BALTIMORE — Bobby Witt Jr. their AL wild-card streak.
With two outs and runners on in the sixth inning, Witt hit a grounder to the dirt rim behind second base, where Jordan Westburg made a diving stop and threw to first. After Whitt had already zoomed 90 feet in 4.14 seconds, he allowed Kyle Isbell to score from third down.
“I should try to run,” Witt said.
It was the second game in a row that the AL batting champion delivered a decisive victory. Witt’s RBI single sealed a 1-0 win in Tuesday’s series opener.
“You never know when this opportunity is going to come around again, so you have to take advantage of it while you have it,” Witt said. “That’s the fun part of this game. That’s why we do this, these situations here.”
Since the RBI became an official statistic in 1920, joining Jimmie Foxx in 1929, Whitt became the second player age 24 or younger to have game-winning RBI in his team’s first two games in 1920.
After enduring two seven-game losing streaks in the final month of the season, Kansas City advanced to face the AL East champion New York Yankees. Game 1 is Saturday in the Bronx.
Cedric Mullins played for the Orioles, who fell to 0-5 the past two years during two quick playoff exits. Baltimore has dropped its last 10 postseason games.
The new-look Royals lost 106 games last season, but used a 30-game streak to return to October for the first time since winning the 2015 World Series.
Second baseman Michael Massey hit a double in the game and scored a run off Vinny Pasquantino, who said the front office brought in veteran players with playoff experience such as Tommy Baum, Yuli Kuriel, Michael Wacha and Will Smith to make this possible.
“They’ve been there before, they’ve done it, so I think it’s helped a lot of guys,” Massey said. “Certainly, it helped us to be around those people and see them and, most of all, how they go about their business — I think it helped us.”
The Royals left 12 runners on base and won another close game by a razor-thin margin thanks to the likes of Witt, Game 1 hitter Cole Ragans and others thanks to the skillful management of Matt Cuatraro.
Cuatraro allowed starter Seth Lugo to strike out after loading the bases with nobody out in the fifth before spinning bullpen roulette, starting with winning pitcher Angel Zerba to get Casey out of that jam and lead off the top of the sixth. Jon Schreiber got three more outs, Sam Long two, Kris Bubic three and Lukas Ercek got the final three outs to earn his second save of the series.
“It’s really impressive, they believe in themselves and they believe in their stuff and they’re going after some of the best hitters in the world,” Cuadraro said.
Cionel Perez took the loss.
The Orioles won their only playoff series for the second year in a row, this time going 1-for-13 with runners and 5-for-32. They face plenty of offseason questions, from manager Brandon Hyde’s future to the possibility of losing pending free-agent starter Corbin Burns.
“Especially when you go through losses like that, there’s frustration, anger, disappointment because you felt there were opportunities to change the score in those couple games and it didn’t happen,” Hyde said.
Orioles left fielder Colton Couser broke his left arm after being hit by a fly ball in the fifth swinging. He left after six innings.
The Royals face Yankees ace Gerrit Cole in the opening game of their ALDS, with no starter but Ragans or Lugo ready to rest. Wacha was in the lineup to start Game 3 against Baltimore.
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
