Salvador Perez and the pesky Kansas City Royals fought back from a Game 1 flop to beat the San Francisco Giants' brilliant bullpen and even the World Series.
Perez broke Game 2 open with a two-run double in a five-run sixth inning, and the Royals' own cast of clutch relievers kept the Giants in check for a 7-2 victory Wednesday night that spiced things up as the Series shifts to San Francisco for the next three games.
Jeremy Guthrie will be on the mound Friday night for the Royals, who had won eight straight playoff games before a 7-1 loss in the opener. Tim Hudson will start for San Francisco.
Sixth inning meltdown
The Royals had already pulled ahead 3-2 on Billy Butler's RBI single in the sixth when Perez doubled into the left-field gap. Omar Infante followed with a two-run shot off Hunter Strickland, the fifth home run the feisty Giants reliever had allowed to 23 post-season batters.
Strickland appeared to mutter to himself as he stalked back to the mound, and Perez overheard him. The two exchanged words and players from both dugouts spilled onto the field. More streamed in from the outfield bullpens before order was finally restored.
"I felt like definitely it was a must-win for us," said Butler, likely to be on the bench when the Series shifts to San Francisco for the next three games. "We felt like with our big sixth inning there, we took a little momentum out of how they were playing."
They were by far the biggest hits in Butler's career, and came after a most trying season.
Young flamethrower Yordano Ventura, with his 100 mph fastball singeing the brims of the Giants' batting helmets, allowed just two runs while pitching into the sixth inning. The 23-year-old hardly looked like the first rookie to make a World Series start in Royals history.
The dynamic trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland did the rest.
Herrera got the final two outs of the sixth to escape a jam, two of his first three pitches clocking 101 mph on the radar gun. He also survived a shaky seventh that included a pair of walks before Davis locked down the eighth, striking out two in a perfect inning.
Greg Holland, who saved each game in the Royals' sweep of Baltimore in the AL Championship Series, allowed a two-out single to Brandon Crawford before fanning Gregor Blanco to end the game.
The Giants' only runs came on a homer by Blanco and a double by Brandon Belt, their streak of seven straight World Series wins ending on a crisp, breezy night.
Home team thriller
ALCS MVP Lorenzo Cain stretched a liner to left field into a two-out double later in the first, and Eric Hosmer walked on four pitches. Butler, Peavy's long-time nemesis, then bounced a single past the outstretched glove of Crawford at shortstop to knot the game 1-all.
The Royals kept the pressure on in second. Infante doubled over the head of Travis Ishikawa in left field, and Escobar sliced a two-out double down the right-field line to give Kansas City a 2-1 lead, its first in the World Series since Game 7 in 1985.
The Giants, so accustomed to October baseball, still didn't look rattled — even as Ventura kept pounding the strike zone with a steady dose of 100 mph fastballs.
Eventually, Pablo Sandoval sent a high fly to the warning track leading off the fourth, and a stiff wind blowing out to left turned Cain around. The ball caromed away for a double, and Belt drove in Sandoval with a double that bounced off Nori Aoki's glove in right field.
The game was still knotted at 2 when the Royals got their first two batters aboard in the sixth. Giants manager Bruce Bochy finally pulled the fiery Peavy, hoping to play for matchups with his bullpen. Butler promptly hit a go-ahead single off Jean Machi, and Strickland came in two batters later to face Perez, whose homer in Game 1 represented the Royals' only run.
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