The rubber match of a three-game series against the Royals on a pleasant early-fall day, moved up an hour to better accommodate the Tigers’ next-door NFL neighbours, ended in a tight 2-1 Kansas City victory. A ninth-inning double hopped over the wall, preventing the Tigers’ tying run from scoring, and Kris Bubic held them down with his best start of the year.
Bubic, the Stanford product, has had a pretty mediocre year overall: a 5-6 record, 4.80 ERA, 5.39 FIP and 1.461 WHIP coming into today, in 18 starts and 27 appearances. The Royals think pretty highly of Bubic, though: he was a first-round pick in 2018, and he’s still barely 24 years old, so he’ll probably fully sort himself out sooner or later.