KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Once again, the Royals didn't make the scoreboard spin, but they put together enough offense to halt a losing streak, and besides, Jason Vargas required very little support from the offense.
Vargas was at his best Thursday in the Royals' 3-1 victory, keeping A's hitters off balance.
It was Vargas who ended the Royals' three-game losing streak to open the season and got them into the victory column last week in Houston, and he was better on Thursday when he ended another three-game skid.
His line read 72/3 innings, four hits and two runs with eight strikeouts and one walk in the top performance by a Royals starter this season.
The A's didn't go quietly as Rajai Davis opened the ninth with a solo home run off closer Kelvin Herrera. But after a double by Jed Lowrie, Herrera retired the final three hitters for his first save of the season.
By salvaging the final game of the home-opening series, the Royals also stopped an eight-game slide against the A's dating to last season, and for the moment, ended chatter about the team's seemingly lifeless play of late.
That topic was based on the fact the offense has been toothless most of the season. But to Royals manager Ned Yost, the trend actually started before Opening Day. Before the game, he referenced the team's get-away day game in Surprise, Ariz., as the origin. The Royals went scoreless in the Cactus League finale against former teammate Dillon Gee, now with Rangers.
The bats remained silent when the Royals finished the exhibition season with two games in Arlington, Tex., and the malaise carried into the season's first series at Minnesota.
"To me we were rolling in spring training until that final game," Yost said. "Then we went to Texas and we didn't do anything there, and then we didn't do anything in Minnesota."
Yost thought the Royals had snapped the collective slump when they won two in Houston, but the homestand opened with two more weak-bat clunkers.
"We haven't hit," Yost said. "Do I worry about it? No. Do I like it? No?"
He liked what he saw in the first inning Thursday.
Alex Gordon got it started with a line single to center, and that started a carousel around the bases, which has been rare for the Royals this season. Mike Moustakas dropped a single to left and Gordon hustled to third.
Lorenzo Cain, celebrating his 31st birthday on Thursday, singled to score Gordon, and with one out, Salvador Perez reached out to serve a Jesse Hahn breaking ball to right, scoring Moustakas. The Royals had their first lead of the series.
Entering the game, half of the Royals' 24 runs had been scored via a home run, 10 solo shots and one two-run homer. They opened Thursday's game by keeping the line moving, a familiar refrain from the 2014 and 2015 seasons.
The Royals manufactured another run in the third when Cain led off with a single, his fifth hit in two games. He went to second on Eric Hosmer's walk and stole third and scored on Brandon Moss' sacrifice fly to left.
Timely hitting, active base running, productive outs, it wasn't a gusher, but it was enough Thursday and more than the Royals had accomplished in most games in the season's first two weeks.
And the three runs were plenty for Vargas, who missed most of last season recovering from Tommy John surgery.
The A's had two base runners in one inning only once against Vargas, who issued his lone walk in the sixth. But he got Lowrie on a deep fly to center to end the mini-threat.
Vargas kept the pitch count low, coaxing a broken-bat double play from Trevor Plouffe to end the seventh, and when he came out to start the eighth Vargas had already gone farther in a game than any Royals starter this season.
He got two outs in the eighth and was almost in the dugout. But Alcides Escobar booted a ball off the bat of Adam Rosales, and Yost made the change to Joakim Soria, who recorded he final out of the eighth. Vargas left the game to a huge ovation.
The error was the first by the Royals this season, ending a club record 782/3 innings to open the season without a fielding miscue.
