What's the Offense's Deal?

For weeks, the Royals offense was one of the best in baseball. Lately, though, it's been one of the worst. What's up with that?

Offense has long been something that ebbs and flows for the Royals. I don’t know what it is, but it feels like once one guy goes into a slump, it’s just a matter of time before six more join him. You can see a trend that supports that even throughout a season where they could end up as one of the 10 highest scoring teams in franchise history. They scored 4.94 runs per game when starting 34-19. Then they were kind of around average for a couple of weeks and averaged 2.6 runs per game over an 18-game stretch that saw them go 6-11. On June 28, they won 10-3 and from that game until August 28, they averaged 5.5 runs per game over 51, in going 30-21.

That’s when the latest skid started. The final game was on August 28, the loss in Cleveland in the fourth game of that series. Then came the Houston series, the other Cleveland series and the rest of the most recent games. Within those 19 games, they’re 7-12 and are averaging 3.4 runs per game. They’ve scored more than four runs just five times, and it feels like they’re scratching and clawing to do it each of those times. So what is happening that has changed things so much for them so quickly?