KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kris Bubic gripped a baseball in his left hand and brought his hands together, coming set in the eighth inning on Wednesday as he let out a heavy exhale. He bent at the waist. He peered toward the plate. He faced a deep predicament.
Here was the first postseason game in Kansas City in 3,269 days — since Game 2 of the 2015 World Series, to be exact — and a full house inside Kauffman Stadium watched as Bubic, a left-handed reliever, prepared to throw a 3-1 pitch to New York Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton in Game 3 of the ALDS.
Bubic had already missed with a fastball and buried a changeup to fall behind 2-0. He had already shown Stanton two straight sliders. If he was going to lose, he would say later, he wanted to go down with his “best slider,” and his best slider usually ended up down, somewhere below the strike zone.
Once upon a time, Bubic had been part of a 2018 draft class that was supposed to carry the Kansas City Royals back to prominence. That year the club took four college pitchers in the top 40 picks, a touted group that included Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar from Florida, Daniel Lynch IV from Virginia, and finally Bubic from Stanford. But for a while, the plan did not materialize. Singer made the majors but struggled. Kowar was traded. Lynch struggled to stay in the majors, while Bubic found his footing in 2023 and then blew out his elbow.
But here was Bubic, back from Tommy John surgery, a vital cog in the Royals’ rebuilt relief corps, pitching again in a high-leverage spot, taking the baton from Singer, who had ended the seventh inning by striking out New York’s Aaron Judge. If not exactly to plan, it was what Kansas City’s front office had once envisioned: A line of homegrown arms on the mound in October, making pitches in front of a packed house.
Bubic kicked his right leg in the air and spun another slider. It did end up down. But perhaps not down enough. Stanton recognized the pitch, dropped his barrel on the baseball and whacked it 417 feet, onto a set of stairs on a concourse in deep left field. The solo homer wound up as the difference in a 3-2 defeat, souring the return of postseason baseball to Kansas City and leaving the Royals trailing 2-1 in this best-of-five series.
It also left Bubic lamenting how he managed to put himself in such a situation in the first place.
“It was more so the count than the pitch,” he said. “I thought the pitch was pretty good. But to fall behind in the count there to a guy swinging the bat pretty well, obviously, this game and this series … can’t happen.”
Bubic noted that he had fallen behind Stanton in a similar situation in Game 2, hurling a 2-0 fastball that Stanton ripped into the hole on the left side. The ball had stayed on the ground, though, producing a spectacular 6-4-3 double play that ended the inning and helped the Royals take a 4-2 victory. The moment would be best recognized now for causing TBS broadcaster Bob Costas to say, “It’s not Giancarlo’s fault.”
At least on Wednesday, the Royals’ loss was Stanton’s fault.
“3-1 (pitch) to a guy swinging the bat well,” Bubic said. “Just … get ahead in the count.”
Bubic stood and spoke in a quiet home clubhouse. It was a stark contrast from the electric scene inside Kauffman Stadium three hours earlier. A sell-out crowd of 40,312 had shown up early — Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes included — hoping to tap into the magic of the club’s charmed World Series runs in 2014 and 2015. The loss meant the 2024 Royals will have to do something those clubs were famous for: Come from behind.
The mission is simple: The Royals must win on Thursday night at Kauffman Stadium to keep their season alive. They will send veteran Michael Wacha to the mound. But as manager Matt Quatraro said late Wednesday: “All hands on deck.”
“You have to put everything out there to try to stave off elimination,” Quatraro said. “But we have Wacha going, we have a ton of confidence in him, so we’re going to approach it like a regular game but understand what the gravity of the situation is.”
If the Royals can win on Thursday, they will push the series back to New York for a Game 5 at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. But that will come later. First, they have to fix a series of problems. Shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. finally collected his first hit of the series, a grounder through the left side, but he remains 1-for-13 in three games with no runs scored. First baseman Vinnie Pasquantino is back in the lineup after missing a month with a broken thumb. But he’s 0-for-12 in the series with one walk.
Pasquantino’s best opportunity for a hit came in the eighth inning on Wednesday, when he sent a jam-shot into shallow center field with one out and Witt on first base. But Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe made a diving catch, ruining what would have been a promising rally and keeping the Kansas City offense at bay.
“Game of inches,” Witt said.
In the end, the Royals were limited to just two runs during a two-out rally in the fifth inning. The answer, Witt said after the loss, was in controlling the things the team could control.
“Just taking things one step at a time and not really trying to get hits,” he said. “Can’t really control that. Just trying to see good pitches and be able to kind of put a good swing on it.”
He meant focusing on process over results, though the Royals, of course, would be wise to try to collect some hits, too.
“I believe in everyone in this clubhouse,” Witt said. “Everyone does. And so that’s all we got to do.”
For the Royals, most everything about the process felt right on Wednesday night. Postseason baseball was back. The offense fought back from a 2-0 deficit. Singer, a former first-round pick, fanned Judge in the seventh in a rare relief role. Then Bubic took the ball, and even Lynch was warming up in the bullpen.
Everything, except a few pitches to Stanton in the eighth.
“It was kind of the theme of the whole inning,” Bubic said. “Just falling behind in counts.”
As a result, the Royals only have one theme left: Win.
“(We) can’t worry about what happened now in the past,” Witt said. “We’re going to go in tomorrow. It’s a gift. That’s why they call it the present.”
(Top photo of Kris Bubic: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
