A Royal power outage

The Royals cannot hit home runs anymore

Over the last six games, the offense has been truly terrible. I do not think any Royals fans have not already realized that, but six games and five runs with two shutouts and I would argue a third since last night only a zombie runner in the tenth scored, that is pretty rough. The last home run was Bobby’s grand slam in a loss last Monday. Where has the long ball gone?

This team has been okay at hitting home runs this season, which is better than normal for this organization, historically speaking. The Royals franchise has never been known for massive power. Being 20th in baseball in homers this year is nothing to write home about, but they are less than 10 homers behind the median team, so it really just puts them in a muddled middle. Average home run production is okay, and it is the most home runs hit by a Royals team since 2017 and their second-best in a decade, and that is in a year when home runs are down overall league-wide. Now they need to hit some more to hold on to a playoff berth.

It is more than just home runs however. In the last six games the team has zero triples and just three doubles. Two of those three doubles were Bobby Witt Jr., and of course no one could get him home. That means everyone not named Bobby Witt has a combined one extra-base hit in 197 plate appearances!! The team is slugging .193 over the last week.

I have heard other commentators talking about the loss of Vinnie causing most of the problem, but I don’t think that is it. For whatever reason, the Royals just had one of the worst-hitting weeks that we ever seen and Vinnie couldn’t have saved them. Even the worst hitter on the team (Adam Frazier or Garrett Hampson?) can typically slug over .200, which makes me assume this will end pretty quickly. Hopefully, it is quickly enough to hold on to the wild card.

The current offense is not what we should expect the Royals to be for the rest of this week and into the playoffs. They are clearly better than this, it is just hard when you have your worst-hitting week right in the middle of a playoff race. Especially when it is the first playoff chase in nearly a decade. Maybe last night’s eight hits and four walks were the beginning of getting back on track?