The Kansas City Royals and designated hitter Billy Butler are featured on one of this week’s regional covers for Sports Illustrated.

Kansas City is one of the hottest teams in the majors, but also owns baseball’s longest postseason drought, a nearly 30-year wait for a team that has two winning seasons in the past 12 years.

Kansas City is no doubt the surprise of this season, as the team is sitting in first place with less than 40 games to go in the regular season.   According to the report in SI, the Royals can credit their once-dormant offense and steady pitching staff for the turnaround.

The team’s ERA is fourth in the American League, and since August, they have more hits than anyone, have scored more runs and have hit .284 as a team, also tops in the majors.

DENVER (AP) — Omar Infante had three doubles and drove in four runs to help the streaking Kansas City Royals beat the Colorado Rockies 7-4 on Tuesday night.

James Shields pitched six solid innings to get the win for the Royals, who have now won 21 of 26 after getting to Colorado rookie Tyler Matzek in the seventh.

Matzek (2-9) came into Tuesday with a 9.60 ERA in August but was having his best outing since blanking Pittsburgh over seven innings on July 26 when he ran into trouble with two outs in the seventh. Matzek got the first two outs before allowing a pinch-hit single to Josh Willingham and walking Nori Aoki.

Adam Ottavino came on and gave up consecutive doubles to Infante and Salvador Perez to give the Royals a 4-2 lead.

The Royals scored three more runs in the eighth off Colorado’s bullpen. Infante had a two-run double with the bases loaded.

It was the second time in his career he has had three doubles in a game. The last time, May 27, 2004, came against the Royals when he was playing for Detroit.

That made a winner of Shields (12-6), who allowed two runs on nine hits and struck out six. He wasn’t sharp, allowing base runners in every inning but his last and struck out Drew Stubbs with the bases loaded to end the fourth.

Drew Stubbs and Nolan Arenado each had three hits and a home run for Colorado.

Arenado went deep in the fifth to give Colorado a 2-1 lead and Stubbs hit a two-run homer in the ninth, when the Rockies mounted a rally. Greg Holland came on and threw one pitch to record his 39th save in 40 chances.

Justin Morneau, back in the lineup after missing two games with a stiff neck, gave Colorado a 1-0 lead with a double-play grounder in the first.

Kansas City tied it in the fourth on Lorenzo Cain’s RBI double to.

— Associated Press —

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Erik Kratz homered twice after replacing an ailing Salvador Perez, and Jason Vargas pitched seven strong innings to lead the first-place Kansas City Royals to a 6-4 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Monday night.

Vargas (10-5) allowed one run on four this and struck out three, but had his scoreless innings streak snapped at 17 when Oswaldo Arcia hit a solo homer in the seventh. Perez had two hits and two RBIs before leaving in the seventh because of discomfort in his right knee, helping the Royals win for the 21st time in 26 games.

Kansas City extended its lead over the idle Detroit Tigers in the AL Central to two games.

Trevor May (0-2) gave up three runs on seven hits and walked four in 4 2/3 innings for the Twins.

When Perez left, Kratz came in as a pinch hitter and drove a pitch just over the wall in left field for a 4-0 lead. He added a solo shot to center in the ninth for his first multihomer game.

Trevor Plouffe hit a three-run homer off Aaron Crow in the ninth inning, but Greg Holland came on for his 38th save in 40 tries. Josh Willingham had three hits and Alex Gordon and Billy Butler each had two for the Royals, who have won eight straight series for the first time since 1991.

May made his major league debut on Aug. 9, and it was a rough one. He walked seven batters in two innings and gave up four runs. He breezed through four innings of his home debut, but walked the bases loaded in the fifth.

Perez followed with a two-run single and Butler added an RBI single to give the Royals a 3-0 lead.

That was enough for Vargas, who has dominated the Twins this season. He retired 10 in a row from the second through sixth while his offense built him a cushion.

— Associated Press —

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Kansas City Royals scored seven runs in the second inning. Then they really started hitting the ball.

Alex Gordon, Salvador Perez and Josh Willingham homered, and the Royals beat the Minnesota Twins 12-6 on Sunday for their 20th win in their last 25 games.

