No No-No But Another Win and Another Sweep Will Do

Cole Ragans flirted with a no-hitter, but he'll have to settle for a dominating six innings in another Royals win.

Cole Ragans vs. Tarik Skubal had all the looks of the sort of game you take off work to watch. And if you’re a Royals fan, I’ll bet you hoped that you did. If you didn’t, hopefully you were able to follow along via your phone or something because Ragans was special in six innings of work against the Tigers. The pitch count ran up a little bit with walks and a few more foul balls than you’d like, but he had Tigers hitters in knots all day long, relying mostly on a four-seam fastball/changeup/slider combination. Maybe you’d have hoped for more innings, but it’d be hard to ask for much more than that out of the Royals ace.

You could tell Ragans had it from the first inning. His fastball, which wasn’t coming in quite as hard, got a swing and miss for the third strike on the second batter of the game and that was just the beginning. He struck out Mark Canha on a four-seamer after that first strikeout and then got seven more strikeouts with the pitch. In total, he struck out 12 over six innings of work and even when the Tigers threatened against him, there wasn’t really a threat of them scoring. Giving up just one hit over six innings with 12 strikeouts is the sort of thing aces do and Ragans is a legitimate ace in the game.