NEW YORK — Salvador Perez sparked a four-run rally against Carlos Rodon in the fourth inning, and the Kansas City Royals beat the New York Yankees 4-2 on Monday night to even their AL division series at one game apiece.
After Cole Ragans lasted four innings, four relievers held New York in check. Tommy Baum, Garrett Hampson and Michael Garcia scored runs for the Royals.
Garcia moved from ninth to first in Kansas City’s batting order, striking out four.
The Royals’ first postseason home game since the 2015 World Series is Wednesday night in Kansas City, Game 3 of the best-of-five playoffs.
Yankees star Aaron Judge went 1 for 3 with an infield single and was 1 for 7 with four strikeouts in the series. Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr., who was expected to finish second to Judge in AL MVP voting, went 0 for 5 with three strikeouts, dropping to 0 for 10 in the series.
All four division series started 1-1 for the first time since the first round in 1995.
Giancarlo Stanton put the Yankees on top in the third with an RBI single, but New York went 6 for 1 with runners on base and is 3 for 19 in the two games.
Ragans allowed one run and three hits, struck out five and struck out four. Winning pitchers Angel Zerba and Jon Schreiber each pitched one hitless inning followed by Kris Pubic tossing two scoreless innings. Lukas Ercek earned his third save and ninth of the postseason.
Ercek gave up a leadoff homer to Jazz Chisholm Jr. and a two-out single to John Bertie, but retired Kleiber Torres on a grounder to end it with slugger Juan Soto.
Perez, the Royals’ remaining 2015 World Series champion at age 34, evened the score when he drove a 2-0 slider into the left-field seats. The nine-time All-Star went 12 for 26 (.462) with three homers for old AL Central rival Rhoden while pitching for the Chicago White Sox.
Yuli Kuriel singled and advanced on a wild pitch to take a 2-1 lead on Pham’s one-out single, sparking cheers from NFL fans at Arrowhead Stadium in the Kansas City Chiefs’ home game against New Orleans. Baum took second and scored on Hampson’s two-out single.
Garcia followed Ian Hamilton with an RBI single that put the Royals up 4-1.
Rhoden, lined up to pitch a possible Game 5, gave up four runs and seven hits with seven strikeouts and no walks in 3⅔ innings. Twenty-four of the 32 home runs he allowed this season were solo shots.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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