Kansas City sent 11 batters to the plate in the big second, keyed by two-run singles for Alcides Escobar and Nori Aoki. The Royals then started hitting the ball out of the park after a 54-minute rain delay in the fourth.

Gordon sent one drive into a flower bed in right-center. Perez lined one into the left-field seats, and Willingham’s homer traveled an estimated 433 feet into the third deck in left field.

“Those tack on runs are huge,” Royals manager Ned Yost said.

The Royals also increased their AL Central lead to 1 1/2 games over Detroit, which lost 8-1 to Seattle. This is the latest the Royals have been in first place since 2003.

Kansas City’s Jeremy Guthrie (9-10) returned to the mound after the delay in the fourth and lasted seven innings, yielding home runs by Joe Mauer and Kennys Vargas.

Oswaldo Arcia also went deep for Minnesota, hitting a two-run drive off Jason Frasor in the eighth for his 11th homer.

But Kansas City’s post-rain delay power surge helped it remain in control despite the Twins showing some power of their own.

“You gotta fight for 27 outs,” Perez said. “We continued to play hard. We needed to keep hitting it until the game was over.”

In his second start with Minnesota since coming over in a trade from Oakland, Tommy Milone (6-4) allowed seven runs in a career-low 1 1/3 innings.

“Awful. The first inning was good, the second one was pretty awful,” Milone said. “Couldn’t get a good feel, try not to walk guys, left the ball over the plate. It was pretty tough.”

The first pitch was delayed 34 minutes in anticipation of a rain shower that never happened. The rain did arrive as the second inning started and got worse until umpires called the players off the field with one out in the bottom of the fourth.

After managing just one run in Saturday night’s 4-1 loss, the Royals scored 10 or more for just the third time since June 17.

“With the weather and everything, we were pretty good,” Perez said. “We fought through it.”

— Associated Press —

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Kurt Suzuki rarely makes errors or hits home runs. He did both on Saturday night, and the homer made up for a bad throw that could have cost Minnesota another game.

The All-Star catcher went 2 for 3 with a solo homer and made an impressive slide into home plate that helped lift the Twins over first-place the Kansas City Royals, 4-1.

Suzuki redeemed himself for an errant throw in the fourth that allowed Nori Aoki to score after stealing third and give Kansas City a 1-0 lead. The mistake came with his starting pitcher, Phil Hughes, looking dominant and locked in a duel with hard-throwing rookie Yordano Ventura.

“The hardest part is Phil was throwing so good and for me to do something like that, that’s what really got me a little bit,” Suzuki said.

It was his fourth error of the season.

“It was pretty brutal,” Suzuki said. “It was just one of those things where you get your body moving too quick and I lost the ball probably about right before my arm started coming forward. I said, `This is not good.”

It looked as if that run would be all the Royals needed to win their fourth straight. Ventura had dominated Minnesota’s lineup with his power for most of the night, consistently hitting into the upper-90s.

Hughes (13-8) allowed one run, seven hits and struck out six over 7 1/3 to outlast the young righty.

“You just don’t want to be the guy that breaks first,” Hughes said. “Obviously in a situation like that, I knew that one run might not be good enough and I had to at least keep it there.”

Ventura (9-9) threw six innings of one-hit ball before the Twins broke through in the seventh. With runners on second and third, Ventura threw a 99-mph fastball that shattered Danny Santana’s bat — but Santana reached base when Billy Butler tried to throw out Suzuki at home. The throw was in time, but the tag by catcher Salvador Perez was off, and Suzuki scored.

Brian Dozier followed with his 25th double of the season to score pinch-runner Eduardo Escobar. Kennys Vargas chased Ventura two batters later with a sacrifice fly to score Santana.

“You got to put up more runs than one,” Butler said. “That’s not the way it is every night, but that’s the way it is tonight.”

Hughes has won three in a row after losing three straight starts. He also has allowed only three runs this month. Casey Fien pitched to two batters in the eighth and Glen Perkins pitched the ninth for this 31st save in 34 chances.

— Associated Press —