And that's what we call a winning streak. It has happened before.

Don't look now, but the Royals have won 6 of their last 7 games. For the moment, we will ignore the fact that they were still mathematically eliminated from the playoffs during this streak anyways. Something about September has seemed to bring the best out in the Royals the last two years. Unfortunately, it has been too little, too late. But lets look at the last 7 game stretch a little closer to see what the team has been doing differently.

David Dejesus slides into home to help the Royals get their 6th win in the last 7 games

In the last 7 games, we have averaged 5.71 runs per game, compared to their 4.10 runs per game on the season as a whole. How significant is this extra 1.6 runs per game? The Yankees, the highest scoring team in baseball, averages 5.75 runs per game. I should mention that the Yanks currently have the best record too. It's easy to say "score more runs though." Have the Royals done anything else different during the last 7?

The easy answer is we have been hitting better, with splits of .303/.374/.442 over the last 7 (BA/OBP/SLG). This is much better than the .257/.315/.404 clip the team has hit over the course of the season. But is this sustainable? I would say yes and no. Part of the higher OBP has been due to better plate discipline. Our team walk % has been 10.0% over the past 7 games, as opposed to 7.4% on the season. However, this walking spike seems a little bit strange for a couple reasons. First of all, the Royals have actually been worse at swinging at balls outside of the zone over the last 7 (30.3% compared to 27.5% for the full season). The first strike percentage has been nearly equal what we have been seeing over the course of the season. So basically, the increased number of walks doesn't have a whole lot to do with better plate discipline as a team.

Billy Butler has hit .419/.441/.774 over the last 7 games

So what else can we attribute this increase in output to? Lets try luck. The Royals batting average for balls in play (BABIP) over the last 7 games has been .361. This is completely unsustainable. This compares to .297 for the season. The current league leader in this stat is at .319. This is a very significant stat to those who study advanced stats. Basically, over the course of a season, you can expect all luck on where balls fall to basically even out. Since the place where a ball lands in relation to fielders can be considered random, an unusually high BABIP over a short period of time suggests that you've gotten lucky.

As much as I'd like to believe we've turned a corner with our hitting, it may just be blind luck.

But hitting hasn't been the only reason we've been winning. We have seen some really good pitching performances as of late too. Especially by Zack Greinke, Robinson Tejeda and Kyle Davies. I will look into the pitching side more later this week.