Royals overwhelm Blue Jays 5-0, take 1-0 ALCS lead

Game Two is in Kansas City on Saturday. (All games on FOX or FS1).

Left-hander David Price totally dominated the Royals for the first six innings, allowing only a leadoff single on his first pitch of the game to shortstop Alcides Escobar.

Catcher Salvador Perez homered for the Royals on a 12-degree Celsius night before a sellout of 39,753 in picturesque Kauffman Stadium, where fountains danced in the outfield and a sea of Kansas City blue filled the stands. “And he was like, ‘All right, we’re changing the plan right now”. We got that early hit.

They never touched him all night.

“Tonight was the Volquez show”.

“Our backs are up against the wall but it will be good to go back home where we normally play well”, said a subdued Toronto manager John Gibbons, whose team rallied from an 0-2 start to beat Texas in the best-of-five ALDS. Whatever the team wants me to do to help them win. “His ball was ducking and darting everywhere”. Price is after his first postseason win after going 0-6 with a 5.23 ERA in his previous career postseason starts.

“Yes, I’ve been here a long time”, he said through loud music and the shouts of his ebullient teammates, “but it’s not just for me”. They were shut out just five times in 162 games during the regular season.

X-Rays later confirmed it to be a sprain, but the Jays’ designated hitter is listed as day-to-day.

“He’s been battling this thing”, Gibbons said. “I’ve seen him. The man was the key to getting us here”. David Price will get the nod for the visitors, while Yordano Ventura will toe the rubber for the Royals, looking to take a 2-0 lead north of the border.

It was sure to be the 19th consecutive out recorded by Price, a former Cy Young Award victor who was 0-6 as a postseason starting pitcher.

The two best teams in the American League go about things in different ways.

Tory said he is putting up three kinds of Toronto-brewed craft beer for the bet on the outcome of the series. In their final meeting of the season August. 2, the benches cleared after three batters were plunked at Rogers Centre. Volquez kept making good pitches, but Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista both worked him for nine-pitch walks, and the needle edged perilously closer to empty.

Toronto managed just a Bautista walk in the first inning but made Volquez throw 24 pitches. After the game, Volquez called Donaldson “a little baby” for complaining about being pitched inside.

That was the only reason for the packed house to boo, though. Signed to a relatively modest two-year, $20 million contract in December, Volquez gave the Royals consistent and reliable outings amid a buffet of injuries, random ineffectiveness and occasional rotation chaos. It was Escobar’s ninth multi-hit postseason game.

Volquez walked off the mound with 39,753 fans standing and chanting, “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie”.

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.

A year ago, of course, there are those that might have blanched at the idea of slapping Moustakas with the title of professional hitter, the highest of baseball compliments. C Dioner Navarro was in the Blue Jays’ lineup, not C Russell Martin, as he developed into RHP Marco Estrada’s personal catcher…. He probably knew Price wasn’t going to give in and throw a fastball out over the plate.

Toronto went ahead 1-0 on back-to-back doubles by Pillar and Goins to open the third, ending a 12-inning scoreless drought.