Bubic battles; then breaks

With all three pitches working, Kris Bubic turned in perhaps his best outing of 2022. A look at how it came together...and when it unraveled.

A quick dispatch as last night’s game was more of the same and there are just a few hours before this afternoon’s series finale…

Overall, Tuesday’s game featured a pleasing—and unexpected—outing from starter Kris Bubic.

The fastball

Let’s start with the heater. Bubic threw 55 fastballs on the night, accounting for 58 percent of his deliveries. That’s higher than usual but not necessarily notable. What was notable was the fact he touched…and let me check my notes here because this sort of blew my mind…yes, he touched 97 MPH in the second inning.

That’s such an outrageous statement, I’m obligated to provide video proof.

Officially, it was 96.6 MPH. Unofficially, it was impressive and unexpected.

Sure, it was out of the zone and Austin Slater took it for a ball, but it wasn’t necessarily designed to be a strike on an 0-2 count. More like an exploratory effort to try to get him to chase. Still…97 MPH!

The average Bubic four-seamer was clocked at 93 MPH, the hardest he’s thrown in a start this year and almost two ticks above his average velocity. What was most impressive about the lively fastball was that it wasn’t just a one-batter or one-inning wonder where Bubic went full flamethrower and then dialed it back down. He settled in and held on to that velocity.

Bubic was still hitting 94-93 MPH in his final inning of work. When you see that his average four-seamer was clocked at 91 MPH in his previous two appearances, that’s impressive.

However, velocity on the fastball isn’t everything. It’s not a swing and miss pitch for Bubic—he recorded just two on the fastball—but it’s all about how it allows his secondary pitches to play up. Speaking of which…

The changeup

Ahhh…the primary of the secondary as it was. The change was sharp on Tuesday and Bubic was throwing it in all locations to all batters. He threw it 26 percent of the time. With about 11 MPH separation from the fastball, he was able to pick up some swing and miss.

Or maybe you’d be more interested in a fun left-on-left changeup? I mean, it is quite sexy.

The Giants squared up a couple of these offerings, but they came in the fifth and sixth innings when Bubic was perhaps tiring. Or in the sixth inning…facing the lineup for the third time. Overall, Bubic got three ground balls that were turned into outs, including a double play off the bat of Darin Ruf in the fifth. Three of his six strikeouts were polished off with the change.

The curve

This was such a sharp offering from Bubic on Tuesday. Showing curve 16 percent of the time, he generally kept it low in the zone and away from the Giants’ bats.

Two curves were put into play. One was a bunt from Luis Gonzalez. The other was a squib rolled out to third for a Joc Pederson single in the fateful sixth inning.

Austin Slater saw a couple of curves leading off the game. He struck out on a curve. Still, he wasn’t ready to see this on the first pitch of his second plate appearance.

When the curve has that kind of hard bite...look out. It’s coming in, looking to be arriving at the belt. The hitter recognizes the spin and starts to drop the level of the swing. Then the ball darts even lower and down and out of the zone. An absolute unhittable pitch. Slater was toast the minute he started the swing.

That’s what the Bubic curve can do when it’s working.

The third time

Bubic hasn’t pitched deep into games this season. Hell, he hasn’t made it out of the first inning in two of his seven starts entering Tuesday’s game. In fact, the pitch he threw to open the sixth inning marked the first time he had gone more than five innings all year.

Because he’s been so limited in his starts, Bubic hasn’t matched up against a lineup for a third time through the order very often. In his career, facing a lineup for a third time, Bubic doesn’t experience the “penalty” we hear so much about.

The batting average jumps by about 30 points, but the slugging percentage doesn’t move all that much. His tOPS+ (OPS+ for the split relative to the player’s overall OPS+) shows that yeah, he’s a bit worse the third time through, but it’s really not enough to grab your attention.

Although prior to Tuesday’s game in San Francisco, Bubic had allowed five hits in nine at bats when facing a lineup for the third time. The Giants chased him with a sequence that went double, strikeout, single, single, single. The last two hits drove in the first runs of the game. It wasn’t that the Giants hitters were used to Bubic. It was more about location. Here are the balls put in play against Bubic in the sixth.

The curve out of the zone was the tapper to third off the bat of Pederson. The other three hits were down the chute, catching far too much of the center of the zone. Bubic was at the upper reaches of his pitch count at this point, and after throwing some of his hottest fastballs of the season, I’m thinking there just wasn’t much left in the tank at this point. It’s too bad. It would’ve been nice if he could have gotten through six for the first time in 2022.

A suboptimal finish shouldn’t detract from the overall effort. Especially when it’s about Bubic, who has had his share of struggles this season. I thought he looked sharper on Tuesday than his start back on June 4 when he held the Astros scoreless through five. In fact, had Mike Mathney pulled Bubic at the start of the sixth, his final line would’ve mirrored his effort against Houston earlier this month.

If there’s any second-guessing to be done about Matheny in this scenario, he should’ve been quicker on the bullpen trigger. Pull him after the leadoff double. Definitely after the first run-scoring single. That came after a taxing nine-pitch battle. The results in the sixth inning shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Still, in a season where the Royals are once again tracking for 109 losses, you have to dig a little to find some positives. I’m not ready to declare Bubic has turned a corner (how could anyone given the coaching staff on the major league club and their track record?) but it is a positive development that he’s shown flashes in his last few starts.