Kris Bubic as the stopper

Kris Bubic has announced his return to the rotation with authority. Plus, Bobby Witt Jr. is always on cycle watch and time is running out on MJ Melendez.

Is Kris Bubic the Royals’ starting pitching stopper?

The stopper in the rotation is the ace. The guy who gets the ball every fifth day and gives his team total confidence they can win that ballgame. The stopper is the man who prevents run-away, extended losing streaks that can derail a season. He’s going to get the ball. He’s going to shove. Your team is going to win.

It may be too early to annoint Bubic the stopper and he has some competition for the title with rotation-mates Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo. Make no mistake: Bubic has announced his return to the rotation with authority. On Sunday, he shut down the Baltimore Orioles, leading the Royals to a 4-1 victory and their first series win of the 2025 season.

He sure looks like he possesses ace—and stopper—material.

Twice in this early season, Bubic has taken the ball in a game immediately following a loss. Twice, he has been dominant, pitching into the sixth inning (and beyond) while striking out eight in both starts. He has allowed one run total all season. And that was on a wild pitch on Sunday.

The changeup was the star of the afternoon for Bubic. With so many right-handed bats in the Orioles lineup, the Royals’ lefty uncorked 20 changeups on the day, with 19 of them delivered to righties. The pitch features some arm-side run, but not as much as we would expect from the pitch. The way Bubic is gripping the pitch—with a spiked finger—the changeup has a bit of dip to it. It actually has a lot of dip.

According to Statcast, the Bubic change has 3.2 more inches of vertical drop than the average changeup. It sure looks like it has plenty of drop.

If the Bubic change is going to dive out of the zone and the hitter makes an attempt…forget about it. That guy is toast. Poor Gary Sanchéz.

An added benefit for Bubic on Sunday was the way he commanded that pitch. He was consistently locating his change away from the Orioles right-handed bats.

The result was 11 swings, eight whiffs and two called strikes. Just two balls were put in play against the pitch.

If you know me, you know I jumped out of my chair when Bobby Witt Jr. tripled in his first at bat of the afternoon. The Cycle Watch was officially on.

The Royals currently have the longest cycle drought in baseball. George Brett was the last Royal to accomplish the feat, doing it in Toronto on July 25, 1990. Since then, there have been 127 cycles hit in the majors, and, yep…none by the Royals. In fact, the Royals are the only team not to have had a player hit for the cycle in the 21st century.

The team with the second-longest cycle drought? The New York Yankees. Melky Cabrera cycled for the Bronx Bombers in August of 2009.

Frankly, it’s kind of surprising that Witt hasn’t cycled in his young career. I mean, with that blend of speed and power, it’s going to happen. And it’s probably going to happen soon. I need it to happen.

For the record, Witt finished with three hits on Sunday, with a double and a single in addition to that triple. He was just a home run short of the cycle.

But at least he’s now tied for the team lead in triples with Vinnie Pasquantino.

Pasquantino also hit his first sacrifice fly of 2025 on Sunday, bringing home Witt following his triple. I thought you should know.

The outfield alignment on Sunday was Mark Canha in left, Maikel Garcia in center and Hunter Renfroe in right against Baltimore’s left-handed starter Cade Povich. They went a combined 5-11, with all five hits going for singles. While they weren’t in the outfield for the entire game, I’ll go on record and say that with this roster, that’s a fine afternoon of production from the trio.

With the way Garcia is hitting the baseball at the moment, Matt Quatraro has to continue to find ways to get him in the lineup. So far, so good. The same can be said for Jonathan India, who seems to be looking better with each game he’s playing at either third base or left field. Canha needs to start against left-handers.

The Royals will need to make a move soon on MJ Melendez. I was hopeful that the reworked batting stance would yield results, but that’s just not happening. He has reached base four times in 24 plate appearances while striking out eight times. That’s a line of .100/.250/.100 with a 14 wRC+.

It’s obviously very early days, so take all Statcast metrics with the appropriate grain of salt, but his average exit velocity is 85 mph, about seven mph lower than his career average. He has yet to barrel a pitch. And he’s really, I mean really, getting under pitches with more pop-ups than your favorite food truck. Sometimes, you look at a .167 BABIP (and again, I have to stress that it’s far too early to be looking at these numbers as gospel), and you can see that it’s not bad luck that it’s so low. It was arrived at for a reason.

Melendez didn’t need to get off to a hot start. He just needed to be decent. That’s not happening. The Royals have some outfield depth in Omaha that they have to be considering. This isn’t a “wait until Memorial Day” kind of situation. This is an “act now to plug a fairly obvious hole” move.

I love how the bullpen finished up the game. After Bubic went 6.2 innings and 99 pitches, Matt Quatraro went to Hunter Harvey to face Ramón Urías. Harvey chucked six consecutive fastballs and struck him out on a foul tip at 96 mph.

After that, it was Lucas Erceg for the eighth and Carlos Estévez for the ninth. Both were perfect, going three up and three down. Ballgame.

You can’t draw it up any better than that.

After watching this series (and the games that proceeded), it’s obvious who is in the circle of bullpen trust, along with the pecking order of relievers in late and close ballgames.

Central Issues

Astros 9, Twins 7 - 10 innings

This was fun. Minnesota led 7-1 after four innings. I mean, come on…that’s all I need to tell you, right? Five straight Astros reached in a three-run fifth. They clawed back another in the sixth. The Twins finished their collapse in the ninth when Griffin Jax gave up a leadoff single to Isaac Paredes and the game-tying home run to the next batter, Yordan Alvarez. After that, it was kind of academic. Houston plated their Manfred Man, plus one. Minnesota went weakly in their half of the 10th. As I said…fun.

White Sox 3, Tigers 4

Detroit was looking to sweep Chicago and left it late, trailing 3-1 going into the ninth. Javy Báez got the rally going with a leadoff single. A fielder’s choice and back-to-back walks followed to load the bases. Jordan Leasure came in for the Sox and he promptly walked Andy Ibáñez to plate a run. That set the stage for a resurgent Spencer Torkelson, who doubled in the tying and winning runs to give the Tigers their sweep.

Guardians 2, Angels 6

Logan O’Hoppe, Jorge Soler and Kyren Paris all clubbed solo home runs for the Angels as they took the series from the Guardians. It was a disaster West Coast road trip for Cleveland, who went 1-5 against the Padres and these Angels.

It took nine games, but order is beginning to appear in the Central.

Up Next

Those lovable Minnesota Twins come to town for a four-game set. The starting pitching matchups are still aligned, so we will get a number one starter versus number one starter on Tuesday.

Mon, April 7 - RHP S. Woods Richardson (0-0, 4.50) vs. RHP Michael Lorenzen (0-1, 5.06) at 6:40 p.m.
Tue, April 8 - RHP Pablo López (1-1, 2.25) vs. LHP Cole Ragans (0-0, 3.60) at 6:40 p.m.
Wed, April 9 - RHP Seth Lugo (1-0, 3.27) RHP Bailey Ober (0-1, 12.15) at 6:40 p.m.
Thu, April 10 - RHP Joe Ryan (0-1, 4.50) vs. vs. RHP Michael Wacha (0-2, 4.66) at 1:10 p.m.