Kris Bubic is an important part of the Kansas City Royals rotation for 2025 and his first start was very promising.
When the Royals traded Brady Singer in the offseason I had two thoughts in rapid succession. One, a real leadoff hitter in front of Bobby is going to be fun to watch. Two, Kris Bubic is as good as I thought he might be. After coming back from Tommy John and being a bullpen force down the stretch last year, Bubic is back in the rotation and looking very good, which freed up the Royals to trade a starter for a desperately needed bat.
Here is Bubic striking out a bunch of Brewers on Monday:
Notice that three of those were right in the middle of the zone. One of the reasons Bubic does not walk many is that his stuff is good enough to attack rather than nibble. Moving from the bullpen back to the rotation, you would expect he will look a little different than last year, so I wanted to go through the first start in some detail to see what of interest we can find and what it might portend for the rest of the season.
Most pitchers can throw a little more max effort out of the pen, so you would expect the velocity to come down a bit moving back to a starting role. For Bubic, that wasn’t the case in his first start. Bubic’s average fastball was 92.5 compared to 93.0 last year, so it was a bit lower, but not a significant drop in one start, plus his max velo was in line with last season. He maintained his velocity all the way to his last pitch and his sinker, slider and change were all similar velocities or a touch faster than last year as well. If he can maintain the velocity we saw out of the pen through a six-inning start it could really set Bubic up for similar success. Let me remind you he was really, really good last season – an 11.57K/9 and 1.48 BB/9 led to a 2.67 ERA while his peripherals (xERA/FIP/xFIP) were even better.
The most impressive thing, statistically speaking, about Monday’s start was Bubic’s Statcast metrics. The Brewers managed 0 barrels with a hard-hit rate of 7.7% and max exit velo of 98.2, which is silly. Even Luis Arraez, who is at the bottom of hard-hit rate perenially, managed a 23.7% rate last season. No one squared up Bubic the entire day. It’s too early to assume any of this will stick of course. Here is the overall picture of what he did relative to the league after one week:
The only thing he is not good at relative to the league is fastball velocity. In modern baseball he is a crafty lefty I guess. Look at the Whiff% and high GB% rate on top of what have already talked about. With this particular infield defense I like any pitcher being groundball-heavy. That will serve him well and batters missing the ball when they swing is always a good thing. I have no critiques.
He only showed one significant difference in pitch mix from last year. The four-seamer is still his main offering, then a sweeper, change, and sinker to varying degrees. Last season he really stuck to those four with Baseball Savant showing him throwing just one slider in all of 2024. On Monday the slider showed up 12 times, so it went from 0.2% to 12.6% of his pitches. A fifth pitch is interesting if it is effective. Stuff+ had it as a 104, so it was slightly above average on day one. We will see how that progresses.
Speaking of Stuff+, he showed improvement in his Stuff+ overall from 2024 to 2025, again in only one start but it is a metric that becomes statistically stable very quickly. Actually his Pitching+ improved too with only his Location+ going down from last year, albeit from 115 to 114. He will not be that sharp every time out, so I am not going to say Bubic’s stuff will play up as a starter, but at least he might be able to maintain last year’s level.
Overall I am very optimistic that Bubic can not only step into the Brady Singer-sized shoes he has been asked to fill, but I think he has a good shot at being better than Singer was last season. The biggest question is how many innings can he throw. Last season between his rehab stint in the minors, regular season, and playoffs he threw 70.2 so I am assuming he will not be going out there for 32 starts and 160+ innings. That is something to watch, but for now I think the innings he does throw are going to mostly be good ones.