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The Dodgers have acquired left-handed pitcher Kris Bubic from the Kansas City Royals, per Jeff Passan at Heavy.com. The move comes just ahead of the trade deadline as the front office continues to add arms to supplement what is already shaping up to be a historically loaded pitching staff following the blockbuster Skubal acquisition.

Bubic, 28, was Kansas City’s first-round pick (40th overall) in the 2018 draft out of Stanford. He made his major league debut in 2020 and showed early promise as a back-end starter, posting a 4.32 ERA across 14 starts that shortened season. His best stretch came in 2021 when he made 28 starts for the Royals and flashed the kind of pitch mix — a solid changeup paired with a sweeping curveball — that evaluators believed could develop into a reliable mid-rotation profile. But injuries derailed that trajectory. Bubic underwent Tommy John surgery in 2023, costing him essentially the entire season and much of 2024 as he worked his way back through the Royals’ minor league system. He returned to the majors in the second half of 2024 and spent parts of the 2025 and 2026 seasons bouncing between Kansas City’s rotation and bullpen, never quite recapturing the consistency he showed before going under the knife. Still, the stuff has always been intriguing — his changeup remains a genuine swing-and-miss pitch, and lefty arms with that kind of secondary weapon don’t grow on trees.

For the Royals, this is a classic sell-low move on a player they likely didn’t see fitting into their plans going forward. For the Dodgers, it’s the kind of low-cost, high-upside acquisition that Andrew Friedman’s front office has made a living on. Bubic is controllable and comes with minor league options, which gives the club flexibility to stretch him out in Triple-A Oklahoma City or deploy him in a variety of roles at the big league level depending on need.

The bigger picture here is straightforward: even after landing Tarik Skubal, the Dodgers are not sitting still. The rotation is the headline, but pitching depth wins in October. We saw that lesson play out last postseason and the front office clearly internalized it. Bubic isn’t going to start a playoff game for this team, but he could be a useful piece in a bullpen that has dealt with some churn this season — we just saw Austin Hurt and Brusdar Graterol recalled, Gavin Klein hit the IL, and Cole Irvin DFA’d in a series of moves to shore up the relief corps. Adding a lefty with swing-and-miss stuff to that mix is smart roster construction.

I like this move. It’s quiet, it’s cheap, and it addresses a real need without giving up significant prospect capital. The Dodgers clearly aren’t done tinkering ahead of the deadline, and Bubic gives them another option to work with as the season heads into the stretch run. Not every acquisition needs to be a blockbuster to matter.

Source(s): Jeff Passan (Heavy.com) | First reported: August 3, 2026 6:25 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers