CHICAGO -- After Kris Bubic allowed three runs on two homers and a leadoff walk through three innings on Tuesday night, the Royals’ starter walked back to the mound in the fourth, angry that he put his team in a three-run deficit and determined to not let it get any more out of hand.

“I just said, ‘Screw it,’” Bubic said following his team’s 7-1 loss to the White Sox. “I’m going to throw it as hard as I can.’”

Bubic was suddenly reaching 94-95 mph with his fastball, a pitch that’s averaged 90 mph for the lefty this year. And it threw the White Sox off balance: Bubic struck out seven of the 10 batters he faced in the final three innings and allowed just one to reach base on an infield single.

The end result in the series opener at Guaranteed Rate Field was Kansas City’s fourth consecutive loss. Relievers Kyle Zimmer and Richard Lovelady labored in a four-run seventh inning and the offense stumbled for three total hits and 14 strikeouts against Dylan Cease and the Chicago bullpen.

But Bubic learned another valuable lesson as he tossed six innings of three-run ball for his third consecutive quality start.

“At the end of the day, everything plays off your fastball,” Bubic said. “Your offspeed pitches are going to go as your fastball goes. I’ve gone through my bumps and learned that at the end of the day, that’s going to remain true, no matter how good your offspeed pitches are.”

The first takeaway of Bubic’s night was that he made the necessary adjustment to lean more on his fastball. Of his career-high-tying eight strikeouts, seven came in the fourth inning or later, all on a fastball. He found the command he had been lacking in the third, when he walked Seby Zavala to lead off the inning, allowed a two-run homer to Tim Anderson and then walked Cesar Hernandez.

Bubic knows he has higher fastball velocity in the tank, but he hasn’t been able to reach for it this year like he showed in 2020. So in the fourth inning, he got aggressive with the pitch, and by the sixth, he was throwing harder than he did in the first inning.

“It’s kind of crazy what that does,” Bubic said. “Eliminates the thinking, makes the offspeed pitches sharper. It’s encouraging, but obviously, we’d like it to happen out of the gate instead of putting us in a hole like that early.”

And that’s the second takeaway from Bubic’s night. While the 23-year-old relies heavily on his signature changeup and developing curveball, they’re only going to be effective when he uses his fastball to his advantage, too.

“It’s a conversation we’ve had before,” manager Mike Matheny said. “The importance of using his fastball to make the other pitches better. Every one of these guys, they’re going to need to have that faith and trusting their fastball. It was a great job of making the adjustment because we were about to get somebody loose for him in the third, and for him to be standing out there in the sixth, it’s a great adjustment. Don’t get me wrong there.

“It’s just from the outset, that’s something that needs to be part of their game plan every single time they take the mound.”

The curveball that Bubic threw in the second inning to get Adam Engel to ground out was the first of nine consecutive offspeed pitches he threw that inning. The eighth was a changeup in the middle of the plate to Andrew Vaughn, who rocketed it a Statcast-projected 441 feet to left-center field for a solo homer.

Bubic admitted he shook off a few pitches because he didn’t think he had a good feel for his fastball early on, but the challenge for him will be to trust it when he wants to fall back on his changeup or curveball.

“My problem wasn’t the execution of [the fastball], it was the non-use of it,” Matheny said. “The stuff he had today, he very easily could be standing out there in the seventh with zero runs on the board. Had he gone and attacked the way he did in the fourth inning. He obviously had a better feel for his fastball later, but he didn’t give it a chance to find it until there was already some damage done.”

Bubic’s mentality as he went out for the fourth inning allowed him to give the Royals their seventh quality start in the last nine games.

And that rotation has kept the club in games even as the offense works through another run of streakiness -- it’s 0-for-25 with runners in scoring position since the 10th inning on Wednesday.

“We saw two different pitchers today,” Matheny said. “When he came out for the fourth, he finally established his fastball. Finally used his fastball. When he did that, it was night and day different.”