After losing three straight series (Boston, Houston, and St. Louis), the Royals got back on the winning track in the Bay Area.
On Wednesday afternoon, Kansas City beat Giants ace Logan Webb 8-4, which helped the Royals earn their first series win since the White Sox series at Kauffman Stadium in early May.
With the win, the Royals are now 28-23, tied for 2nd in the AL Central with the Minnesota Twins. They are still 5.5 games behind the division-leading Detroit Tigers (33-17). However, they are 0.5 games ahead of the Cleveland Guardians (26-22), who are 3-7 in their last 10 games.
The Royals will have a crucial weekend series in Minneapolis as they take on a scorching-hot Twins team. Minnesota is 8-2 in their last 10 games and fresh off a 13-game win streak that catapulted them up the Central standings.
Thankfully, the Royals have some positive momentum going into the off day on Thursday after the series win against the Giants, unlike the Twins, who lost on Wednesday to the Guardians 5-1.
I will talk about the Twins series on Thursday or Friday at some point. For now, I wanted to review the Crown Talk Podcast’s Royals’ Three-Star award winners from this series against the Giants, which includes two hitters and one starting pitcher.
1st Star: Kris Bubic (7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 5 K)
It was an eventful homecoming for Bubic, who grew up in the South Bay area. He earned the win and shut down the Giants’ offense, as evidenced by only allowing two hits and no runs in seven innings. He took a no-hitter into the sixth, but lost it due to a controversial “hit” allowed to Wilmer Flores.
(Twitter account MLB Scoring Changes justified that it was a hit, explaining that “slipping” didn’t constitute an error according to the official rule book.)
The Giants were able to draw three walks against the Stanford graduate. However, although Bubic had only five strikeouts (low for his standards), he generated plenty of whiffs. He also kept the Giants at bay regarding hard and productive contact, as seen in his Statcast metrics from his Monday start.
Bubic generated a 105 TJ Stuff+ overall, with his four-seamer (106 TJ Stuff+) and changeup (109 TJ Stuff+) being his most dominant offerings on a stuff end. Overall, he generated a zone rate of 53.8%, a whiff rate of 34.9%, and an xwOBACON of 0.272. His changeup was his best offering on a whiff end (54.5%), while his sweeper was probably his most successful pitch overall on Monday, as demonstrated by the breaking offering’s 55% zone rate, 44.4% chase rate, 57.1% whiff rate, and 0.080 xwOBACON.
The “Croatian Sensation” threw an absolute masterpiece against his hometown team in a stadium where he saw plenty of games growing up. It was fun to watch him keep Giants hitters off-balance all night, as seen in the highlight compilation below.
For the season, Bubic is putting up Cy Young-caliber numbers.
In 10 starts and 61.1 IP, Bubic is putting up a 1.47 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, 2.71 FIP, and 17.6% K-BB%. According to Fangraphs, he has a 1.8 fWAR already, which is tied for the sixth-best mark in baseball along with Zack Wheeler and Paul Skenes.
The 27-year-old lefty’s Statcast and TJ Stuff+ metrics have been impressive this season. That should give Royals fans hope that this hot start from Bubic isn’t a fluke.
As Royals fans can see, Bubic has impressive marks in zone rate (53.9%), chase rate (32.3%), whiff rate (30.1%), and TJ Stuff+ (104). He doesn’t have that elite fastball velocity (92.4 MPH). That said, everything else on a movement end (18.4 iVB on his four-seamer) illustrates the profile of an “ace” and Cy Young candidate.
Last season, the Royals had Seth Lugo transition from underrated reliever to Cy Young finalist.
Bubic seems to be seamlessly taking on that role this season, much to the Royals’ benefit (especially with Lugo and Cole Ragans on the IL).
Second Star: Kyle Isbel (4 H, 2 R, 2 RBI, 0 BB, 0 K)
Maikel Garcia has a great series in San Francisco, as he collected six hits in the three games against the Giants and looked comfortable in the leadoff spot in today’s four-run win. This has added to his impressive campaign in May, where he’s arguably been the Royals’ best hitter this month.
However, he was the first star in the last series, and I wanted to give credit to other Royals hitters who stood out.
Isbel is a hitter who may not get much attention due to his spot in the batting order (nine). However, he’s been having a productive start to the 2025 season.
In 125 plate appearances, Isbel has a slashline of .284/.289/.448 with a .314 wOBA and 98 wRC+. He has three home runs, 12 runs scored, 14 RBI, and a 0.7 fWAR in 44 games. Isbel also has produced another stellar defensive campaign, as demonstrated by his +4 DRS, +3 OAA, and +3 FRV.
In terms of hitting, he’s demonstrated good contact skills, though his barrel and sweet-spot percentages haven’t been anything special (thus explaining why his wOBA is much lower than his actual wOBA).
