How Royals’ Kris Bubic went from ‘it couldn’t really get worse’ to All-Star spot
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bubic earned AL All-Star nod after overcoming elbow surgery and prior setbacks.
- Bubic credits bullpen experience and mindset shift for 2025 rotation success.
- Royals rotation, led by Lugo and Ragans, ranks fourth in MLB ERA at 3.48.
Entering the season, Kris Bubic was the most conspicuous variable in a Royals starting rotation otherwise virtually whole from a year ago — when it was the most essential reason the club went from 106 losses to 86 wins and its first postseason appearance in nine years.
It wasn’t just that Bubic was the only one of those five starting pitchers who hadn’t been an All-Star.
It was his seemingly star-crossed history, including a whirlwind and COVID-warped call-up from A-ball to the majors in 2020, his 3-13 record with a 5.58 ERA in 2022 and the debilitating left-elbow injury that struck just as he finally seemed to be arriving in 2023.
Heck, even his breakout reboot a year ago following Tommy John surgery was in the bullpen, meaning there was no assurance of how that would translate in place of Brady Singer in the rotation.
Only a couple starts into the season, though, it was apparent Bubic was on trajectory to more than merely fit in on a staff led by 2024 American League Cy Young finalists Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans. So much so that manager Matt Quatraro suggested that “once the season gets going, I lose track of who’s one and who’s four, who’s five” in the pitching order.
As of Sunday, the notion was punctuated all the more when Bubic was named to the AL All-Star team along with KC shortstop Bobby Witt Jr.
The selection also underscored something else significant and what’s really special about this: the patience and fortitude that enabled Bubic not simply to recover from his fickle fortunes, but to harness them.
In a certain way, he’s an All-Star now not despite the injury and setbacks, but because of them — a revealing and exemplary approach that makes this triumph all the more worth celebrating.
Imagine how natural it would have been to go into an immediate funk after a season-ending injury right when you’re on the cusp of finding yourself after several volatile years.
Instead, Bubic told me in April, he hardly even was deflated.
Instead, he came out of that time with “a sense of belonging” and embraced the shutdown as “almost like a nice reset.”
As Quatraro on Monday thought about how Bubic always has “been advanced in the way he thinks about the game,” the manager also reflected on his resilience in the aftermath of that 2023 surgery.
Maybe two weeks later, Quatraro recalled, Bubic was meeting with pitching coach Brian Sweeney and other coaches to go over pitch-design ideas.
“His mind never shut off,” Quatraro said. “He was ready to go right from jump street. So he didn’t view it as he was missing time; he was working on something while he wasn’t pitching.”
Sitting in the Royals dugout at Kauffman Stadium on Monday, exactly 365 days after he made his return from the surgery, Bubic said he was “trying to take a second to breathe” and slow it all down and soak it all in since the news came out.
But the truth is this all happened because Bubic, who will turn 28 in August, found a way to manage that realm of emotions in the most pivotal and challenging of times.
“From what I was the first couple years I was here to what I am now … I don’t consider myself the same person or same pitcher as I was then,” said Bubic, who has a 2.36 ERA (seventh best in Major League Baseball) and 7-6 record in 17 starts entering his next scheduled appearance on Wednesday against visiting Pittsburgh.
“So now it’s really cool to see … the validation of a lot of the hard work we’ve put in,” he said, “a lot of the long rehab days here.”
And the value of his attitude in the post-surgery downtime he used “to kind of re-evaluate” himself and, really, every phase of his journey — including coming off what he considered “rock bottom” in 2022 and how he alchemized his bullpen role last year into who he is now.
The upside of that miserable season, in which Bubic also was less than in harmony with the previous coaching staff, was how it fed into 2023.
“I kind of knew, just to be able to stick around, I needed to change my mindset (and) change my arsenal a little bit,” he said, adding that he went into 2023 with a “nothing-to-lose mentality, because in my head it couldn’t really get worse than what it was.
“So I think that helped me unlock just a little more confidence, and I kind of had some early returns of success on that mindset.”
Especially working with Sweeney and Co. in “an environment (that) is so much more collaborative,” as Bubic told me a few weeks ago — and that is further reflected in this season’s staff ranking fourth in the majors with an ERA of 3.48.
Put it all together, and Bubic returned last year armed by a sense of himself and seizing the moment in the bullpen that in turn informed what’s come since.
Here’s how Bubic, the AL Pitcher of the Month in May, summoned that into this:
Instead of focusing on pitching six or seven innings every time out, he zooms in on more bite-size segments — as if he’s pitching just one inning — and then resets after each frame.
“Last year being in the bullpen kind of really opened my eyes to how I could navigate starting again,” he said. “Just really simplifying the game, simplifying the approach to hitters, and just, you know, simplifying my mindset of taking it one inning at a time.”
Between that and trusting the training process, he said, “I just feel a lot more freedom, mentally (and) physically.”
A long way from where he was not so long ago.
Small wonder Bubic says going to next Tuesday’s All-Star Game now is “something you can’t really put into words” and that it hasn’t “sunk in sunk in yet.”
“You never know when a situation like this could ever happen again,” he said, “if it will ever happen again.”
The fact that it’s happened now is its own never-ending story about a man Quatraro called “such an easy guy to pull for” — and an easy one to learn from.