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Not the most visually appealing win for Kansas City, but it still counts.
The Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees did not exactly play inspired baseball on Sunday, but the Royals managed not play as terrible as the Yankees did, winning 2-0 at Yankee Stadium.
Both of Kansas City's runs were unearned. The first run came in the top of the second. Josh Willingham and Mike Moustakas led off the inning with consecutive singles, but Shane Greene retired Alcides Escobar and Jarrod Dyson, bringing Norichika Aoki to the plate with two outs. Aoki hit a dribbler up the first base line, perfectly positioned for an infield single. Greene fielded the ball, and instead of simply picking it up and moving on to the next batter, made an ill-advised throw to first. Greene uncorked a wild throw, which ended up in right field, allowing Willinham to score.
Alex Gordon led off the third inning with what should have been a flyout, but Carlos Beltran commited an error instead, putting Gordon on first. Danger Ox swiped second base, and Eric Hosmer drove him in with a single to right. Gordon could have been thrown out on the play; he stumbled rounding third and was easily beaten by the throw, but Brian McCann focused on Hosmer instead, firing the ball to second base, catching Homser in a rundown. The Yankees ended up getting Hosmer out, but it was a strange play.
The Royals forced Greene to throw a lot of pitches, but didn't capitalize any other opportunities. Still, two runs proved to be enough against a putrid Yankees effort.
New York had a runner reach base against Yordano Ventura in five of the six innings he pitched, but couldn't advance any runner past second base. There were a few loud outs for the Yankee, but they collected zero extra base hits and couldn't take advantage of Ventura's questionable command.
Ventura didn't look terrible by any means, he did shutoutot New York for six innings, only allowing three hits. He walked four and only struck out two, and had to labor through most innings. His pure stuff helped him out; New York just couldn't quite catch up to his fastball or drive his breaking ball.
Aaron Crow pitched a scoreless seventh inning, even inducing a groundball double-play with an inhereited runner on first. Kelvin Herrera worked a spotless eighth, giving way for Wade Davisi n the ninth.
Davis surrendered a leadoff single to Beltran, but retired the next three hitters to earn his second save of the year.
The Royals are now 79-62 on the season, and will either be two games or three games up on the Detroit Tigers when they travel to Comerica Park on Monday. Jeremie Guthrie will start for Kansas City, facing off against Justin Verlander. This will be a huge series, so get excited.
Also, make sure to congratulate Minda.
