Bubic’s strong outing wasted by KC Royals’ bullpen in series-ending loss at Toronto
Those Kansas City Royals fans who were enthralled by the idea of seeing the team’s youth on the display for a full series in the big leagues certainly saw the youth on Sunday. That youth came with some encouraging moments to dream on for the future, as well as a few cringe-worthy ones.
Nick Pratto blasted his first home run in the majors, a high drive that traveled 385 feet down the right-field line, but he also got picked off in a potentially crucial situation for the Royals in a tie game in the seventh inning.
A fielding error by shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. also led to two unearned runs as the Royals fell 4-2 to the Blue Jays in front of an announced 36,681 in the finale of a four-game series at the Rogers Centre.
The Blue Jays won the final three games of the series against the Royals, who overhauled their roster with minor-league promotions to fill in for 10 unvaccinated players who could not travel to Canada.
Royals pitcher Kris Bubic allowed just two unearned runs in seven innings. The left-hander didn’t walk a batter and struck out four. He allowed five hits and hit a Blue Jays batter.
“That’s one of the best we’ve seen from him,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “We give him a little bit more run support, he’s probably still going. It seemed liked he just kind of kept getting better. He mixed it up so well. …
“I thought (catcher) Freddy (Fermin) did a fantastic job with the game plan, just keeping them off-balance. Man, I didn’t know which way they were going to go in certain counts. (Bubic) was executing pitches when he got to those counts, with everything. You just can’t ask a pitcher to do more than that.”
Matheny called Bubic’s Sunday curveball “elite.”
With the score tied 2-2 in the eighth, reliever Wyatt Mills took over for Bubic. Mills, who hadn’t allowed a run in his previous four appearances, came in to face the heart of the Blue Jays’ lineup including Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk, Bichette and Teoscar Hernandez.
Guerrero lined a single to center and Kirk got a 3-2 slider that stayed up in the zone, smacking it over the left-field wall for a two-run homer to give the Blue Jays their margin of victory.
“It was one pitch to the wrong guy,” Matheny said. “Overall, he has been a great surprise guy. A surprise in the fact that we didn’t know we were going to have him. Then when we got him, we didn’t know exactly what we were going to get. He has been extremely good. We had a couple guys that we couldn’t use down there. He’s a guy we’re going to trust in those situations.”
Royals closer Scott Barlow was unavailable after throwing three of the previous four days, not including closing out both ends of a doubleheader on Monday.
Josh Staumont, who’d come off the injured list on Friday, has not pitched in back-to-back outings since June 20-21.
Bubic tossed a beauty
The Royals gave Bubic a two-run lead after two innings courtesy of a first-inning RBI single by Edward Olivares (1 for 4, RBI) to score Nicky Lopez (1 for 4, RBI), followed by Pratto’s home run in the second.
The Blue Jays (50-43) got two runs back in the fifth against Bubic on a pair of infield hits, a fielding error and a sacrifice fly.
Both infield singles were on softly-hit balls to third baseman Michael Massey, who’d played just two games at that position in the minors. In both cases, Massey charged and fielded the ball cleanly, one on a bare-handed play, but couldn’t throw out the batter.
With two runners on, Kirk hit a grounder to shortstop that Witt failed to field. A run scored on that play. The next batter, Bo Bichette, hit a sacrifice fly to drive in the tying run from third.
“Innings like that are going to happen,” Bubic said. “They hit a couple balls hard earlier that got caught. A couple kind of weird hops to the infield and it is what it is. But just keep making pitches and keep challenging guys regardless of the situation. Usually, things will kind of even out.”
Bubic held the Jays to just those two runs over seven innings. Despite the traffic on the bases in that inning, he tossed his longest outing of the season (seven innings) on 92 pitches. He left the game with the score tied.
“I had a really good rhythm the whole time,” Bubic said. “The first time through, a couple hard-hit balls and maybe got away with some pitches. But I think as we navigated through the game and navigated through a pretty good lineup, we mixed pitches really well. Rhythm, tempo, just wanted to stay on the attack as much as I could all day. Good things happened.”
Witt, who began the season as the starter at third base, has now committed four errors in his last six games.
“This kid has been — I can almost not describe it for the fact that he’s been working through some things and fighting through and answering the bell,” Matheny said of Witt. “He’s been so good. Then he comes out the next inning like, ‘OK, watch this.’ And makes two fantastic plays.
“Errors happen to the very best players. He does a great job of letting them go and getting ready for the next one. And he wears that really hard, takes it very personal. We want him to continue to be aggressive and want the ball because we want the ball hit to him.”
Power and pickoff for Pratto
Pratto, ranked by Baseball America as a Top 100 prospect (No. 60 on its latest update), got his first two hits in the majors on Friday after making his debut in Thursday’s series opener.
On Sunday, he went 2 for 3. One of those hits came on a 1-0 elevated fastball from Blue Jays starting pitcher Jose Berrios, which Pratto hammered into the stands.
“It was just kind of something where he threw a pitch that kind of matched up with what I feel is a strength of mine, and I didn’t miss it,” Pratto said. “Earlier in the series, I had been fouling off a lot of balls that I feel like I could have driven. I just executed well.”
Pratto’s second hit, a single to right, came with a man on and one out in the seventh, the score tied. After his single, the Blue Jays went to left-handed reliever Tim Mayza out of the bullpen to face left-handed hitting Michael Massey.
With the catcher’s spot due up after Massey, Matheny allowed Massey to bat. Emmanuel Rivera was on deck, pinch-hitting for the catcher, Fermin. Massey popped up in foul territory for the second out.
With Rivera at the plate and two away, Blue Jays first baseman Guerrero and catcher Danny Jansen alertly connected to pick off Pratto as the trail runner. That out ended the inning and burned Rivera as a pinch-hitter: The Royals needed to substitute a catcher into the field.
“They executed it really well, and they caught me sleeping,” Pratto said. “That’s a big spot and it hurts. I’ll learn from it and keep going.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2022 at 1:43 PM.