Detroit ? The Kansas City Royals have the record of a last-place team and a pitching staff to match.

The Tigers found out again Monday that the Royals don’t have a last-place offense.

The Royals got 18 hits in their second August win over Max Scherzer, beating the first-place Tigers, 9-5, on Monday night.

Salvador Perez, Alcides Escobar and Alex Gordon all homered while Johnny Giavotella added a bases-loaded double for the Royals, who came in 181/2 games behind Central Division leaders.

“I don’t know what it is about Scherzer,” Giavotella said. “We’ve put good swings on the ball against a lot of pitchers and not gotten anything to show for it, but we’ve been better against him.”

Scherzer (13-8) allowed seven runs, 10 hits and a walk in three-plus innings.

“We were swinging the bat really well against him, and they weren’t bad pitches,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Detroit has a great lineup, so you really want to put up as many runs as you can as quickly as you can.”

Tigers manager Jim Leyland wasn’t surprised.

“People need to realize that isn’t the team that fell way out of the race,” he said of the Royals. “They’ve brought up some young, aggressive hitters that are pretty impressive.”

Luke Hochevar (9-10) gave up five runs and eight hits in seven innings.

“My job is to go out and execute pitches, whether we’re leading by 10 runs or down by 10 runs,” he said.