Witt gets another big hit to send the Royals into ALDS with a 2-game sweep of the Orioles

BALTIMORE (AP) — Bobby Witt Jr. beat out an infield single to drive in the go-ahead run and send the Kansas City Royals into an AL Division Series with a 2-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday for a two-game sweep of their Wild Card Series.

With two outs and runners at the corners in sixth inning, Witt hit a grounder to the edge of the dirt behind second base, where Jordan Westburg made a diving stop and throw to first. Witt was already there after zooming 90 feet in 4.14 seconds, allowing Kyle Isbel to score from third.

"I just had to try to run," Witt said.

It was the second consecutive game in which the AL batting champion provided the decisive hit. Witt's RBI single in Tuesday's series opener plated the only run in a 1-0 victory.

“You never know when this opportunity ever is going to happen again, so got to make the most of it while you have it,” Witt said. “That’s the fun part of this game. This is why we do it, these situations here.”

Kansas City, which endured two seven-game losing streaks over the final month of the season, advanced to face the AL East champion New York Yankees. Game 1 is Saturday in the Bronx.

Cedric Mullins homered for the Orioles, who fell to 0-5 during two quick playoff exits the past two years. Baltimore has dropped its last 10 postseason games.

The new-look Royals lost 106 games last season but used a 30-win improvement to get back to October for the first time since winning the 2015 World Series.

Second baseman Michael Massey, who led off the game with a double and scored on a single by Vinnie Pasquantino, said the front office bringing in experienced veterans with playoff experience like Tommy Pham, Yuli Gurriel, Michael Wacha and Will Smith made this possible.

“They’ve been there before, they’ve done it, so I think it’s helped a lot of guys,” Massey said. “It’s helped us, for sure me, to be around those guys and just watch them, more than anything, and see how they go about their business, has been — I think that’s helped us stay even keel.”

The Royals left 12 runners on base and got through another close game with a razor-thin margin for error thanks to some masterful managing by Matt Quatraro, himself a postseason rookie like Witt, Game 1 winner Cole Ragans and so many others.

Quatraro let starter Seth Lugo get an out after loading the bases with nobody out in the fifth before spinning up bullpen roulette, starting with winning pitcher Angel Zerpa, who got KC out of that jam and then got the first out of the sixth. John Schreiber got three more outs, Sam Long two, Kris Bubic three and Lucas Erceg the final three to earn his second save of the series.

“It’s so impressive that they believe in themselves and they trust their stuff and they just come after some of the best hitters in the world,” Quatraro said.

Cionel Pérez took the loss.

The Orioles were swept in their only playoff series for a second consecutive year, going 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position this time and 5 for 32 combined. They face numerous offseason questions, from the future of manager Brandon Hyde to the possibility of losing pending free-agent starter Corbin Burnes.

“Especially when you lose like this, there’s frustration, there’s anger, there’s disappointment because you felt like there was opportunities there in those couple games to change the score, and it didn’t happen,” Hyde said.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Orioles: LF Colton Cowser broke his left hand when it was hit by the ball as he struck out swinging in the fifth. He exited after six innings.

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The Royals face Yankees ace Gerrit Cole in the opener of their ALDS, with any starter but Ragans or Lugo rested and ready to go. Wacha had been in line to start Game 3 against Baltimore.

