KC Royals: How Kowar’s debut stacks up against KC’s best

Jackson Kowar’s debut for the KC Royals Monday night definitely wasn’t something to behold. Pitching against the American League West Division’s fourth-place Angels, Kowar didn’t survive the first inning. Los Angeles took full advantage of his control and command problems, his three wild pitches, and the three hits and two walks he gave up in just two-thirds of an inning. They scored four runs off the rookie, enough for an 8-3 win.

But how does the young righthander’s first regular season exposure to major league hitters compare to those of the Royals’ top all-time starters, the half-dozen hurlers—Paul Splittorff, Dennis Leonard, Mark Gubicza, Kevin Appier, Larry Gura and Bret Saberhagen—who won at least 100 games for Kansas City?

Let’s start with Saberhagen.

Teen Bret Saberhagen stifled the New York Yankees in his KC Royals debut.

At the tender age of 19 and just a season removed from his first professional campaign, an impressive 16-7 season split between High-A Fort Myers and Double-A Jacksonville, Saberhagen threw his first big league pitch in 1984 against the New York Yankees at then Royals Stadium.

Saberhagen relieved starter Paul Splittorff with no outs in the fourth and the Royals trailing 4-2 in the season’s second game. He faced just four batters and didn’t give up any runs that inning, then retired the Yanks in order in the fifth and seventh, and pitched to only four hitters in the sixth. Although he didn’t record a strikeout, he walked no one, gave up only three singles, and held New York scoreless in his 4.2 innings. Kansas City lost 4-3.

Saberhagen went on to win 110 games in his eight Kansas City seasons, good for sixth on the club’s all-time list, and was on the mound for the final out of the Royals’ 1985 World Series championship. He won two Cy Young awards with the club, later pitched for the Mets, Rockies, and Red Sox, and finished his 16-year career with 167 victories.

He didn’t start out with the KC Royals, but Larry Gura was a club star.

Larry Gura’s 111 wins are fifth-best in Kansas City franchise history, but he didn’t debut with the Royals, or even in the American League. Instead, the Cubs called on Gura to finish a lopsided 9-2 loss to Atlanta in late April 1970.

Chicago stood 13-4 when starter and future Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins took the mound against Atlanta. Jenkins didn’t make it out of the second inning—the Braves tagged him for five runs before manager Leo Durocher replaced him with future Royal Jim Colborn.

Durocher didn’t opt for Gura until Jim Cosman loaded the bases with two outs in the seventh. Unfortunately, Atlanta pitcher George Stone tagged Gura for a two-run single, and the future Royal’s career was underway. He finished the inning and pitched a scoreless eighth to end his first major league outing.

The KC Royals obtained Gura via an early season trade with the Yankees in 1976. Working primarily out of the bullpen, he went 4-0 that year with a 2.30 ERA, then saved 10 games for the Royals in 1977 before he transitioned to the rotation in 1978. He won 16 games that season, and posted 18 victories twice (1980 and 1982). His career came full circle when Kansas City released him in early 1985 and he rejoined the Cubs. It was his last big league season.

A workhorse starter for the KC Royals, Mark Gubicza had an excellent debut.

Mark Gubicza was only 21 when he made his first start for the Royals in the fourth game of the 1984 season. For a pitcher who’d never appeared in a major league game, he was superb.

Gubicza started against future Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven and drew a Cleveland club featuring Brett Butler, Tony Bernazard, Julio Franco, Pat Tabler, Mike Hargrove, Brook Jacoby, and Otis Nixon, and shut it down. He allowed a run on a fielder’s choice in the first inning, then held the Indians scoreless in the next five before giving way to Mark Huismann to start the seventh.

He struck out four, walked only one, and scattered five hits in his six innings. Unfortunately for him and the KC Royals, Blyleven and reliever George Frazier shut them out; Cleveland won 2-0.

Gubicza won for the first time four starts later when he shut Boston out 3-0. He finished his rookie season 10-14, won 14 games during the Royals’ 1985 World Series championship campaign, and posted 20 wins in 1988. Injuries struck the two-time All-Star in1989 and, although he pitched several more seasons, he never recaptured his best form.

The righthander worked over 240 innings four times, and over 175 three others, in his 13 Royal seasons. Gubicza is third on KC’s all-time list with 132 wins.

Dennis Leonard’s debut was an obscure moment in the KC Royals’ 1974 season.

Kansas City was a major disappointment in 1974. The Royals went 77-85 after posting their second-ever winning season the season before. And a six-game losing streak had knocked them 9.5 games out of first place when Paul Splittorff took the mound against Jim Kaat and the White Sox Sept. 4.

Splittorff shut the Sox out for the first four innings, but Brain Downing greeted him in the fifth with a leadoff homer and Chicago strung together four straight singles to score twice more before Nelson Briles took over for KC. Briles gave up three more runs (two were charged to Splittorff) before the inning ended and surrendered another run in the sixth. The door was open for Leonard’s major league debut.

Leonard started the seventh and pitched two scoreless frames. He retired future Hall of Famer Ron Santo, Jerry Hairston, Downing, Bucky Dent, future Royal Jorge Orta, and Dick Allen. He didn’t get a decision that day, lost four times in the season’s final month, and didn’t earn his first win until beating Boston the following May, the first of his 15 wins that year.

Leonard won 21 games for the KC Royals in 1978, 20 the season before, and 20 in 1980. But for a disastrous torn patellar tendon he suffered in 1983, which sidelined him for the rest of that season and most of the next two, Leonard would have posted far more than the 144 wins he has as a Royal and which rank second on the club’s all-time list.

He pitched an inning in each of two September games in 1985, then made a memorable return to the rotation by shutting out Toronto on just three hits April 12, 1986. He finished the season 8-13 and retired.

Like Jackson Kowar, Paul Splittorff lost his first game with the KC Royals.

Kansas City gave Paul Splittorff, a young lefty who’d won eight and lost 12 for Triple-A Omaha that season, a late-September 1970 chance. Seven games remained when he started against the White Sox that day; it was a battle of two bad teams—the Royals were 62-92, good for fourth place in the six-team AL West and, at 54-99, the White Sox were in the division cellar.

Splittorff handed the Sox a run in the first, then gave them nothing to speak of until the sixth when two doubles, a walk, and an infield error led to a pair of unearned runs and a 3-0 Chicago lead. Splittorff surrendered a solo homer in the seventh before giving way to Ken Wright to begin the eighth.

Although Splittorff gave up 10 hits in his seven innings, he struck out eight. The loss he took was his only 1970 decision, but he won his first major league game the following season with an excellent one-run, 7.2 inning performance against Washington. He won 12 in 1972, 20 in ’73, 19 in ’78, and reached double figures in victories seven other times in a 15-year KC career.

Splittorff pitched for the last time June 26, 1984, a game this writer attended and remembers like it was yesterday. He spent his entire career with the Royals and his 166 wins remain the best in franchise history.

So there it is, a comparison of Jackson Kowar’s big league debut to those of the six pitchers who’ve won at least 100 games for the KC Royals, all of whom are in the club’s Hall of Fame. Of that half-dozen, only the first games of Brett Saberhagen, Mark Gubicza and Dennis Leonard were particularly good from start to finish. From that, Kowar can take heart.