Former Royal says team needs to cut ties with Bubba Starling
Outfielder Bubba Starling’s difficult 2018 season took another downturn last week when the Royals announced he had injured a finger after stumbling while getting out of bed.
Starling had been prepared to join Class-AAA Omaha following an oblique injury that has limited him to just 15 games in the minor leagues this season.
An injury ended Starling’s 2017 season prematurely and he had struggled at the plate for most of his minor-league career since being chosen by the Royals with the fifth overall pick in the 2011 draft.
Starling, a multisport star at Gardner Edgerton High School, received a $7.5 million bonus from the Royals.
Speaking Tuesday on KCSP (610 AM), former Royals catcher and coach Jamie Quirk said it’s time for the team to cut ties with Starling.
“I think Bubba’s got to go,” Quirk told 610’s Carrington Harrison and Brad Fanning. “They’ve got to move him, find somebody in a trade. I think the things that he’s gone through here or lack of production, guys passing him by on the totem pole. I think his own teammates, they’ve lost faith in this guy.
“I don’t think he’ll ever be able to be a Kansas City Royal. I don’t even know if he’ll ever make it to Kansas City, but there’s that sense of we don’t trust you anymore. You’re not one of us. Something’s happened to you along the way where you can’t stay healthy. Weird things happen. I think that the trust factor is gone there.”
Starling, who will turn 26 next week, had a scholarship offer to play quarterback at Nebraska, and Quirk said Starling would have been better off playing for the Cornhuskers.
“My biggest thing is I don’t know how much Bubba loves baseball,” Quirk said. “I think he loved it because he got 7 1/2 million dollars and you have to take that. I think his first love was football, I think that’s where he probably belonged. But you do not turn down 7 1/2 million. ...
“He doesn’t go to winter ball, he doesn’t got to Venezuela or Puerto Rico or Dominican and continue his craft. He comes home and does what guys do in the offseason and hunt, fish, hangout. I don’t think he loves the game of baseball. He doesn’t have a passion to really get better, because when your peers are passing you up and going to higher levels, that should bother you at some point.”
Quirk, who played 11 seasons for the Royals, said Starling was in line to make his debut in Kansas City this season before the injuries hit.
“All Bubba had to do basically was keep breathing and he was going to play center field at some point this year,” Quirk said. “Just be on the field in Omaha, they don’t care what you’re hitting, you will be here at some point, and he couldn’t even do that.”
You can hear more of what Quirk said about Starling, including his eye-hand coordination, by clicking/tapping this link.
This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 10:14 AM.