Royals, Soria bounce back with 5-3 victory over Indians

CLEVELAND | Well, hey, it wasn’t going to happen twice in a row, right?

Joakim Soria rebounded from his worst outing in two months Sunday afternoon by closing out a 5-3 victory over the Cleveland Indians that allowed the Royals to head home buoyed by a winning road trip.

“I wanted the ball big-time today,” Soria admitted. “I was hoping to have the situation to get in the game. It worked today.”

Sunday’s success came after Soria surrendered four runs Saturday night in the ninth inning in a 5-2 loss — including a two-out, three-run walkoff homer by Matt LaPorta. This time, Soria got the job done for his 13th save in his last 14 opportunities.

“That just happened (Saturday) night,” manager Ned Yost said. “He made good pitches, and he got hit. Today, he made good pitches, and he got us through it.”

Danny Duffy started in place of Kyle Davies, who was scratched prior to the game because of a sore shoulder. Duffy, 3-4, got the victory after working five-plus innings before Louis Coleman, Tim Collins and Greg Holland provided the bridge to Soria.

Duffy said he got a heads-up Saturday to be ready to pitch.

“I’m pretty microwaveable,” he said. “You give me 30 minutes, and I’ll be ready. Today was a really good win. Our bullpen ate four great innings, and we ended up winning this road trip.”

The victory enabled the Royals to win the three-game series and complete a 4-3 trip that began with a four-game split in Boston. It marked their first winning road trip since going 3-2 through Detroit and Minnesota during April 8-13.

“Two wins against Boston in Boston is really good,” Yost said. “Coming here and winning two out of three and with a chance to take all three of them — I thought we played great baseball the whole road trip.”

The Royals have won eight of their last 12 and made Soria’s job easier by picking up a run with two outs in the top of the ninth when Alcides Escobar capped a 14-pitch at-bat against reliever Tony Sipp by lining an RBI single into center.

“When it got to 3-2,” Escobar said, “every pitch was a fastball. No breaking pitches. All fastballs middle outside. The last one was high. It was ball four if I don’t swing at it. But, wow, that’s the best at-bat in my career.”

Escobar’s single scored Chris Getz, who reached on a two-out single and stole second.

“Esky had some fan yelling at him the whole time who was pretty annoying,” left fielder Alex Gordon said. “So it felt good to see him come through. Our whole bench was fired up about it.”

The Royals got homers from Jeff Francoeur and Gordon while building leads of 3-0 and 4-2 against Cleveland starter Fausto Carmona, who fell to 5-11 after allowing four runs and six hits in 7 1/3 innings.

“We were coming off a tough loss,” Gordon said, “and it almost seemed like the same game until we started adding runs like we couldn’t do (Saturday) night. There was nothing bigger than Esky’s hit. That gave Soria more than one run to close with.”

The Royals led 3-2 when Gordon opened the eighth inning with a walk. Melky Cabrera followed with a slicing double to left that moved Gordon to third, but the Indians opted to stay with Carmona.

Billy Butler’s line drive into right-center turned into a sacrifice fly when it held up long enough for Kosuke Fukudome to run down.

Cleveland got that run back in a hurry after Ezequiel Carrera opened the bottom of the inning with a pinch-double against Holland. Carrera went to third on a wild pitch and scored when pinch hitter Travis Hafner grounded to short.

Holland struck out the next two hitters. Escobar’s single made it 5-3 before Soria pitched around a one-out walk by getting Carlos Santana to ground into a game-ending double play.

“Baseball is like that,” Soria said. “You lose one day, but the good part of baseball is you always have the next day to redeem yourself.”

Inside
Kyle Davies is scratched from his start Sunday because of a sore shoulder. | B5