Here’s why end of Kris Bubic’s scoreless streak was a positive for Kansas City Royals
It’s easy to point to Kris Bubic’s recent stretch of scoreless innings and dub it progress or growth or whatever other descriptive might seem to fit.
But the Kansas City Royals’ young left-hander recognizes growth as much in grind-it-out performances as the ones where he goes into relative cruise control.
On Sunday, Bubic had to grind a bit.
The 23-year-old was blessed with enough self-awareness to realize, as it was happening, just how differently his start would have unfolded in similar circumstances last season.
His five-inning start in the club’s 3-2 walk-off win over the Detroit Tigers definitely served as a signpost along his journey to being the pitcher he hopes to become.
“If you take that game last year, I might be out of that game in the first inning. I might be out of that game in the first three innings,” Bubic told pitching coach Cal Eldred in the dugout after he came out of the game.
Last season in his 10 starts, Bubic regularly found himself pitching into tough spots and around traffic on the basepaths as evident by his 1.48 WHIP.
As a result, his pitch counts ballooned and he rarely worked deep into games. He completed six innings or more in just two of those 10 starts.
Bubic entered Sunday’s start with a scoreless streak of 17 2/3 innings. That stretch included two relief outings of five innings or more as well as a six-inning start.
The Tigers sent eight batters to the plate in the first inning. Four of the first five batters smacked hits. The Tigers scored two runs. Then they loaded the bases with just one out and went looking to add more.
It quickly started to look like one of last year’s outings in the making, except with the added element of live spectators in the stand instead of cardboard cutouts.
“I probably shouldn’t be thinking about it, but in the first inning that’s always going through your head,” Bubic said of the comparison to last season. “You got through a long inning, a couple runs, a lot of traffic and you know the human nature of that. Some doubt creeps in.
“But at the same time, I think that’s where I’ve overcome that. It’s okay for that doubt to creep in. It’s how I react to that doubt is kind of the difference.”
Bubic got a pop-up and a strikeout to escape the first inning and strand the bases loaded with just two runs scored.
Working without his best command and with his primary weapon, his changeup, not mystifying hitters nearly as much as it often does, Bubic still retired nine of the next 11 batters he faced through the next three innings.
“I could kind of tell early on that fastball command was, you know, a little spotty,” Bubic said. “There’s not many days I don’t get any swings and misses on my changeup. It’s probably a product of facing them again and the recency of that.
“I wasn’t able to execute as much as I wanted to. But damage control in the first and doing my best to hold it there with kind of so-so stuff the whole time was the mindset. I didn’t really care how I got it done just as long as we put up a couple zeros.”
He gave up back-to-back singles to start the fifth inning with the middle of the Tigers order coming up, but he got slugger Miguel Cabrera to hit into a double play and then got an inning-ending groundout from Eric Haase.
Haase had one of the two first-inning RBI singles against Bubic, and he was also the final batter of Bubic’s outing.
Bubic didn’t give up a run after those two in the first inning.
He didn’t rack up gaudy strikeout totals. He had just three. He didn’t cruise his way through the lineup as he did in his most recent outings, but it may have been a more significant performance than any other so far this season.
“What he did is that progression of figuring out what he’s got to do to get back in the bottom of the zone, which then makes his other pitches better,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of Bubic. “But then, just survive. He was jumping into the wind-up whenever he could do it. That was helping him get a better rhythm. Just figuring out ways to keep us in the game. Next thing you know, he finishes five and hands it off.”
