Royals' bats continue torrid stretch in 2nd half as Deadline nears

KANSAS CITY -- All the talk about adding offense to this Royals team at the Trade Deadline has dominated headlines for months.

But in the month of July? The current offense has started to click.

With Tuesday’s 9-6 win over the Braves at Kauffman Stadium, evening the series ahead of its finale on Wednesday, the Royals have scored 113 runs this month, by far their most of any month this season with still with one game to play. That’s 4.91 runs per game over the 23 games in July.

Since the All-Star break, Kansas City’s bats have been even better, having scored at least five runs in 7 of 11 games, something the Royals did in only 21 of 97 games before the break. Their average of 5.82 runs per game since the All-Star break ranks third in the Majors, after their 3.38 average before the break ranked 29th.

“It’s an offense I don’t want to face right now,” starter Seth Lugo said. “The bottom of the lineup is scrappy, making pitchers work, and the heart of the lineup is driving balls hard.”

The month of July is shorter than most months in the season because of the All-Star break, and the post-break sample size is small, but there’s no denying that this offense is better than it was earlier in the season.

Tuesday’s game offered a glimpse into why.

Fresh off a two-year contract extension, Lugo cruised through 5 2/3 scoreless innings, working around some hard hits early but largely keeping the Braves off balance.

That changed in a span of three batters and five pitches. Austin Riley homered on a hanging curveball, Michael Harris II poked a single up the middle, and Marcell Ozuna pounded a first-pitch curveball for a two-run home run. Lugo’s four-run lead was suddenly down to one.

A double and back-to-back walks to the Braves’ Nos. 8 and 9 hitters turned the lineup over and ended Lugo’s day. Reliever Hunter Harvey entered to face Jurickson Profar and got him to fly out to center, ending the threat.

“Bases loaded, that’s a big shutdown,” Lugo said. “And for our offense to turn around and score like they did right after that, it shows how the whole team felt after he got that big out.”

Moments later, with Adam Frazier on first base, Freddy Fermin drew a walk. That brought pinch-hitter Randal Grichuk to the plate so John Rave could avoid the left-on-left matchup against Braves reliever Aaron Bummer. But the Braves countered with righty Enyel De Los Santos.

Grichuk drew a walk anyway.

Kyle Isbel followed with a bases-clearing double, lining it the opposite way to the left-center gap. It was the Royals’ first extra-base hit with the bases loaded all season.

“It’s a good moment, obviously a lot of energy,” Isbel said. “The at-bats all day, they were incredible, and it was fun to watch.”

The Royals added two more with Bobby Witt Jr.’s single and Vinnie Pasquantino’s ground-rule double.

The Braves might have scored three in the top of the frame, but the Royals punched back with five.

“That’s the stuff that we weren’t doing at the beginning of the year,” said Pasquantino, who homered in the first inning. “If like, OK, you get slapped in the face, how do you respond? And we did a nice job coming back in and responding. There’s been quite a few times this year where we haven’t responded. Sometimes it feels like if we give up runs, it’s like, ‘Uh oh.’ And tonight was definitely not one of those nights.”

Thursday’s 5 p.m. CT Trade Deadline is rapidly approaching, and the Royals (53-55) are searching for ways to improve their roster, not having given up on a potential run in 2025. They’ve already brought in two players in Frazier and Grichuk who have provided boosts. The front office will be looking for more, along with adding pitching depth.

Lugo’s extension provided an even bigger boost to the clubhouse, cementing that his future was not with another team while showing the Royals are committed to trying to win now.

“This week’s always weird,” Pasquantino said. “I don’t know, I’m probably not supposed to say that. But it is. It’s like a weird cloud hanging over the team. And to be honest, I felt like [Lugo’s extension] kind of ended that. I think the organization made a really smart decision doing that. It’s not common for small market teams to make moves like that, to extend guys when they could have easily traded him and got some prospects, and they didn’t do [that].

“That fires up the locker room.”

So do bounce-back wins like Tuesday.