Kansas City’s dormant bats sprang to life on Saturday with a five-run seventh inning that rallied the Royals from a three-run deficit to a 6-3 victory over Toronto, delivering a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series (ALCS).
The Royals had been held to one hit by Toronto starter David Price before stringing together four singles and a double in their go-ahead inning.
In the National League Championship Series (NLCS), the New York Mets won 4-2 at home in the opening game against the Chicago Cubs, with Daniel Murphy continuing his fine form with a homer and a diving stop on the game-ending play.
Ben Zobrist’s easy fly somehow fell in for a safe hit to start Kansas City’s rally, and the hosts 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 had at one point recorded 18 straight outs. A dominant pitcher in the regular season, he fell to a 0-7 record in playoff starts.
Royals closer Wade survived a shaky ninth inning, in which he gave up a leadoff single and then a walk. He struck out Ben Revere and Josh Donaldson before Jose Bautista then flied out to right to give Davis his third post-season save and the Royals another post-season comeback win.
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 1970s and 1980s.
The Blue Jays head home for Game 3 today 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.
Meanwhile, in New York, Mets starter Matt Harvey pitched 7-2/3 strong innings to guide the home team to a 4-2 victory in the NLCS opener.
Harvey allowed two runs and struck out nine, leaving after allowing a Kyle Schwarber home run.
Jeurys Familia completed the four-out save, but needed help from Murphy. Familia allowed a two-out double in the ninth — the first hit he had given up in the post-season — and the next batter got a crisp shot that was angling toward right field, only for Murphy to dive to his left, take the ball on the hop, spring up and get the throw to first base in time for the final out.
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GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
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