SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout the playoffs, as the Kansas City Royalskept beating teams the same way — with quality starting pitching, sound defense and a dominant bullpen — their formula was simple, the results were clear, and the questions about their manager, Ned Yost, never went away.
Following their now-familiar formula, the Royals beat the San Francisco Giants, 3-2, on Friday night in Game 3 of the World Series to seize control with a two-games-to-one lead. Their starter, Jeremy Guthrie, outpitched the veteran Tim Hudson. Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer had clutch hits, and the Royals’ dominant bullpen recorded the last 12 outs.
“This is the way our games have gone all year,” Yost said, adding: “It’s not me doing it. It’s the guys that we put out there that are doing it.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout the playoffs, as the Kansas City Royalskept beating teams the same way — with quality starting pitching, sound defense and a dominant bullpen — their formula was simple, the results were clear, and the questions about their manager, Ned Yost, never went away.
Following their now-familiar formula, the Royals beat the San Francisco Giants, 3-2, on Friday night in Game 3 of the World Series to seize control with a two-games-to-one lead. Their starter, Jeremy Guthrie, outpitched the veteran Tim Hudson. Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer had clutch hits, and the Royals’ dominant bullpen recorded the last 12 outs.
“This is the way our games have gone all year,” Yost said, adding: “It’s not me doing it. It’s the guys that we put out there that are doing it.”
On Friday, every string he pulled seemed to move in his favor. It began with his starting lineup, which was drastically different from the one he used in Games 1 and 2, which the Royals played at home.
With the series shifting here for three games, Yost, citing the need for better defense at spacious AT&T Park, replaced Nori Aoki with the speedy Jarrod Dyson, who had not started in about five weeks. Because of that switch, and the absence of the designated hitter in the National League park, Yost jumbled most of his lineup.
Lorenzo Cain, who was playing right field in place of Aoki, made two nifty catches in the first two innings. Gordon, whom Yost moved up into Aoki’s spot in the batting order, smoked a run-scoring double in the sixth. Then Hosmer worked an 11-pitch at-bat that ended with a single that scored Gordon to give the Royals a 3-0 lead.
“Whatever he does, we go with it,” Cain said of his team’s manager. “We just try to go out and get it done. No matter what situation he puts anyone in, we understand that he trusts us.”
Through the first five innings, it was Guthrie, and not the more accomplished Hudson, who set the pace of the game. Hudson has won 214 regular-season games in his 16-year career, and at 39 he had become the third-oldest pitcher to make a debut start in the World Series. But Guthrie, a journeyman, retired 10 batters in a row, painting the corners and forcing the Giants to make bad contact.
Guthrie, like so many Royals, had been overlooked.
Yost recently recalled how, one night in the summer of 2012, Dayton Moore, the Royals’ general manager, received a text message from a Colorado Rockies executive that essentially asked: Hey, would you be interested in swapping struggling starters? The Royals would send Jonathan Sanchez to the Rockies for Guthrie.
As Yost said: “We looked at each other, ‘Man, let’s give it a shot, right?’ ”
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