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Kansas City Royals pitcher Lucas Erceg reacts after striking out Baltimore Orioles' Gunnar Henderson for the final out in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. The Royals won 2-1. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Baltimore Orioles' Gunnar Henderson, left, walks to the dugout after striking out for the final out as Kansas City Royals pitcher Lucas Erceg, right, and catcher Salvador Perez react following Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. The Royals won 2-1. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals manager Matt Quatraro gestures after his team defeated the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Kansas City Royals outfielder Hunter Renfroe, center, celebrates with teammates following Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. The Royals won 2-1. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez reacts after defeating the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Kansas City Royals players and staff pose for photographers after defeating the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez, right, holds a cell phone as he and teammates celebrate after defeating the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., center, reacts with a staff member after defeating the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson, top left, leaps to avoid the slide of Kansas City Royals' Hunter Renfroe (16) after forcing him out on a ground ball hit by Kyle Isbel during the second inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. Second base umpire Bill Miller, second from right, and third base Jordan Westburg (11) look on. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals' Vinnie Pasquantino reacts after hitting a single against the Baltimore Orioles during the fifth inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals' Vinnie Pasquantino connects for a single against the Baltimore Orioles during the fifth inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Baltimore Orioles' Cedric Mullins (31), with Ramón Urías (29) looking on, gestures after hitting a solo home run against the Kansas City Royals during the fifth inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Baltimore Orioles' Colton Cowser reacts after being hit by a pitch from Kansas City Royals pitcher Angel Zerpa during the fifth inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals manager Matt Quatraro (33) takes the ball from pitcher Seth Lugo while going to a reliever during the fifth inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Kansas City Royals' Kyle Isbel scores on an infield single by Bobby Witt Jr. during the sixth inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Kansas City Royals' Bobby Witt Jr. (7) hits a single as home plate umpire Ben May, left, and Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman look on during the third inning in Game 2 of an AL Wild Card Series baseball game, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

In a debate that evoked a calmer era in American politics, Tim Walz and JD Vance went after each other’s running mates Tuesday and sought to shore up their campaigns’ vulnerabilities at a time of renewed fears of a regional war in the Middle East and sadness over devastation from Hurricane Helene.

Meanwhile, those new trials — along with a dockworkers strike that threatens the U.S. economy — are looming over the final weeks of the presidential campaign and could help shape the public mood as voters decide between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the latest:

The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that Walz would have his first appearance on a late-night talk show during an upcoming trip to California, and Kimmel posted on Instagram, “I am pleased to announce that Governor Tim Walz is coming to @JimmyKimmelLive.”

The comedian said Walz would “chat and fix our transmission on Monday 10/7.” The Harris campaign produced a video of Walz fixing the cruise control on his 1979 International Harvester.

Oct. 7 is less than a month before Election Day, but also marks the first anniversary of Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.

A consequence of the prevalence of election misinformation: an troubling uptick in physical threats against election officials of both parties and, in some cases, their families, often based on false claims about the 2020 election. Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called it “corrosive” to democracy and said it’s something the public needs to collectively fight.

“Those election officials, they are not faceless bureaucrats,” Easterly said. “They’re folks we see in the community every single day. And they’re not doing this for pay. They’re not doing it for glory. They are doing it because they believe in the process of democracy.”

Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that lays out fresh details from the landmark criminal case against the former president.

The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”

“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.

The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Read more here.

Anti-abortion leaders said Wednesday that they’re undeterred after Donald Trump said he would veto a federal abortion ban, the first time he has explicitly said so after previously refusing to answer questions on the subject.

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, the Republican presidential nominee posted on his social media platform Truth Social that “everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it.”

With the election less than five weeks away, Trump has been trying to thread a divide between his own base of anti-abortion supporters and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. The former president is trying to make up ground with women — a group that views Democratic nominee Kamala Harris more favorably nationally — in the handful of battleground states that will likely determine the winner.

“Trump’s statement last night is just one more example of Republicans trying desperately to rebrand themselves on the issue of abortion,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “But at the end of the day, the only thing that has actually changed is their rhetoric on the issue. It’s their reaction to seeing the political consequences for this deeply unpopular policy position.”

Read more here.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday that “I need to be more specific on that” and acknowledged he misspoke during a debate with his Republican rival a day earlier when he said he had “become friends with school shooters.”

“I’m super passionate about this,” the former schoolteacher told reporters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He clarified that he had gotten to know the parents of victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting while he was in Congress, as well as the activist and school-shooting survivor David Hogg, calling him a “good friend of mine.”

Said Walz, “I need to be more specific on that, but I am passionate about this.”

Walz also acknowledged again that he “got his dates wrong” when he claimed he was in China during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Security for America’s election systems has become so robust that Russia, Iran or any other foreign adversary won't be able to alter the outcome of this year’s presidential race, the head of the nation’s cybersecurity agency said Wednesday.

