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 —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — It made sense perfect sense that New York Yankees rookie Chase Whitley pushed all the credit toward Brian McCann after earning the first win of his big league career.

After all, the veteran catcher not only guided Whitley though a punchless Kansas City lineup, he also drove in three runs with a timely double in the third inning of what turned into a 4-2 victory over the Royals on Friday night.

“He told me a game plan before the game and we were able to execute it,” Whitley said. “Just follow whatever he has in store because that guy has everything. He does.”

Brian Roberts also drove in a run for the Yankees, who finally gave their young right-hander some support. Whitley (1-0) had allowed five earned runs in his first four starts, and left two of them with the lead, only for his team to saddle him with a series of no-decisions.

Of course, McCann helped take care of that with his bases-loaded double.

“That’s a huge hit,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “It’s a tough at-bat. He fouls off a lot of tough pitches, a change-up, a curveball, a real slow curveball, and he got a ball up in the zone and it turned into a double.”

Dellin Betances worked around a double by Alcides Escobar in the eighth, and David Robertson retired Salvador Perez with runners on first and second in the ninth to earn his 14th save.

Jeremy Guthrie (2-6) wound up with the loss, once again getting very little support. Perez and Lorenzo Cain drove in the Royals’ runs.

“I think I threw the ball all right except for the third inning when I gave up a couple of hits,” Guthrie said. “I had McCann down to two strikes and couldn’t finish him off. I threw a couple of pitches trying to finish him off and wasn’t able to do that.”

Making their only scheduled visit to Kauffman Stadium, the Yankees won their second straight on the heels of a four-game losing streak. They also established some much-needed confidence as they began a 10-game trip that will take them through Seattle and Oakland.

The Royals figured they were catching a break during the four-game series by missing Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka, who pitched his way to a 2-1 win over the Athletics on Thursday.

Whitley made them wish they were facing the Japanese star.

Mixing his fastball with an effective slider and change-up, the former 15th-round draft pick allowed five hits while striking out three without a walk in the longest start of his career.

Whitley had never lasted more than five innings in the big leagues.

“Yeah, tonight’s a big night. We’re all happy for him,” McCann said. “He’s worked really hard to get here, to do this.”

The Yankees took a 1-0 lead on a single by Roberts in the second inning, and Kansas City promptly answered when Perez followed a double by Alex Gordon with his own RBI single.

New York quickly regained the lead in the third.

Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner led off with singles, and Guthrie grazed Mark Teixeira on the shoulder to load the bases with one out. That’s when McCann connected for his double to left, giving the Yankees what turned out to be an insurmountable 4-1 lead.

Guthrie kept the Royals in the game, retiring his final nine hitters. His weak-hitting offense even got a run back in the fifth when Cain drove in Gordon with a double.

Still, it was not enough for Guthrie to avoid his sixth straight losing decision and his 11th consecutive start without a win. In the last five, the veteran right-hander has received a total of three runs of support.

“We just couldn’t get that big hit to come through,” the Royals’ Billy Butler said. “We were putting some good at-bats together with no results. Those days are kind of frustrating.”

— Associated Press —

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Matt Carpenter had a career-high five hits, including the go-ahead double in the 11th inning, and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Kansas City Royals 5-2 on Wednesday night to snap a three-game losing streak.

After the Royals rallied with two runs in the ninth, Peter Bourjos worked a one-out walk off Royals reliever Kelvin Herrera (1-2) in the 11th. Carpenter then rapped his double to center field, drawing a roar from a crowd comprised mostly of Cardinals fans.

Allen Craig added a two-run single off Tim Collins later in the inning, and Pat Neshek breezed through the bottom half to end the Royals’ six-game winning streak against National League clubs.

Sam Freeman (1-0) earned the win with a perfect 10th inning.

Carpenter became the first Cardinal to record five hits in a game since Ryan Ludwick on Sept. 4, 2009. He had a part in his club’s first three runs, driving in Mark Ellis in the second inning and scoring on Matt Holliday’s groundout in the seventh

The Cardinals persevered after Adam Wainwright blew a 2-0 lead in the ninth inning. He struck out Eric Hosmer to start it, but the ball squirted away from catcher Yadier Molina, allowing Hosmer to reach first base. Billy Butler followed with a crisp single up the middle.

Trevor Rosenthal, who took the loss Tuesday night, entered in relief and walked Alex Gordon on a full count to load the bases. Salvador Perez followed with a broken-bat groundout to score a run, and Lorenzo Cain’s single up the middle knotted the game 2-all.

The ninth-inning rally wasted a dazzling bounce-back start by Wainwright, who was trying to become the NL’s first nine-game winner. The two-time All-Star did not allow a hit until the sixth inning, stranded three runners on third base and struck out eight while walking just two.

Wainwright wasn’t the only Cardinal to get on track, either.

Molina had hits in his first two at-bats, snapping an 0-for-16 streak. Ellis ended an 0-for-8 stretch with his single in the second that led to the game’s first run.

After St. Louis dropped the first two games of the four-game, two-city set at Busch Stadium, the NL champs rebounded to win for the eighth straight time at Kauffman Stadium.

Jason Vargas kept Kansas City in it most of the night. After leaving the bases loaded in the first inning, he went on strand 10 in a season-high eight innings. The left-hander allowed nine hits and walked two while allowing two runs or fewer for the fifth time in six starts.

