KANSAS CITY -- The Royals saw another starter sidelined Monday when Kris Bubic was placed on the 15-day injured list with left elbow soreness ahead of their series opener against the Red Sox at Kauffman Stadium.
The move is retroactive to last Friday. In a corresponding move, the Royals recalled reliever Eli Morgan from Triple-A Omaha. Bubic was supposed to start Tuesday against the Red Sox; now it’ll be a bullpen game based on who’s available following Monday’s game.
If Bubic’s recovery goes the way he and the Royals expect it to, though, it will be a short stint on the IL before he slots back into the rotation.
“Very mild in nature,” Bubic said. “It’s not something I want to push, given my history and given the timing of the year. So for me, this is good news in a sense. I’ll talk to [Dr. Vincent Key] when he’s here later, but I expect this to be pretty minimal IL, just a few weeks, and we should be back. That’s the expectation in my head.”
Bubic felt more soreness than he typically feels after his start last week in Chicago, when he allowed five runs in four innings. Looking back at that start, his mechanics were a little out of whack, leading to three walks, but no other red flags popped up, like a significant velocity drop. Bubic felt the soreness more the day after the start on Friday when he played catch and through the weekend. He described it as more in the “forearm flexor” region rather than elbow and said the severity wasn’t too concerning, but given his injury history and it still being early in the season, he wasn’t comfortable with pushing through it.
After Tommy John surgery in 2023 and a left rotator cuff strain that sidelined him in the second half of ‘25, Bubic has been through his fair share of injuries. In that sense, it’s frustrating for him to be on the IL again in ‘26, but on the other hand, catching this injury early and not pushing through it will hopefully mean a shorter absence.
“This is much different,” Bubic said. “With the past two injuries, the Tommy John and even the shoulder last year, maybe I just have a high tolerance for pain, but I tend to push through some things to the brink. Essentially that’s what happened with both of those injuries. They were more long-term absences, and I don’t necessarily want to do that for a third time.”
Bubic marks the second starter the Royals currently have on the IL, joining Cole Ragans, who is dealing with left elbow impingement -- or, more specifically, valgus extension overload. He threw a 30-pitch bullpen session on Sunday, and, if he continues to feel good Monday and Tuesday, he’ll throw another session on Wednesday.
Stephen Kolek has stepped into Ragans’ spot in the rotation, and the Royals feel like they have enough multi-inning relievers in their ‘pen -- from Luinder Avila to Bailey Falter to Morgan -- that they can cover Tuesday’s start for Bubic.
“We’ll certainly need somebody to step up tomorrow,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “It’ll be a bullpen day, and we’ll have multiple guys work in spots they haven’t worked in in the immediate past. We never want our guys to get hurt, but we talked about this all spring, and we talk about it all season. You need depth, you need quality depth, and you need guys that are versatile. We think we have that.”