighth, but it was hardly necessary. Kansas City’s shutdown bullpen made certain the lead would stand up.

— Associated Press —

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 —

HOUSTON (AP) — Astros shortstop Carlos Correa couldn’t handle a deflected grounder that might have been a double-play ball, helping the Kansas City Royals rally for five runs in the eighth inning to beat Houston 9-6 Monday and force their playoff series to a decisive Game 5.

Correa homered twice, doubled, singled and drove in four runs in Game 4 of the AL Division Series. Houston took a 6-2 lead into the eighth, but a tough error charged to the 21-year-old rookie keyed the Royals’ comeback to even the matchup at two games apiece.

Game 5 will be back in Kansas City on Wednesday night.

Late in the game, a tweet from the account of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott congratulated the Astros on advancing to the AL Championship Series.

But the defending AL champion Royals had other ideas.

Kansas City opened the eighth with five straight singles off relievers Will Harris and Tony Sipp, with RBI hits by Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer making it 6-4 and leaving the bases with no outs.

Kendrys Morales followed with a hard, one-bouncer off Sipp’s glove. The ball took two more hops and glanced off the top of Correa’s mitt, rolling into center field as two runs scored to tie it at 6.

Alex Gordon’s RBI groundout off Luke Gregerson later in the inning put Kansas City ahead.

Hosmer launched a long, two-run homer in the ninth for insurance.

Ryan Madson (1-0) allowed two runs in the seventh and still got the win. Wade Davis pitched two scoreless innings for his second save.

Sipp took the loss.

— Associated Press —

HOUSTON (AP) — Dallas Keuchel remained perfect at home with seven gutsy innings, and Chris Carter homered Sunday, leading the Houston Astros to a 4-2 win over the Kansas City Royals to take a 2-1 lead in the American League Division Series.

The Astros could wrap up the best-of-five series with a win in Game 4 on Monday.

Keuchel, who shut down the Yankees in the AL wild-card game, worked out of jam after jam, allowing five hits and one run with seven strikeouts. He continued his success at Minute Maid Park, after going 15-0 at home this season, a modern major league record.

“The ball in Dallas Keuchel’s hand brings an awful lot of confidence to a lot of people. Including me,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “And he came up with some excellent pitches.”

Luke Gregerson gave up a leadoff homer in the ninth to Alex Gordon before finishing off the Astros first playoff game in Houston in 10 years with a four-out save. It was his first save of more than three outs in three years.

Jason Castro drove in two runs with a single in the fifth that made it 2-1. Carlos Gomez, who has a rib muscle strain, started for the first time in the series and had an RBI single in the sixth.

Carter’s soaring solo homer, which landed on the train tracks atop the wall in left-center, and came on Danny Duffy’s first pitch of the seventh pushed the lead to 4-1.

Carter, batting .199 in the regular season but .455 in the postseason, was a triple shy of the cycle for the Astros, who were hosting a playoff game for the first time since the 2005 World Series.

Lorenzo Cain hit a solo homer in the fourth for the Royals, who are on the brink of elimination after reaching the World Series last season.

Kansas City starter Edinson Volquez fell to 0-3 in his postseason career by allowing five hits and three runs in 5 2/3 innings.

The Astros are one win away from reaching the AL championship series just two years after losing a franchise-worst 111 games. They took the series lead in front of a rowdy, playoff-starved sellout crowd of 42,674. The group was mostly clad in orange and dotted with fans sporting fake beards in support of the star lefty who has become all but untouchable at home.

They were given inflatable orange sticks at the door and spent the afternoon beating them as they cheered, making the roar in the closed-roof stadium deafening at times.

“Electric crowd, and it was 10 years coming,” Keuchel said.

Keuchel wasn’t as sharp as he was in New York, but he was able to tiptoe out of trouble again and again and got deep in the game despite a pitch count that got high early. He finished with a season-high 124 pitches.

The Astros scored three runs in the first two innings of both of the first two games, but couldn’t get anything going early on Sunday.

Colby Rasmus, who homered in Houston’s first three playoff games, got a kooky single in the eighth when his pop fly caromed off the ceiling and back into play.

