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Royals home runs rattle Tigers

Sep 24, 2008 - 2:39 AM DETROIT (Ticker) -- The Kansas City Royals blasted three home runs en route to a 5-0 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday.

Mike Aviles hit his ninth home run in the first inning; Ryan Shealy his seventh in the fourth; and Alex Gordon added his 16th, a two-run shot, later in that inning.

Aviles gave the Royals a 1-0 lead with one out in the first, driving Freddy Garcia's pitch deep to left field.

"Just a 3-1 fastball ... he left it up a little bit," Aviles said.

Shealy also went deep to left, leading off the fourth. One out later, Billy Butler walked and Gordon followed with a blast deep to right.

Aviles, Shealy and Gordon each had two hits in the Royals' 11-hit attack. Shealy joined Gordon with two RBI, delivering an RBI ground-rule double to deep center in the fifth.

Zack Greinke (13-10) was the beneficiary as the Royals won for the 10th time in 12 games. The righthander threw seven solid innings, allowing four hits while striking out four and walking two. Leo Nunez finished up with two innings of hitless relief.

"Makes it a little easier on our club the way Zack went out there and pitched and we finished it out," Royals manager Trey Hillman said. "He was pretty dominating ... not his most dominating but pretty close."

The righthander agreed with his manager.

"Just throw strikes and they were making great plays behind me," Greinke said. "It really wasn't a dominating game. I didn't have any location of any pitches. My fastball was good, but I wasn't locating it good."

Garcia (1-1) was victimized for all three home runs, allowing seven hits and five runs in five innings. Garcia struck out six and walked two as the Tigers lost their fifth straight.

"I really like him. He is a real professional," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "He's made a lot of progress. A year ago, he was undergoing arm surgery and now he's doing real good."

"He had a couple of bad pitches for home runs, but he had a lot of swings for misses."

Gary Glover and Casey Fossum each threw two innings of two-hit ball in relief for Detroit.

The only positive sign for the Tigers was their ability to turn double plays - they turned four on the night.

"I'll make things real simple. We just haven't played good enough," Leyland said. "We have five games left and we're going to try to win as many of those as we can. We are going to give it our best, go into the winter and see how we can make things better."

Kansas City (72-86) and Detroit (71-85) are in a virtual tie for fourth place in the American League Central Division.

"Unfortunately, that's what we have to play for now," Shealy said. "At least, we're going in the right direction."