Baseball: Kikuchi wins while Darvish, Maeda also sharp

The Toronto Blue Jays’ Yusei Kikuchi won his first start of the season Tuesday, while fellow Japanese right-handers Yu Darvish and Kenta Maeda also allowed a run over five innings but failed to pick up wins.

Kikuchi gave up three hits in the Jays’ 4-1 win over the Kansas City Royals, allowing his only run on Royals cleanup hitter Franmil Reyes’s second-inning leadoff home run at Kauffman Stadium.

A single and wild pitch left Kikuchi with a runner on third with one out, but left fielder Daulton Varsho ended the inning by gunning down the runner trying to score on a fly out.

Toronto scored singl...