Kris Bubic may actually be a Dude

In his first two starts of the season, the lefty has taken an incredible step forward. He shoved all day against the Giants.

Dude: /do͞od/ Taking care of business on the field. One of the best players on the team.
”That guy is a legit dude.” “Kris Bubic is a dude now.”

Although the Royals lost the series finale to the Giants by a score of 3-1, don’t blame Kris Bubic. He stymied San Francisco all afternoon, throwing six scoreless innings while striking out nine. The guy was nails in his second start of 2023, improving on what had been a solid first outing. He allowed just three baserunners.

It was success built off of his previous start. When Bubic made his 2023 debut last week, he was so impressive the superlatives started flying like one of his suddenly mid-90s fastballs.

What made Bubic so good on Sunday against the Giants? Why has he seemingly taken a step forward to the point where we are now asking if he’s truly become a dude? I’m glad you’re asking those questions. Let’s see if we can find some answers.

After raiding the zone a whopping 72 percent of the time in his first outing, Bubic threw a first-pitch strike 62 percent of the time on Sunday. These are the first pitches he thew:

I like that he was throwing all his pitches right out of the gate, and to hitters from both sides. (The Giants stacked their lineup with right-handed hitters on Sunday. Michael Conforto and Brandon Crawford were the only lefties to start.) I’m a little surprised at the two elevated curves, but those were just a couple of loose pitches. Facing mostly those righties, it was clear he was working inner half. It generally worked and allowed him to start the plate appearance with the advantage.

I can’t believe I’m writing this about Bubic, but watching the game, I was thinking his most impressive pitch was his four-seamer. It was alive. He held his velocity fairly well until the sixth (and final) inning when he saw about a tick fall off the pitch. The sixth was the only inning all afternoon where Bubic didn’t get a swing and miss. (More on that to come.)

As noted in the Tweet above from Brozdowski, in his first outing the Bubic four-seamer lost a little arm-side run. I think he found it on Saturday.

That pitch featured eight inches of arm-side run. And I swear it was a rising fastball even though the data says I’m being ridiculous. Anyway, once Heliot Ramos decided to swing, he was toast.

The next batter, Bryce Johnson, saw a four-seamer in almost the same location. Bubic threw it with a little more hair and it ran at 10 inches of horizontal break. The pitch exploded.

Nasty. Bubic averaged 91.9 MPH on his four-seamer last summer. That pitch was 94.3 MPH. To make it even more impossible to hit, it came on a 1-2 pitch in a plate appearance where Bubic threw two curves and two changeups prior to that fastball. You don’t think that pitch exploded? Swing at a couple of spinners coming in at 83 MPH and then have to adjust for that high heat. It can’t be done. The evidence is right there.

The Bubic changeup has, like the fastball, picked up a couple of MPH from the last couple of years. It’s still an effective pitch because it still has about 10 MPH of separation from the fastball. On Sunday, it had quite a bit of run.

Bubic really filled the zone with the change. It’s not necessarily a chase pitch—he didn’t get a single swing on a change out of the zone on Sunday—but the movement combined with the separation from the four-seamer meant it was difficult to square up. If they were even able to make contact.

The curveball that Bubic has thrown in his first two starts is a bit firmer than the one he’s offered in the past. Like his other offerings, it’s coming in faster by a couple MPH and it’s spin rate is down quite a bit from what we saw last year. The result is a pitch that doesn’t have as much drop. Maybe it’s that lack of drop that’s fooling hitters.

The curve is going to be a difficult pitch for the left-handed hitters to conquer no matter what, but you can see from the gif above that it just doesn’t have the bite it’s had in the past, but it still has enough of that downward break. Crawford will have picked up the spin and is clearly looking for it to tumble more into the zone compared to where it ultimately landed.

Indeed, Bubic is working up with the curve.

Only one curve was put in play all afternoon. Called strikes, fouls and whiffs. Amazing.

And now for the shiny new slider. This pitch was just unfair.

The gif comes with what the Pitching Ninja would call the bonus K strut.

As noted from the Tweet, it’s a baby sweeper that has plenty of horizontal break. It’s a cousin of the curve with a little more velocity and a little less drop. It’s beyond my realm of comprehension how a batter can discern between the Bubic curve and the slider as the pitches are en route to the plate. Given the results we saw on Sunday, I don’t think they can.

Bubic threw just seven sliders against the Giants, but it’s enough of a show-me pitch that it now has to be scouted and incorporated in any kind of hitter’s meeting prior to the game. Meaning, this pitch now has to be accounted for.

With Bubic’s three usual pitches all playing up, given the work and adjustments he made this offseason, combined with the addition of a fourth pitch that he can throw for strikes in the slider…yeah, he’s now a dude.

The Giants were off balance all afternoon. Bubic finished with an eye-catching 45 percent swinging strike rate. It wasn’t just one or two pitches that were working. It was everything.

That’s a ton of weak contact against Bubic. The Giants barreled just two pitches all day. The hardest hit ball—a 106 MPH groundout—was the only ball in play that topped triple digits. Bubic finished with nine strikeouts while allowing just two hits. He didn’t walk a batter.

The nine strikeouts matched a career high. The 19 swings and misses was a career high. His Game Score of 77 was one off the best Game Score of his career, which was a seven inning, six strikeout effort against Detroit back in September of 2021.

While two starts do not make a Dude, I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen. We can at least start having this conversation about Bubic. If he can keep this up, it could be a fun summer with him in the rotation.