Kris Bubic’s First Half Has Raised Questions About His Future
This year, Kansas City Royals fans were looking forward to seeing the development of the famed 2018 MLB Draft class that saw Daniel Lynch, Brady Singer, Kris Bubic, Jackson Kowar and Jonathan Heasley all eventually get innings in 2021. That development has not really taken place in 2022 — there's some case for Heasley being a positive development — and it's concerning for the future.
This article is focusing on Bubic, though, starting with a long list of negatives. Bubic has regressed in a ton of per-nine stats except HR/9. Most notably, his K/9 is 7.48, down 0.5 from last year and his BB/9 is up to 4.99 (up 0.91 points from last year). His K:BB ratio is 1.50, which is certainly not good. This is only the tip of the iceberg for Bubic's bad year.
Let's look at the batted ball profile against Bubic. Surprisingly, it's relatively normal compared to previous years, so that isn't the issue. The issue arises with what pitches get hit a lot and get hit hard. Bubic's pitch tracking shows a lot of concern regarding his fastball. It's getting hit at a .356 clip and it is also getting crushed (.593 SLG), which is not good in the slightest. Run values also back that up.
Last year, Bubic put together a decent year mainly through his fastball being good (minus-7 run value). Fast-forward to this year, and guess what that run value is this year? Thirteen. To put it simply, Bubic's fastball is one of the worst in baseball in terms of run value and is on pace for a run value of 26. This is astonishing when factoring in that he throws his fastball 51.8% of the time. That's where a good chunk of his issues arise.
To be blunt: Bubic can't throw his fastball 50% of the time. It is not an overpowering pitch, he hasn't been able to control it this year and he either hangs it over the middle or overthrows it, leading to a lot of high and outside misses. It isn't just his fastball that has control concerns, but that has been easily the biggest issue for him this year.
Putting Bubic's control issues into perspective, guess the percentage of pitches he throws outside the zone? It's 51%, which is not ideal since he doesn't produce a lot of swings and misses — whiff% at 21.3% — which is also not good. All of this leads to the horror movie that is Kris Bubic's Baseball Savant page. All of the percentile rankings on that page are in blue, with just one in light red.
Bubic gives up a high hard-hit rate, a staggering 47.8%, has very high expected numbers and both his wOBA and xwOBA are close to the worst in the league. To sum up his percentile rankings with words is hard, but "horrendous" wouldn't be hyperbole. Let's get into the next problem for Bubic: his splits.
Against lefties, Bubic gives up a .393/.500/.696 slash, "good" for an OPS of 1.196. Against righties, that line is .263/.336/.395 (.731 OPS). That's a massive difference. That's just the lefty/righty splits, though, so let's dive into leverage splits next.
Bubic's leverage splits are chaotic, to say the least. In low leverage, he's at his worst with an opposing slash line of .325/.422/.584 and an OPS of 1.006. In medium leverage, he's only slightly better with an opposing slash of .282/.361/.423 (.784 OPS). Then the weirdness kicks in: In high leverage, Bubic shuts things down with an opposing line of .231/.267/.231 with OPS of .498. That's a very weird trend, especially considering Bubic's lack of whiff-drawing ability.
Going back to his pitches and usage of them, this is where the main issues arise for Bubic. This is also where my main issues with Bubic arise. Let's go back to run values for his changeup and curveball. Both are in the negative, with a minus-1 for the changeup and a minus-2 for the curve. That's good — the issue is that he doesn't throw them enough (combined 48.2%).
To be fair, this isn't exclusive to just Bubic, as Royals pitching relies way too much on bad fastballs. Let's keep the focus on Bubic, though. He simply cannot throw his worst pitch the most at the highest level of play and get away with it, especially if he can't control it.
Bubic is putting together a terrible season, and it could lead to him getting demoted or relegated to the bullpen where he might have more upside. This year isn't quite a make-or-break one for Bubic, who is only 24, but the season he's put together has made the Royals fanbase concerned about whether or not he is even able to be solid again. He has the potential to be good at the big-league level, as his curve and changeup are evidence of that potential to be a good contact pitcher, but he needs to make changes to his approach in order to reach his full potential.
Trey Donovan is a contributor for Inside the Royals, as well as KC Kingdom over at Fansided. Trey is currently going to Baker University, where he is majoring in Mass Media. You can follow him on Twitter @Tdonova7, where he posts some analytical stuff on the Royals.