In addition to a .254 wOBA, he is also in the lower percentile in barrel rate (3.0%), sweet-spot percentage (26.3%), and hard-hit rate (34.3%). Conversely, Isbel has been arguably the Royals’ best bunter. He can execute bunts in sacrifice situations and in hitting situations. This has put pressure on opposing defenses, as was the case today (the Giants made an error on his bunt attempt).
Isbel doesn’t walk much, as his 1.6% walk rate is paltry, to put it lightly. However, he doesn’t whiff much (17.9%) and makes a lot of contact, especially on pitches in the strike zone (88.6% Z-Contact rate). That has helped him see an uptick lately in wOBA, even though the hard-hit rates haven’t been high.
Isbel is the ideal No. 9 hitter because he doesn’t strike out too much, puts the ball in play, and demonstrates solid baserunning ability (though it doesn’t translate to stolen bases). While some Royals fans may want more from him (especially in the area of walks), we shouldn’t get too greedy with him and his outlook. His skill set and metrics demonstrate a hitter who may be at his peak right now.
There’s always been a streakiness to Isbel’s hitting at the Major League level (that is obvious in his rolling chart, as he was near the bottom 1st percentile between his 60th and 80th plate appearances). Thus, fans should be happy that Isbel is on a hot streak now, which is helping the Royals on the offensive end as other hitters above him in the batting order figure out their issues.
Third Star: Salvador Perez (3 H, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 R, 2 RBI, 0 BB, 4 K)
To put it bluntly, Salvy has had a rough year. Even after today’s strong performance, he only has an average of .223 with a .604 OPS. He also has just three home runs, and in 73 at-bats in May, he has 21 strikeouts to only one walk.
Salvy has always struggled with plate discipline in his career. Unfortunately, this year has been particularly poor in that category, especially when looking at his rolling BB-K% chart.
That is not what Royals fans want to see from their cleanup hitter, let alone a multi-time All-Star like Salvy.
However, today may have been a step in the right direction.
All of Salvy’s hitting stats came from today’s win. He finally snapped out of a brutal home-run slump (his last home run before today was on April 13th). Salvy hit his third home run of the year, an opposite-field shot off Webb in the top of the fourth inning, which gave the Royals a 6-1 lead.
Hitting the ball hard is something Salvy has always done well in his career. It’s a big reason he has been so offensively productive, despite his whiff and chase issues. His hard-hit rate still is solid at 46.4%, which ranks in the 68th percentile. However, he did see a bit of a decline after a strong start in this area.
Salvy’s hard-hit rate dropped below the 50th percentile at the 110th BIP mark and stayed that way until roughly the 130th BIP mark. Conversely, after the 130th BIP mark, it spiked back up to his season average, a good sign that he’s back to hitting the ball hard again after a brief hiatus.
When looking at his Statcast metrics via his TJ Stats summary card, it seems like Salvy has long been due for some turnaround, despite the awful surface-level metrics. After all, his xwOBA is 108 points HIGHER than his actual wOBA.
The barrel rate, sweet-spot percentage, 90th EV, and max EV metrics are all excellent. His hard-hit and Z-Contact rates are good enough. And his swing-speed data isn’t all that much different from what he did a year ago, especially on a zone chart end.
His swing has been slightly faster on pitches in zones 2, 4, and 5. Conversely, he’s seen some swing slowdown in zones 7 and 8.
The differences in swing speed have been minor, even though some of the overall bat-tracking metrics aren’t great. Salvy’s 21.6% squared-up rate is 3.3% down from his squared-up rate a year ago. His 28.3% fast-swing rate is down five percent this year.
Despite those declines, it seems to be trending in the right direction recently, illustrated in his ideal attack angle (attack angles between 5-20 degrees) rate, which is 56.9%. That is 3.3% higher than last year and 1.0% higher than in 2023. Royals fans can see the nuances of Salvy’s attack angle via Savant via this link.
That improvement in ideal attack angle is an encouraging sign for Salvy and his offensive outlook for the remainder of 2025, especially if the balls start falling for hits more often (.268 BABIP, 21 points lower than his career norm).
Graphic Credit: Kevin O’Brien and Jared Perkins/Crown Talk Podcast
Ysbel is considered “harmless”, which plays to his skill set of high, but weak contact. If his contact strength/exit velocity were to improve slightly, his BA might go up .020 to .040. He would no longer be harmless.
Hitting coaches should see how to get him to hit line drives that clear the IF. Maybe move up in the box so pitches are a little higher in the zone? Might not pull so many, but sharp grounders over 2b usually go for singles.
He can be very useful.
That’s interesting. He moved up a lot in the box last year according to bat tracking data. However, he seemed to move less than an inch back and 1.1 inches off the plate. I think that has helped him with drag bunting and maybe pulling the ball more. His fast swing rate and bat speed is a little slower than a year ago, but it hasn’t affected him too much.
But, I think what you mentioned are interesting adjustment to think about and pay attention to with Isbel, especially if he regresses a bit after this hot May (which is likely).