Jen Easterly told The Associated Press in an interview that voting, ballot-counting and other election infrastructure is more secure today than it’s ever been.

“Malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election,” said Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Federal agencies have warned of growing attempts by Russia and Iran in particular to influence voters before the Nov. 5 election and election conspiracy theories have left millions of Americans doubting the validity of election results.

Easterly says those efforts are primarily aimed at sowing discord among Americans and undermining faith in the security of the nation’s elections.

Betting on the outcome of U.S. Congressional elections can resume, at least temporarily, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dissolved an order it had previously issued that prevented New York startup company Kalshi from taking bets on which political party would control the House and Senate after this November’s elections.

The ruling clears the way for such betting to resume while the court further considers the underlying issues in the case.

So far, Kalshi has only offered bets on congressional races; it was not immediately clear whether they plan to expand offerings to include the presidential election.

The court said it could reconsider a ban if the commission provides new evidence of serious harm to the public interest in the coming weeks.

“This strike is about fairness," the vice president said in the Wednesday statement. “Foreign-owned shipping companies have made record profits and executive compensation has grown. The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.”

In the statement, she criticized her opponent, former President Donald Trump, as someone who wants to take the country “back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize.”

“Donald Trump makes empty promise after empty promise to American workers, but never delivers," Harris said. “He thinks our economy should only work for those who own the big skyscrapers, not those who actually build them.”

“I feel very strongly that U.S. Steel needs to remain a U.S. company, and that the people working there need to be American workers,” Harris during an interview with KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh.

It’s a position consistent with the White House.

Pressed on U.S. Steel saying it could be forced to move its headquarters from Pittsburgh and cut jobs if the deal doesn’t go through, Harris told the TV station that it's her “priority to keep jobs in Pittsburg.”

President Joe Biden has opposed the acquisition of U.S. Steel to a foreign entity and his administration has indicated it could move to block the sale amid a government review of it. Since taking over for Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris has repeatedly taken a similar stance.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is holding a bus tour through central Pennsylvania with stops in the capital of Harrisburg, as well as York, and Reading.

In York, he’s being joined by Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman for a rally. While on the tour, Walz plans to meet with labor organizers and leaders from rural areas and the Hispanic community.

Vice President Kamala Harris had originally been set to do the bus tour with Walz following Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate in New York, but she's instead heading to Georgia on Wednesday to see areas hard-hit by Hurricane Helene.

On Saturday, Walz has fundraisers scheduled for Cleveland and Cincinnati, then will head to California and Washington state. That swing will feature campaign stops in Reno, Nevada — a makeup for a planned trip in September that Walz scrapped because of wildfires -- and Arizona, where early voting will be kicking off.

The Harris campaign says Walz will also increase the number of media interviews he's doing post-debate, with an eye to reaching target voters across key demographics.

Over the past four years, President Joe Biden has jetted off to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires and tropical storms. It’s not a role Kamala Harris has played as vice president.

But on Wednesday, they'll both fan out across the Southeast to grapple with the damage from Hurricane Helene, seeking to demonstrate commitment and competence in helping devastated communities after Donald Trump’s false claims about their administration’s response. Biden is heading to North and South Carolina, while Harris is going to Georgia.

Harris’ stop will also serve as a political test in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. She’s trying to step into the role for which Biden is best known — showing the empathy Americans expect in times of tragedy — in the closing stretch of her campaign for president.

Former President Donald Trump is going back to Butler, Pennsylvania, where the world saw him pump his fist and beseech followers to “fight,” even as blood streaked his face from a would-be assassin’s bullet.

In announcing his return, the current Republican nominee said he planned to “celebrate a unifying vision for America’s future in an event like the world has never seen before.”

The question is: Is Butler ready?

While many are predicting a large crowd to hear Trump speak back at the very Farm Show property where a bullet grazed his right ear on July 13, there's also apprehension in town, along with a sense that Butler is still healing.

This combination image shows Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, left, and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, talks with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, at Discovery World in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to members of the media, Tuesday Oct. 1, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)