Six years ago, Kris Bubic threw in his first Kauffman Stadium home opener, a 22-year-old rookie making his MLB debut in front of no fans in the COVID-condensed season.
It looked a little different Monday — and that’s not solely because of the environment.
The other difference? Him.
OK, and those around him.
Bubic threw six innings of one-run baseball in a Royals 3-1 win Monday against the Twins. It’s not an outlier spin through the Royals’ rotation, but rather a neat fit into their early season story.
It needs to be their full-season story.
In the past three turns in the rotation, Royals starting pitchers have navigated 18 1/3 innings and allowed just a single run — the second-inning solo homer Matt Wallner blasted off Bubic on Monday. That’s it, a 0.49 earned run average in three starts.
But this isn’t just about a great three games in March. It’s how they have to be great. This is their path, or at least their best path.
The Royals have scored nine runs in four games, barely more than two per game, and yet they still would have won three of them if not for closer Carlos Estevez blowing a ninth-inning lead Saturday night in Atlanta — or, perhaps, if not for Estevez’s ankle getting in the way of a potential inning-ending ground ball.
The Royals will heat up offensively, though they’re probably unlikely to develop into a top-5 run-producing team. But they can be a top-5 run-prevention team in their rotation. That part can stick.
The opening week of an MLB season doesn’t typically provide foreshadowing for a 162-game season. We don’t need to cite the data on that. The schedule is all of 2.5% exhausted — or about the equivalent of 5 minutes to go in the second quarter of the opening week of the NFL season.
But it just so happens to illustrate how the Royals are built — and, beyond that, how good teams are built, too. There are other teams with better top-line starters. There are few, if any, who can match what the Royals will put out Nos. 3-5. And in the first week, we have the privilege of seeing aces vs. aces, No. 4s vs. 4s and 5s vs. 5s. You get the idea. The Royals’ depth becomes in-your-face obvious.
That’s where they have thrived through a quick four games, but more importantly where they have to thrive through 162. They have better depth than they’ve had in decades, good enough that some major-league ready pitchers are in Omaha.
“We know that’s how we’re built,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “We know that’s how all good teams are built. Pitching leads the way, and those guys make us feel really good.”
To his point, 13 of the 14 best rotation ERAs in baseball last season finished better than .500, and the other surrounded Paul Skenes with bargain-bin contracts. That statistic is far closer to obvious than surprising, but that’s the point.
In a place that quite obviously correlates to success, the Royals can line it up pretty good — health pending, of course, though they’re better built to absorb an injury than they were a year ago.
It stacks wins.
It prevents the long losing streaks.
That first Saturday night a couple days ago was rough. But the Royals woke up Sunday and put Seth Lugo on the mound, the right-hander who finished second in the American League Cy Young race just two years ago. And he’s their No. 3 starter to open the season.
Two days later, Bubic struggled with his fastball command to open Monday’s first couple of innings, but he had enough else in his arsenal to buy himself the necessary time to rediscover it. He was an All-Star last year before a shoulder injury ended his season early, but the fourth man up to open the year.
The Royals’ lineup ought to be better positioned than it was a year ago, even if slightly. But with the pitching staff, they should always have a good place to start.
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Sam McDowell
The Kansas City Star
Sam McDowell is a columnist for The Star who has covered Kansas City sports for more than a decade. He has won national awards for columns, features and enterprise work. The Headliner Awards named him the 2024 national sports columnist of the year.
