Kris Bubic’s early-inning woes continue as Kansas City Royals lose 10-0 to Cardinals
Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Kris Bubic never cooled off the St. Louis Cardinals’ bats, meanwhile his counterpart and veteran right-hander Adam Wainwright never allowed the Royals’ offense to come close to warming up.
Bubic gave up more hits, walks and runs in less than an inning than Wainwright did in seven innings as the Royals lost 10-0 in front of an announced 12,774 in the finale of the I-70 series with the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday at Kauffman Stadium.
“Just not being able to do my job, flat out, plain and simple,” Bubic said of his outing. “It sucks. It’s embarrassing right now. It’s pretty much as frustrating as it gets. Not just today. Even the last month is as frustrated probably as I’ve been on a baseball field. And that is what it is, but it sucks letting my team down.
“Obviously, it’s not the first time. To put ourselves in a whole like that, it’s just unacceptable. I’ve got to find a way out of it.”
The Cardinals won three of the four games in the season series against the Royals, who were shut out for the third time in their past five games.
Bubic allowed four runs, two hits and two walks in a third of an inning against the Cardinals (14-10), including a three-run home run by Nolan Arenado, as the Royals found themselves in a five-run hole before they’d taken their first at-bat.
“You never want to start the game in a hole,” shortstop Nicky Lopez said. “They came out swinging. One swing of the bat from Arenado kind of gave them the momentum. Obviously, it’s kind of tough. You don’t want to start it like that.”
Wainwright, who has more than 16 years in the majors, held the Royals (8-15) scoreless over seven innings. He allowed just one hit and one walk.
Michael A. Taylor (1 for 2), MJ Melendez (1 for 3) and Edward Olivares (1 for 4) had hits for the Royals, while Lopez drew a walk. Hunter Dozier came off the bench and had a pinch-hit single in the ninth inning.
“He had three pitches thrown for strikes,” Lopez said of Wainwright. “That’s a key to success, you know, strike one, strike two. You see statistically the numbers go down as a hitter once you’re down in the count. He’s been doing it for years, and he was on today.”
Lopez described the game as “one those games you flush” from an offensive standpoint.
Rough first inning for Bubic
In recent starts — five innings against the Yankees, pitching into the third against Seattle — Bubic weathered an early storm enough to salvage some innings that the bullpen didn’t have to cover.
But he couldn’t navigate through his early struggles Wednesday.
“Coming off a good win yesterday and we need our starting pitching,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “He’s got to find it quicker. We had some arms in the bullpen that were rested, so we were going to take our best shot.”
Matheny wasn’t willing to wait to see if Bubic could get on track on Wednesday. He had a reliever warming in the bullpen before the end of Bubic’s third batter.
Bubic faced five batters. Four reached base, two via extra-base hits.
The Cardinals drew back-to-back walks to start the outing, followed by Arenado’s seventh home run of the season.
“That was probably the last place I wanted to go with it,” Bubic said of the fastball to Arenado. “When you’re searching for things, you’re searching for things. At that point it was I just wanted to get an out, wanted to just make a good pitch and get the first guy out in the inning.”
Bubic intended to go up and in with that fastball. Instead it ended up down and over heart of the plate in a 2-1 count to a dangerous hitter in Arenado, which Bubic described as a “recipe for disaster.”
Cleanup hitter Albert Pujols hit a fly ball to center field for the first out of the inning, then Juan Yepez doubled on a bloop hit to right field.
Yepez’s first at-bat in the majors marked the last of Bubic’s outing. Reliever Joel Payamps took over. Bubic threw 24 pitches, 10 strikes. He left with a runner on base, who scored after Bubic exited.
“Trying to win,” Matheny said of going to the bullpen early. “Off day tomorrow. We’ve got our long guy, who has recovered, we’ve got a couple guys who can go more than one inning. We’ve got to take our best shot at winning. That’s all there is to it each night.
“You’d like to hang around, see if he’s going to put it together. But we have an urgency. We take our best shot.”
The Cardinals tacked on a fifth run in the first inning against Payamps, and then added five more in the final three innings.
The Royals’ only hit against Wainwright came on Taylor’s single in the third inning.
The Royals have Thursday off before they begin a three-city, nine-game road trip on Friday night in Baltimore.
This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 3:30 PM.
