(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
 Houston wins ALDS-opener in Kansas City
Nederlands
 KANSAS CITY, Missouri (USA) -
The Houston Astros opened the best-of-five American League Division Series on Thursday-evening (October 8) with a 5-2 victory at the Kansas City Royals.
On Tuesday, the Astros had shutout the New York Yankees 3-0 in the Wild Card-game to advance to the ALDS.
Game Two will be played on Friday.
All four games played so far in this postseason were won by the visiting teams.
Earlier on Thursday, the Texas Rangers won 5-3 at the Toronto Blue Jays in the other ALDS.
The National League Division Series begin on Friday.
Recap Rangers vs. Blue Jays
For the Astros, this is their 10th appearance in a postseason, but their first as an American League-team.
The Astros moved from the National League to the American League starting in 2013.
The last time that Houston played in the postseason was in 2005, also as a Wild Card-team, when they advanced to the World Series.
This was the only World Series the Astros played in.
Manager of the Astros is A.J. Hinch, who is in his first year with the club.
With his 40 years, the former catcher is the second youngest Manager in the Majors this year.
In 1996, Hinch was a member of the National Team of the USA that won the Bronze Medal on the Olympic Games of 1996 in Atlanta (USA).
This season, the Astros led the American League with 121 stolen bases and was second in the Major League with 230 homeruns.
Only the Toronto Blue Jays hit more homeruns, 232.
The Royals are playing in their ninth postseason and second in a row.
This season, the Royals won their first-ever championship in the American League Central Division.
The last time that the Royals won a Division-title was in 1985 when the team played in the West Division.
The team finished the season with a 95-67 record, which was the best in the American League.
The 95 wins are the most since winning 97 in 1980 when the Royals won the American League-title and went on to the World Series.
A record 2,708,549 spectators visited the games this season at Kauffman Stadium.
The Royals are led by Manager Ned Yost, who this season became the winningest manager in franchise history.
Yost led the team to 468 wins since becoming Manager in May 2010.
In June, Yost passed legendary Whitey Herzog, who had 410 wins as Manager of the Royals.
Yost also won 457 games as Manager of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Earlier today, Toronto's José Bautista played in his first postseason-game of his career after having played in 1403 regular season-games since 2004.
In this game, Kansas City's rightfielder Álex Ríos also played in his the postseason-game of his career.
Ríos, who was born in the USA, but grew up in Puerto Rico, led all active players this year by having played in 1691 regular season-games (also since 2004), but never had reached the postseason.
In 2008 and 2009, the two were teammates while playing for the Blue Jays.
Collin McHugh was the starting pitcher for the Astros.
He was 19-7 in the regular season.
The starter for the Royals was Dominican Yordano Ventura, who was 13-8 this season.
Houston took a quick 2-0 lead in the first inning off of Ventura.
José Altuve led off with a single, then George Springer walked and the bases got loaded when Carlos Correa also singled.
The first two then scored on grounders by Colby Rasmus and Evan Gattis.
While it had started to rain, Houston added another run in the top of the second inning.
With two outs, Jake Marisnick doubled and scored on a following single by José Altuve.
In the bottom of the second, Kansas City scored its first run off of McHugh when Cuban Kendrys Morales led off with a homerun.
Three groundouts followed, but then the game was halted, as the rain had become heavier.
After a 48-minute delay, the game resumed and that resulted in a pitching change for the Royals, as Chris Young replaced Yordano Ventura.
In his first-ever postseason-inning, Young struckout three batters, while walking another with one out.
Collin McHugh returned to the mound for the Astros after the lengthy delay.
In the top of the fourth inning, Young added two more strikeouts.
The Royals then narrowed the deficit to 3-2 off of McHugh in the bottom half of the fourth when, with two outs, Kendrys Morales homered again.
In 2003, Morales won the Gold Medal with the National Team of Cuba on the World Championship, which was then held in Cuban capital Havana.
In the quarter finals vs. Brazil, Cuba won 4-3 thanks to a homerun by Morales.
In the semi-final vs. Taiwan, Cuba won 6-3 thanks to a grand slam homerun by Morales.
Cuba then beat Panama 4-2 in the final to win the World Championship-title.
Morales made his Major League-debut in 2006 playing for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Morales became the second Cuban-born to hit two homeruns in a postseason-game.
The other was Tony Perez, who homered twice for the Cincinnati Reds in Game 5 of the 1975 World Series vs. the Boston Red Sox.
In the top of the fifth, Houston made it a 2-run difference again when Geroge Springer hit an one-out homerun to make it 4-2.
Houston took more distance in the top of the eighth inning when Colby Rasmus led off with a homerun off of new pitcher Ryan Madson.
On Tuesday, Rasmus also homered in the Wild Card-game against the New York Yankees.
(October 8)
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