Royals LHP Kris Bubic to undergo Tommy John surgery

Royals left-hander Kris Bubic will undergo Tommy John surgery, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com. That will put him out of action for the remainder of 2023 and a portion of the 2024 season as well. The typical recovery timeline for Tommy John surgery is roughly 14-18 months. Bubic is already on the 15-day injured list but the club will inevitably move him to the 60-day once they need a roster spot.

It’s a very unfortunate setback for Bubic, 25, who was showing some positive signs here in 2023. Coming into this year, he had a 4.89 ERA through 309 innings, a somewhat disappointing mark for a guy who was selected 40th overall in 2018 and had been a touted prospect in the years after that. But through his first three starts this year, he had a 3.94 ERA and possibly was even better than that number would indicate. He struck out 23.5% of batters faced and walked just 2.9%, big improvements over his 20% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate coming into the year. He also saw his ground ball rate jump to 52.1%, which was just 44.3% in prior seasons.

This is just three starts and small sample caveats certainly apply, but it’s also worth pointing out that Bubic had added a slider to his repertoire this year. Both Eno Sarris of The Athletic and Jake Mailhot of FanGraphs wrote pieces last week that highlighted Bubic’s improved arsenal in the early parts of the year, suggesting that his better results might have been for real and perhaps could have gotten better going forward. Though his 2023 ERA was about a full run better than his career mark, he had an even shinier 2.71 FIP and 3.45 SIERA. Again, it’s just three starts, but it was backed up by actual changes to his arsenal and might not have been just noise. Bubic and the Royals will now have to wait over a year to test those changes over a larger sample.

It’s obviously a blow for Bubic personally but also for the Royals, who have made some decisions that put their fortunes in the hands of young starters. They have used many of their early draft picks in recent years on pitchers, with not a lot of success. Between 2015 and 2018, Bubic, Brady Singer, Josh Staumont, Daniel Lynch, Jackson Kowar and Jonathan Bowlan were all selected in the first 65 picks of their respective drafts. Up until last year, none of that group had found much major league success. Singer finally bucked the trend in 2022 by posting a 3.23 ERA in 153 1/3 innings and it seemed there was a chance that Bubic was following him. But now the latter is out for the remainder of the year and the former is struggling to a 8.14 ERA through his first four starts.

This loss will only compound the various struggles that the Royals are facing right now, as they have limped out to a 4-15 start, with their .211 winning percentage below all MLB teams except for the Athletics. Without Bubic, the Royals will proceed with four regular starters in Zack Greinke, Jordan Lyles, Brad Keller and Singer. Friday night, Taylor Clarke is serving as an opener in front of Ryan Yarbrough, who figures to get the bulk of the innings. Lynch is on the IL with a shoulder strain but could factor in whenever he’s healthy.

Bubic qualified for arbitration this past offseason as a Super Two player, meaning this is his first of four arb seasons. He and the club agreed to a $2.2M salary for this year. Even though he’s going to miss the vast majority of the season, he’ll be in line for a similar salary next year, since the arb system is designed so that salaries almost never go down. He can then go through the arbitration system twice more after that before he’s slated for free agency after 2026.