Kansas City Royals Beat San Francisco Giants in Game 3

On Friday, every string he pulled seemed to move in his favor. It began with his starting lineup, which was drastically different from the one he used in Games 1 and 2, which the Royals played at home.SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout the playoffs, as the Kansas City Royals kept beating teams the same way — with quality starting pitching, sound defense and a dominant bullpen — their formula was simple, the results were clear, and the questions about their manager, Ned Yost, never went away. Following their now-familiar formula, the Royals beat the San Francisco Giants, 3-2, on Friday night in Game 3 of the World Series to seize control with a two-games-to-one lead. Their starter, Jeremy Guthrie, outpitched the veteran Tim Hudson. Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer had clutch hits, and the Royals’ dominant bullpen recorded the last 12 outs.

“This is the way our games have gone all year,” Yost said, adding: “It’s not me doing it. It’s the guys that we put out there that are doing it.” But Yost was the oft-criticized man behind it all. His decisions are frequently seen as unorthodox, and in the past he has been regarded as hotheaded. The other day, Yost was asked how he felt when people who had doubted him now called him a “genius,” and he maintained that he did not pay attention to it when people called him “stupid.”

With the series shifting here for three games, Yost, citing the need for better defense at spacious AT&T Park, replaced Nori Aoki with the speedy Jarrod Dyson, who had not started in about five weeks. Because of that switch, and the absence of the designated hitter in the National League park, Yost jumbled most of his lineup.

Lorenzo Cain, who was playing right field in place of Aoki, made two nifty catches in the first two innings. Gordon, whom Yost moved up into Aoki’s spot in the batting order, smoked a run-scoring double in the sixth. Then Hosmer worked an 11-pitch at-bat that ended with a single that scored Gordon to give the Royals a 3-0 lead.

“Whatever he does, we go with it,” Cain said of his team’s manager. “We just try to go out and get it done. No matter what situation he puts anyone in, we understand that he trusts us.”

Through the first five innings, it was Guthrie, and not the more accomplished Hudson, who set the pace of the game. Hudson has won 214 regular-season games in his 16-year career, and at 39 he had become the third-oldest pitcher to make a debut start in the World Series. But Guthrie, a journeyman, retired 10 batters in a row, painting the corners and forcing the Giants to make bad contact.

Guthrie, like so many Royals, had been overlooked.

Yost recently recalled how, one night in the summer of 2012, Dayton Moore, the Royals’ general manager, received a text message from a Colorado Rockies executive that essentially asked: Hey, would you be interested in swapping struggling starters? The Royals would send Jonathan Sanchez to the Rockies for Guthrie.

As Yost said: “We looked at each other, ‘Man, let’s give it a shot, right?’ ”

The Royals would become the fourth team for Guthrie, who has lost more games than he has won and twice led all of baseball in losses. But he has been rejuvenated with the Royals, and Friday night was perhaps the best start of his career. He held the Giants to two runs on four hits over five innings.

In the clubhouse, after the 35-year-old Guthrie had been unofficially chosen as the player of the game, his teammates shot him with Silly String and doused him with water.

“Happiness, excitement, gratitude,” Guthrie said. “I think those describe it as best I can do it.”

Once Guthrie left the game in the sixth, Kelvin Herrera, the Royals’ hard-throwing reliever, finished the inning. The rest of the game was up to the Royals’ bullpen and, to an extent, Yost’s strategy.

In the seventh, with one runner on and one out and Herrera at 27 pitches, Yost pulled him in favor of the rookie Brandon Finnegan. Months earlier, Finnegan pitched in the College World Series. With his first appearance in the major league World Series, he became the first person to play in both events in the same year.

Finnegan got Juan Perez, a pinch-hitter, to fly out, then struck out Brandon Crawford swinging at a 95-mile-per-hour sinker.

Wade Davis pitched a perfect eighth inning on 12 pitches. In a show of desperation, Gregor Blanco tried to bunt for a base hit and was thrown out. On his slide into first base, he looked like a man belly flopping into a pool. In the ninth Greg Holland, the Royals’ closer, topped Davis by throwing a perfect inning on eight pitches.

The Royals seemed comfortable afterward — loose, relaxed, excited. After getting blown out in Game 1, they were back to playing the way they had throughout the postseason. And they sounded confident.

“So,” Gordon said, “I don’t see why the other two, three, four games are going to be any different.”