KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Not even the Kansas City Royals' 8,900-square foot, $8.3 million, 17-people-to-operate, see-it-from-space, high-definition scoreboard could make Jered Weaver's pitching look good on Wednesday night.

Simi Valley's Weaver was bounced around by one of the least offensive teams in the majors, giving up as many hits (10) as he retired batters in his worst start of the season, a 9-4 loss to the Royals.

The hits and runs allowed (8) were season-highs for Weaver. The 313 innings were his shortest start since leaving a June 10, 2007 start after three innings because of injury. Only once in his 55-start major league career has he been knocked from a game faster while healthy — 123 innings April 23, 2007, against the Detroit Tigers.

"Just leaving balls up. Everything was up," Weaver said. "Just one of those days. When you can't command the ball, you're not going to get too many people out."

And he didn't.

The Royals came into the game with the fewest runs scored in the majors at 110. They were last in the AL in slugging percentage and total bases, second to last in home runs and on-base percentage.

But six of their 10 hits off Weaver went for extra bases, including home runs by David DeJesus and Alex Gordon that produced five of the Royals' nine runs.

"It gets back down to command, repeating pitches," manager Mike Scioscia said. "A couple breaking balls just rolled into the zone. ... I thought there was life on his fastball, but he had trouble getting it into some good zones."

Weaver has spent much of this season in a danger zone. He is 2-5 (tied for the AL lead in losses) with a 5.59 ERA. In losing four of his past six starts, he has allowed 44 hits and walked 12 in 3313 innings.

Opposing batters are hitting .294 with a .471 slugging percentage against him.

Even without those numbers to quantify it for him, Weaver knows something needs to change.

"It's been one of those years so far. I set the bar too high, I guess," he said. "Everybody wants you to go 6-0 (like Joe Saunders and Ervin Santana this year) or 9-0 (like Weaver as a rookie in 2006).

"One of the things I said when I came up was that I was going to pitch my game until they figured me out. I guess people are starting to figure me out. I'm going to have to change my approach and take it from there."

Making Weaver's struggles more glaring is the fact that he might have been the Angels' sharpest pitcher in spring training, earning him the opening-day start. His performance since then has been a disappointment.

"I think he's been a little inconsistent," Scioscia said. "He's working hard. He understands what piece he needs to bring to our club.

"Right now, he's not as crisp as we've seen in the past. In spring training, he really looked like he was where he needed to be. He hasn't carried some things forward as consistently as he needs to."

The only highlights for the Angels on Wednesday were home runs by Mike Napoli and Garret Anderson.

Napoli's (his eighth of the season) traveled into the construction zone beyond the Angels bullpen in left field.