Kris Bubic’s Breakout Is Becoming More Legit By the Day

Kansas City Royals’ starting pitcher Kris Bubic is enjoying a breakout campaign in his return to the starting rotation this season. Coming into 2025, he was a candidate to come out with a strong performance, but he’s certainly done more than could have been expected from him.

Bubic will get plenty of Cy Young votes this season if he maintains this level of success over the remainder of the year, and if it weren’t for Tarik Skubal’s even better performance he’d likely be the frontrunner in voting for the award.

Early-Career Struggles

Bubic began his career at the MLB level in 2020, and he initially found some struggles with the jump from the minors to the big leagues.

A 4.32 and 4.43 ERA in his first two seasons showed that while Bubic wasn’t a battle-hardened MLB starter just yet, he was able to hold his own up there with the best. In 2022, he saw an ERA north of 5.50, which was by far a career-low, and he just simply wasn’t getting guys out.

Baseball Savant ranked Bubic’s 2022 campaign within the bottom 10% of the league in Chase Percentage (23.9%), Pitching Run Value (-36), Expected Batting Average (.286), and Expected ERA (5.67). Overall, this was a disastrous season for Bubic, who was losing a grip on his rotation spot with the Royals by the day.

His WHIP had ballooned to almost 1.70 due to a 10.7% walk rate and allowing 10.9 H/9.

In fact, his 4-seam fastball in 2022 was statistically the worst pitch in all of MLB according to Baseball Savant’s Run Value. Bubic used this pitch over 50% of the time, so it’s pretty plain to see that this season unraveled in so many different ways for Bubic.

In 2023, Kris Bubic was only able to appear in three starts due to needing Tommy John Surgery, and he performed quite well in those few outings, notching a 3.94 ERA and striking out 16 while only walking two across his 16.0 innings of work. The surgery would require a sizeable amount of time for Bubic to recover, but once he did, the baseball world would see how strong Kris Bubic had gotten.

Relief Dominance

Bubic returned to the Kansas City Royals’ pitching staff in July of 2024, and he did so out of their bullpen for the first time in his MLB career. He managed 30.1 innings of work over just 27 appearances last season, but still managed to do some incredible things.

Firstly, his average fastball velocity increased by over a full 1 MPH, going from 91.7 MPH in 2023 to 93 MPH in 2024. It seemed as though a bullpen workload was more adequately fitting Bubic’s pitching style and repertoire.

He threw up a 2.67 ERA and struck out a ridiculous 39 batters to just five walks over these 30.1 innings, skyrocketing his K/9 rate that season to 11.6, much higher than he had ever posted before. Bubic’s Baseball Savant page for 2024 is a thing of beauty, and although he didn’t pitch enough innings to qualify for percentile rankings, his dominance can clearly be seen:

The biggest change to Bubic’s arsenal following his move to the bullpen was a sweeper that became his secondary pitch behind his now-faster four-seam fastball. Among sweepers thrown at least 100 times in 2024, his sweeper had the 9th-most vertical break compared to similar pitches. Hitters mustered only a 79.1 MPH average exit velocity on the pitch throughout his 2024 campaign.

Bubic also threw 4.2 innings across 4 postseason outings last season while only allowing one earned run, including a 2-inning shutout appearance in the Royals’ only win in the ALDS against the New York Yankees. This season put the league on notice of Bubic’s skill, and he would use this performance as a platform to push off from in 2025.

Bubic is a Beast

Kris Bubic has undoubtedly been one of the best pitchers in the American League this season, if not all of MLB. His Royals may be four games under .500 as of June 16th, but this underperformance is not thanks to Bubic’s play at all.

He’s posted a 5-4 record through 13 starts to the tune of a 1.92 ERA and 1.07 WHIP over nearly 80 innings. He began the season as a dark horse Cy Young candidate, and now he’s built himself a legitimate case.

Bubic owns the league’s 6th-best bWAR (3.0) and 8th-best fWAR (2.5) nearly three months into the season, and he’s shown no signs of stopping his dominance. His 0.34 HR/9 is the second-lowest mark in MLB this season behind José Soriano of the Los Angeles Angels, who is also having a strong season.

His sweeper is the third-most valuable sweeper in all of baseball this season behind JP Sears of the Athletics and Clarke Schmidt of the New York Yankees. Even better, he’s got a Run Value of at least 3 on four of his five pitches: 4-Seam Fastball (4 RV), Sweeper (6 RV), Changeup (5 RV), and Slider (3 RV). These four pitches also have whiff rates over 26% in 2025.

He’s gone 7 innings five times this season and 9 of his 13 starts have been quality starts (≥6 innings, ≤3 earned runs). In May, he had the second-best ERA among qualified pitchers with a mark of 0.56, ever so slightly behind Cincinnati Reds starter Andrew Abbott (0.55 ERA).

Bubic logged 25.1 innings and struck more batters than he allowed walks and hits combined (33 K’s, 28 BB+H). If that wasn’t impressive enough, he stranded 97.7% of baserunners across the entire month. This amazing month earned him Just Baseball’s Gold Medal as Pitcher of the Month for the month of May.

Despite Bubic’s incredible success this season, American League Cy Young voting will be intensely close thanks to great performances from the Astros’ Hunter Brown, Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, and the Yankees’ Max Fried. Bubic has emerged as Kansas City’s ace this season in the face of struggles from Cole Ragans, who finished 4th in Cy Young voting last year.

As the season progresses, Bubic’s prowess is going to become more and more certain as he continues to mow down big-league bats at an alarming rate. Enduring tough times as a starter and reimagining his pitch mix in the bullpen last season, he’s put in the time to earn this opportunity and now there’s a realistic possibility he starts the All-Star Game for the AL.