Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer homers help Royals defeat White Sox 6-3

Salvador Perez and Eric Hosmer both hit impressive home runs on Sunday, powering the Royals to a 6-3 win over the Chicago White Sox, their seventh straight victory.

Hosmer's bomb came in the top of the first off Andre Rienzo. Rienzo had Hosmer down 1-2, but hung a curveball over the middle of the plate that Hosmer didn't miss, smashing the ball to dead center.

Omar Infante, who hit a one-out single, scored thanks to the HosBomb, and the Royals had a 2-0 advantage.

Perez drove in three runs with his roundtripper, and he also punished a Rienzo curveball. The starter's pitch to Perez wasn't as terrible as his offering to Hosmer, but it was over the inside part of the plate and the Royals catcher turned on the ball, easily clearing the leftfield wall.

Jarrod Dyson drove in the only other Royals run on the day with a single in the fourth inning, plating Mike Moustakas. The Royals offense was fairly quiet after the fourth inning, only finishing with eight hits despite scoring six runs. Funny how much well-timed home runs help a team score.

There was some drama in the top of the first inning that resulted in a run scoring on a balk and Ned Yost getting tossed from the game. James Shields surrendered a leadoff triple (that could've been an error on Hosmer) to Adam Eaton, then attempted to pick Eaton off third base. The home plate umpire called Shields for a balk, which allowed Eaton to score.

Shields didn't think it was a balk and started to argue with the home plate umpire. Yost came out to argue as well, and was sent to the showers for his effort. Here's a link to the video; I'm fairly certain the balk call was correct.

Shields didn't have his best stuff today and had to throw a ton of pitches, but still worked six quality innings, allowing three runs on ten hits. Chicago hitters did a good job working the count against the right-hander and avoiding the strikeout (only three for Shields) but couldn't capitalize during a number of run-scoring opportunites.

The White Sox stranded at least one runner in scoring position during eight different innings. Overall, Chicago stranded 13 runners against Shields, Francisley Bueno, Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland. Alcides Escobar also made a couple of really impressive defensive plays, helping his pitching staff out.

The Detroit Tigers also won today, so Kansas City remains 1 1/2 outside of first place. The top two teams in the AL Central will kick-off an important four-game series tomorrow at Comerica Park. Jason Vargas will take the mound for the Royals, facing off against Justin Verlander.