— Associated Press —

TORONTO — In a season of solid outings by Mark Buehrle, this stood out as one of his best.

Buehrle pitched eight sharp innings to become baseball’s first 10-game winner, Edwin Encarnacion homered again and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Kansas City Royals 4-0 Sunday.

Buehrle (10-1) won his sixth straight decision, his longest streak since a nine-game run in 2005. He gave up six hits, walked one and struck out three as the Blue Jays finished a 10-game homestand at 8-2.

“Today he was as good as he’s been all year,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “He topped off a nice homestand for us.”

Buehrle lowered his ERA to 2.10 and improved to 25-12 lifetime against the Royals.

“He was dynamite,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “He’s traditionally tough on us, but he’s 10-1 now, he’s tough on everybody.”

Typically low key, Buehrle said he considered himself fortunate to keep the Royals off the scoreboard.

“It was one of those games where I could have gotten my butt handed to me,” he said. “I was making mistakes and they weren’t making me pay for it.”

Encarnacion matched Mickey Mantle’s AL record with 16 home runs in May, then started off a new month with another drive. He hit a two-run shot off Aaron Crow in the eighth for his 19th homer of the season.

Dioner Navarro also homered as the AL East-leading Blue Jays, who went 21-9 in May, began June with their 17th victory in 21 games.

Jeremy Guthrie (2-5) lost his fifth straight decision, allowing two runs and eight hits in seven innings.

Guthrie has received just one run of support in his past four outings and is winless in 10 starts.

“With all the pitchers, the offense is definitely not living up to the capability it can live up to right now,” Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer said.

Toronto loaded the bases with two outs against Guthrie in the first but Juan Francisco flied out.

Navarro hit a solo homer in the second with a drive into the right-field bullpen.

Francisco hit a leadoff double in the fourth, Brett Lawrie singled and Anthony Gose had an RBI grounder.

The Royals hit a pair of leadoff doubles against Buehrle, but he never allowed a runner reach third base. Alcides Escobar doubled to begin the third but was caught in a rundown on Nori Aoki’s sharp grounder to second.

Hosmer doubled to open the sixth but was thrown out at third by shortstop Jose Reyes on Billy Butler’s grounder into the hole.

Hosmer called it “a stupid baserunning mistake,” but his manager was more charitable.

“It was an aggressive mistake,” Yost said. “Reyes did a great job of ranging over and the only play he had was at third.”

— Associated Press —

TORONTO (AP) — Toronto’s booming offense made life easy for Marcus Stroman in his first major league start.

Juan Francisco had three hits and four RBIs, Adam Lind went 3-for-5 with three RBIs and the Blue Jays used a seven-run first inning to rout the Kansas City Royals 12-2 on Saturday.

Stroman said having Toronto’s potent lineup behind him was “like playing a video game with a cheat team.”

“Everyone is like a 100 level,” he said.

The AL East-leading Blue Jays snapped a two-game losing streak and finished May with a 21-9 record. Toronto has won 15 of its past 19.

Stroman (2-0) allowed one run and five hits in six innings. The right-hander walked none and struck out six.

“I thought he was terrific,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. “He showed us something.”

Kansas City’s batters were impressed with Stroman, too.

“Power fastball, good slider,” Royals catcher Brett Hayes said. “He got ahead. He’s got good stuff, let’s be honest. That slider is pretty filthy.”

Gibbons said Stroman is certain to get another turn in Toronto’s rotation

“We’d be crazy not to,” he said.

Todd Redmond worked the final three innings for his first save.

The Blue Jays gave Stroman all the support he would need with a 12-batter first inning against Royals right-hander Aaron Brooks, who was also making his first career start. Toronto set a team record when the first eight batters reached safely against Brooks. The Blue Jays had seven straight reach safely to begin a win over Baltimore on Sept. 15, 2007.

Jose Reyes led off with a walk, Melky Cabrera was hit by a pitch, Jose Bautista hit an RBI double, Edwin Encarnacion walked to load the bases and Adam Lind hit an RBI single before Brett Lawrie brought home another run when he was hit by a pitch. Juan Francisco hit a two-run double and Dioner Navarro walked before Brooks finally retired a batter, getting Anthony Gose to ground into a 1-2-3 double play.

Reyes and Cabrera added RBI singles before Michael Mariot came out of the bullpen, getting Bautista to foul out to the catcher on the first pitch to finally end the inning.

“It’s tough, you know, coming up and facing a club like this,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “You’re really kind of hoping for a Cinderalla story, he comes up and give you five good innings. There was just nothing we could do. We knew that we had to try to get as far as we could with him but it just got tough.”

Brooks (0-1) allowed seven runs and five hits in 2/3 of an inning, raising his ERA to 43.88. He walked three and struck out none.

“I just couldn’t control the zone,” Brooks said. “I wasn’t getting ahead of batters. I was trying to do a little too much, I guess.”

Hayes hit an RBI single in the second, but the Blue Jays answered in the bottom half when Lawrie singled home Lind’s one-out double.

Toronto tacked on three more against Mariot in the fourth. Lind hit an RBI double, Lawrie followed with a sacrifice fly and Francisco added an RBI single.

Nori Aoki drove in Kansas City’s second run when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the seventh.

Francisco capped the scoring with an RBI double off Louis Coleman in the eighth.

— Associated Press —