Kansas City Royals starter Edinson Volquez did his best to shed the postseason reputation he had previously carved out.

Volquez pitched with a fervor previously unseen, joining Danny Jackson, Bret Saberhagen and Yordano Ventura as the only Royals pitchers to throw six scoreless innings in a postseason game, as the Royals shut out the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1.

Volquez was overpowering in his own way

Game-time temperature was 54 degrees, but it was Volquez who brought the heat. He was 0-3 in six starts in his career when game-time temperature was that cold or colder and 0-4 in his career against the Blue Jays, but that was of little consequence.

Volquez averaged 95.3 mph with the 66 fastballs he threw, his fastest average velocity in any start this season. After the game, he credited the fans for providing him the extra energy needed to reach that velocity. His second-fastest was 94.7 in his start against the Houston Astros in his American League Division Series start. That was a mile per hour faster than his average fastball speed in the regular season.

Volquez was a little fortunate. The Blue Jays recorded five “hard-hit balls” (based on video review) against his fastball but netted only one base hit. Volquez netted 12 of his 18 outs with his fastball, four with his changeup and two with his curveball.

The Blue Jays led the majors with an .894 OPS in plate appearances ending with fastballs during the regular season.

It wasn’t that Volquez’s fastball was a swing-and-miss pitch. It’s that it was well located. Volquez got strikes at a 51 percent rate when the Blue Jays took his fastball. That rate was his third-best of the season and is 15 percentage points higher than his regular-season rate.

The biggest at-bat for Volquez was his last batter. With two men on base and two out in the sixth inning, Troy Tulowitzki stepped up to the plate. Volquez threw him seven pitches, all fastballs, and ultimately struck him out looking to end the inning.

Shutout trends

The Blue Jays were shut out for the third time in postseason history, the first since being blanked by Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling in Game 5 of the 1993 World Series.

It’s the third year in a row that one of the League Championship Series openers featured a shutout. The Tigers beat the Red Sox 1-0 in 2013. The Giants topped the Cardinals 3-0 in 2014.

Did you know?

The two previous teams to get a home win over the Blue Jays in Game 1 of the ALCS (the 1989 Athletics and 1991 Twins) both won the World Series.