The Astros’ first hit didn’t come until a single by Carter to start the third inning, but he was thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. Luis Valbuena drew a walk with one out in the fifth and Carter followed with the team’s second hit, a liner to the left-field corner for a double. Castro got hit first hit of the postseason on two-strike groundball to center field to score them both to make it 2-1.

George Springer doubled to start Houston’s sixth when Cain sprinted and dived to grab his flyball, but it bounced in and out of his glove and onto the ground. Cain slid across the warning track on his stomach and punched the wall in frustration when he got back to his feet.

Gomez’s two-out single to center field scored Springer to extend the lead to 3-1.

Cain’s first career homer in the postseason came when he launched the 10th pitch of the at-bat, a hanging 80 mph slider, into the seats in left field to start the fourth inning and make it 1-0.

PRESIDENTIAL FIRST PITCH

Former President George H.W. Bush, in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game. The 91-year-old Bush, recovering after breaking a vertebra in his neck in a summer spill, smiled broadly when the crowd cheered after he was brought onto the field. With wife Barbara by his side, he bounced a short throw from about five feet in front of the plate to Houston’s Jed Lowrie, who was set up to catch.

UP NEXT

Houston rookie Lance McCullers (6-7, 3.22) opposes Yordano Ventura (13-8, 4.08) in Game 4. It will be the postseason debut for McCullers, who turned 22 on Oct. 2. But he seems undaunted by the challenge. “I don’t view myself as a young kid when I go out there,” he said. Ventura will make his second start of the series after his first one was limited to two innings because of a 49-minute rain delay in Game 1. He was strong late in the regular season, going 7-1 with a 2.38 ERA in his last 11 starts.

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Royals whipped out the same formula that carried them to last year’s World Series to turn back the Houston Astros and tie their American League Division Series at a game apiece.

Some clutch hitting. Stingy defense. An unflappable bullpen.

Even a little help from replay.

“Just battling,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “That’s what this team does so well.”

Kansas City rallied from a three-run deficit Friday, getting a go-ahead single from Ben Zobrist in the seventh inning, and then watched Wade Davis and the bullpen make it stand in a 5-4 victory that brought back memories of the team’s nip-and-tuck postseason of a year ago.

The Royals knotted the game at four off Scott Kazmir and relievers Oliver Perez and Josh Fields in the sixth. They took the lead in the seventh when Alcides Escobar led off with a triple against Will Harris (0-1) and Zobrist followed with his single through the left side.

Kelvin Herrera (1-0) and Ryan Madson each tossed a scoreless inning for the Royals, and Davis came on to close it — though the real drama was only beginning.

Davis walked Preston Tucker with one out, and speedy Carlos Gomez came in as a pinch runner. Davis snapped a throw to Hosmer at first, and he neatly snagged it on one hop as Gomez made a dive back to the bag. Gomez was initially ruled safe, but the call was overturned upon review.

“That play that Hos made on the pickoff, I don’t know if there’s a lot of first basemen that can make that play,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “It was tremendous.”

Jose Altuve grounded out to end the contest.

It was a crucial victory considering what awaits Kansas City in Game 3 on Sunday: Astros ace Dallas Keuchel, who was 15-0 at home this season. Edinson Volquez will start for the Royals.

“We were in position to win that game. Their bullpen did a very good job of shutting us down,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “We’ve got some work to do to win this series. It’s going to be a good series. These are two really good teams.”

Two starters acquired with October in mind, Kazmir and Royals counterpart Johnny Cueto, pitched mostly to a stalemate Friday. Kansas City’s relief corps was simply better, preserving the first win by a home team this postseason.

“They compete,” said Salvador Perez, who homered for the Royals. “Pretty good stuff.”

Colby Rasmus homered, doubled and drove in two runs for Houston, becoming the first player in major league history with an extra-base hit in his first six postseason games. George Springer had a pair of RBIs after hitting a solo shot in the series opener.

“Just to let it slip away late is kind of a downer,” Astros reliever Tony Sipp said. “We had a lead late and let it slip away. We had the momentum going.”

The Astros jumped on Cueto right from the start, just as they did Yordano Ventura in Game 1 on Thursday night. Rasmus doubled in a run in the first inning, and Springer added a two-run knock in the second as restless Royals fans began to shower their ace with boos.

