Tigers manager believes struggling offense 'will bust out'

One of the league's most potent offenses to start the season has hit a wall.

The Detroit Tigers owned the second-best team batting average in April - while scoring the seventh-most runs - but have seen their offense dry up in May.

The Tigers have gone 5-6 this month, scoring just 33 runs over that time, though manager Brad Ausmus doesn't believe his lineup will stay cold for long.

"Anemic right now," Ausmus told Matthew Mowery of the Oakland Press. "But it just tells me it's going to be (better). At some point, this offense will bust out. You always go through stretches where you have trouble scoring runs - you seem to even get your hits, but you have trouble scoring runs. I'm very confident in this offense in the long term, even though it's been a little bit of a struggle lately to score."

A key contributor to the Tigers' offensive woes has been a lack of production from the middle of the order.

"To be honest with you, I think we need a little luck, because the last three or four games we hit the ball hard right at them," Miguel Cabrera said. "So what are we going to change? If we change, I think it's going to be worse. It's not our fault we're hitting at the ball right at them. We need to be patient and try to work the count and try to score more runs."