Jason Vargas delivers as Royals craft first victory of season

The story came on a morning last May, but it could have been an afternoon in June or an evening in July. Royals manager Ned Yost was sitting inside Safeco Field in Seattle and talking about Jason Vargas, the veteran left-hander who was recovering from Tommy John surgery.

It was a September day three years ago, Yost said, the final month of the 2013 season. Vargas was pitching for the Los Angeles Angels then, and Yost and Royals general manager Dayton Moore found themselves in front of a television as Vargas made a start against the Astros in Houston. The sight, as Yost recalls, was not pretty. The Astros mashed baseballs all over Minute Maid Park. The game was a landslide.

“It was like 9-0 or 9-1,” Yost remembered. “And Dayton was like: ‘I want to try to go after this guy.’ And I’m looking around, and it was like 9-1, right? And I’ve always liked Vargy, but I’m like: ‘Why?’ ”

A second later, Moore turned back toward Yost.

“Look at him,” he said. “Watch him. The score is 9-1 … he’s competing his (butt) off out there.”

The story may be slightly apocryphal, the details lost to memory, but the message resounds, even one year later. The Royals signed Vargas that winter after the 2013 season. He helped them to the World Series in 2014. He weathered a busted elbow in 2015 and survived a monotonous year of rehab in 2016.

The struggle offered context for a Friday night in Houston. Vargas returned to Minute Maid Park and carried the Royals to a 5-1 victory over the Astros, the first victory of 2017.

“It put us on the board,” Vargas said. “Hopefully we can keep rolling.

Facing the prospect of an 0-4 start to the Royals’ season, Vargas handled the Astros for six innings, allowing one run and six hits while striking out six. The performance came on the heels of a nightmarish opening series in Minnesota, a three-game sweep that included just five runs of offense and three days of porous bullpen work.

The Royals arrived at Minute Maid Park on Friday afternoon in need of a shutdown outing. Vargas delivered with aplomb, neutralizing the Astros’ offense with a tidy curveball and disappearing change-up. As he racked up scoreless innings, he induced seven swings and misses with his change-up. He walked just one, ending a streak of command issues from Kansas City’s starting pitching.

“He’s a veteran guy,” Astros outfielder Carlos Beltran said. “You’ve got to give him credit.”

“We never really solved his ability to change speeds on all his pitches,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “He threw a couple different fastballs, a couple different change-ups.”

For Vargas, the win represented his first since June 8, 2015, at Minnesota. The satisfaction, he said, was in something simpler: He started a year healthy.

“I know the game that I had to play in rehab is just a waiting game,” Vargas said. “It’s just kind of how it works out. It always sounds so far removed when they say over the telecast your last win was in June of 2015.”

And still, the Royals had to grind for victory No. 1 on the season. They built a 3-1 lead on a solo homer from Salvador Perez and two gifted runs thanks to some shoddy Houston defense. Reliever Peter Moylan calmed the waters after Vargas ran into trouble in the seventh. Alex Gordon broke the game open with a two-run double in the eighth.

And then, Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain finished it off with a brilliant catch up against the wall in right-center field.

As he scaled the wall and landed on his feet, stealing extra bases from Houston’s George Springer, Cain flashed a wide smile. A cascade of boos greeted him inside Minute Maid Park. His teammates came to the dugout railing and raised their caps. For the first time in five days, the Royals could feel good about themselves.

“I smiled, and all the fans booed me,” Cain said, flashing a second smile inside the visitors clubhouse. “So … that’s fine.”

For four days in Minnesota, the Royals had waited for their offense to break out. They would wait a little longer on Friday, facing Astros right-hander Mike Fiers, a 31-year-old who found himself at the back end of the Houston rotation after an injury to starter Collin McHugh.

The Royals offense would only muster two runs before Fiers gave way to the Astros bullpen in the seventh.

Perez crushed a solo homer off the left-field pole in the top of the second. Paulo Orlando generated another run on a bases-loaded catcher’s interference call in the top of the sixth. Yet for a while, the big inning remained elusive. The Royals left the bases loaded in the sixth and the seventh. Cain and first baseman Eric Hosmer continued to look just a tick off at the plate. Hosmer finished 1 for 5, striking out in the first before hitting into inning-ending double plays in the third and seventh.

In three games in Minnesota, Hosmer finished 2 for 11. On Friday, he again struggled to elevate the baseball.

The problem came to a head against reliever Jandel Gustave, a former Royals prospect, in the top of the seventh. With the bases loaded, Gustave pumped three fastballs that touched 97 mph. On the sixth pitch of the at-bat, Hosmer hit a chopper to shortstop, ending the threat.

“We had to grind it out,” Yost said. “We had opportunities to tack on runs. We just couldn’t get it across until Gordy finally got the big double.”

By the end, the Royals could exhale. Music blared in the clubhouse in the moments after the game. Gordon celebrated with a postgame workout. The wait for a victory was over. The bullpen came through with three scoreless innings. And Vargas was back — healthy and competitive and offering just what was needed.

“I was able to locate fastball,” Vargas said. “So that opened up a lot of other options.”

This story was originally published April 7, 2017 at 10:39 PM with the headline "Jason Vargas delivers as Royals craft first victory of season."