Perez got one back for Kansas City with his homer to left in the bottom half, but Rasmus matched him with his third home run in three games this postseason.

Cueto finally settled in, but it looked as if it would be too late. Kazmir allowed a run in the third but otherwise had Kansas City off balance until the sixth inning.

Trailing 4-2, Lorenzo Cain got the Royals’ tying rally started with a double, and Hinch called for Oliver Perez. He allowed back-to-back singles and a walk to leave the bases loaded for Fields, who walked Salvador Perez on four pitches to tie the game.

When the Royals took the lead the following inning, their shutdown bullpen made it stick.

“I’m happy we’re going home,” Hinch said. “We’ve got home-field advantage for the rest of this series. We have to take care of business in our own yard.”

CORREA HOBBLED

Astros rookie Carlos Correa fouled a pitched off the inside of the back of his knee in the fifth inning, and for a while it appeared as if he might leave the game. He remained in and struck out but came back with a single off Herrera in the seventh.

UP NEXT

Keuchel threw six shutout innings in the Astros’ wild-card win over the Yankees and tossed eight shutout frames against the Royals in June. Volquez tossed two scoreless innings of relief in Kansas City’s regular-season finale in Minnesota to tune up for the playoffs.

— Associated Press —

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 —

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Salvador Perez added to his career-best home run total, Johnny Cueto tossed five solid innings and the Kansas City Royals secured home-field advantage throughout the postseason by beating the Minnesota Twins 6-1 on Sunday.

Perez hit his 21st homer in the third inning, one behind Kendrys Morales and Mike Moustakas for the team lead.

Cueto (4-7 with Royals, 11-13 overall) allowed one run over five innings, helping the Royals finish on a five-game winning streak.

The right-hander, whose transition to the AL since a trade from Cincinnati has hardly been smooth, surrendered six hits and four walks. Cueto struck out the last two batters to leave the bases loaded in the fourth after giving up an RBI single to Danny Santana.

The defending AL champion Royals (95-67) posted their best regular-season record since the 1980 team went 97-65.

Ricky Nolasco (5-2) started for the Twins for the first time since May 31 after a right ankle injury sidelined him for the summer, but he lasted only 2 2/3 innings. Alex Gordon hit an RBI double and Alex Rios followed with a two-run double in the second, sticking Nolasco with a career-worst 6.75 ERA, though he logged only 37 1/3 innings.

Max Kepler got his first major league hit for the Twins (83-79), who stayed in wild-card contention until the next-to-last day on the schedule and enjoyed a winning record for the first time in five years. Despite that, their attendance dipped this year, the product of an eroded season-ticket base. They drew 2,220,054 fans, an average of 27,408 per game. Last year’s average was 27,785.

STARTERS FINISH STRONG

Over their last eight games, covering 48 1/3 innings, the Royals rotation posted a collective 1.49 ERA.

HUNTER’S LAST HURRAH?

The Twins used a mostly forward-looking lineup that did not include Torii Hunter, but the 40-year-old right fielder took the microphone in front of the mound for a brief pregame pep talk to the crowd. First, he congratulated the Royals for winning the AL Central division. Then, he thanked the fans for the energy they provided the players this season. He also praised his teammates, who were gathered behind him.

“No matter what’s in store for me for the future, these are my little brothers, and I love `em,” said Hunter, who will be a free agent and has not yet declared his intent to continue his career or not. He came out of the dugout in the middle of the seventh to wave to the crowd, patting his heart during the ovation.

TRAINER’S ROOM

The Royals kept center fielder Lorenzo Cain out of the lineup for the third time in four games because of a bone bruise on his right knee, but manager Ned Yost said Cain should be ready for postseason action after a four-day break. Cain dealt with a similar injury last year in October and batted .333 in 15 postseason games.

UP NEXT

The Royals will begin their AL division series at home on Thursday and Friday against the winner of the wild card game between the Yankees and Astros. Yost has not yet announced his rotation, but Yordano Ventura is on track to start in Game 1, with Cueto likely following him in Game 2.

— Associated Press —