Halladay leads Jays past K.C., 7-1

? Roy Halladay is the perfect go-to guy for Major League Baseball’s efforts to speed up the pace of games.

Halladay won for the third time in four starts, Marco Scutaro matched a career high with four RBIs and Toronto beat Kansas City, 7-1, on Friday night, handing the Royals their fifth straight loss.

Halladay needed just 2:14 to throw his major league-leading fifth complete game, his first since a run of four straight ended on April 29 in Boston.

“He was very good tonight,” Royals manager Trey Hillman said. “He had good action to his pitches, threw a lot of strikes and when he missed, he missed in non-dangerous places.”

Kansas City starter Zack Greinke (5-2) allowed a season-high six runs on nine hits in five innings, matching his shortest outing this year. He walked two and struck out two.

“They hit inside fastballs, outside fastballs, breaking balls in the zone and out of the zone,” Greinke said. “There wasn’t much I could do to them. They were just squaring up the ball a lot.”

Coming into play Friday, only Washington (183), San Francisco (171) and San Diego (166) had scored fewer runs than Kansas City (177) and Toronto (185).