Old King Cole Dominates Again

The Royals found themselves something with Cole Ragans and he was outstanding again for them.

I promise you that I’m not only waiting for Royals wins to write. It’s just been a crazy week for me and with the late games and the crazy heat and life in general, this is just the first chance I’ve had to actually write about this team this week. My timing, though, is pretty great. After inexplicably dropping the first two against the only team with a worse record than them, the Royals sent Cole Ragans to the mound to try to get them a win leading into an off day. My friends, he was electric.

You can say what you want about the opponent, but this is a team that scored 11 runs in the first two games of the series and got two wins, so it’s kind of hard for that argument to fly. Ragans came out in the first and looked good. He threw some solid fastballs, some cutters in the 93-94 range, and some other pretty good pitches. That’s when it feels like he just said “eff it, I’m throwing the fastball.” And it’s not that he didn’t mix pitches well in his outing, but his fastball was absolutely electric yesterday in Oakland.

He had three swinging strikes on it in the first inning and then proceeded to light up the radar gun with it the rest of his outing. He ended up averaging 98 MPH with his fastball, throwing 33 of them in his outing. The A’s simply couldn’t hit it. He was in the zone with 64 percent of them. They swung 14 times and missed nine of those times. Add in five foul balls and six more called strikes and he got a whiff or a called strike on 20 of the 33 he threw. They didn’t put a single fastball in play. That’s just ridiculous.

He got seven of his 11 strikeouts with that fastball, but something I found interesting was that all of the seven strikeouts with it were in the zone. It was very much a challenge pitch.

His velocity spiked on his 77th pitch when he threw a 101 MPH ball to Shea Langeliers. He threw nine pitches 99 MPH or harder, another 11 between 98 and 99 and five more between 97 and 98. Man, that’s a far cry from the 92.1 MPH he averaged last season with a whiff rate of 11.7 percent. With Ragans, what’s so nice is it isn’t just the fastball. He also has a nasty changeup that got seven whiffs on 17 swings, a cutter that he’s still throwing harder than when the Royals acquired him, a slider that he’s added that got two whiffs on eight swings and a curve that wasn’t working quite as well for him as it has in the past at getting called strikes, but they didn’t put a single one in play. That all adds up to what makes him so tough. He’ll throw any pitch in any count in any spot.

I’m not sure what a hitter is supposed to do when you look at this pitch chart. Yes, the fastball and cutter are generally going to be up and the slider and changeup down, but that’s just such an impressive pitch mix. Here’s one of his ridiculous changeups:

And a silly swing on a slider too:

There are caveats that it was the A’s offense and all that and I get it, but this is an offense that some other pitchers on the Royals struggled with at least a little bit in the first two games. I know that probably says more about them, but Ragans put together an absolutely dominant outing and no matter who you face, it counts. I would wager that with his stuff yesterday, Ragans would have had similar numbers against just about every team.

Overall, what a win for the Royals with this Ragans deal. They identified Aroldis Chapman as a pitcher they could get back on track. They did get him back on track and were able to trade him at high value. They jumped on a deal for a pitcher who is under team control through 2028 and someone they identified as very valuable. They worked with him to even refine what he’d been doing after he worked this winter to increase velocity. He averaged 96.1 MPH with the Rangers and has averaged 96.5 MPH with the Royals.

I’m not saying the Royals have definitively figured something out with their pitching development, but their ability to identify two pitchers who they could work this magic with feels like more than they’ve done in a decade with any pitcher. Ragans now has some video game numbers with the Royals:

6 GS
34.2 IP
31 H
47 K (33.3%)
10 BB (7.1%)
2.08 ERA

It’s six starts. Guys have six-start stretches like this, so I’m not trying to get too ahead of myself here, but the 33.3 percent strikeout rate would rank only behind Spencer Strider. The 7.1 percent walk rate is roughly average. This is a guy who had a 15.5 percent strikeout rate and 9.2 percent walk rate in the big leagues last year. He was at 22.6 percent and 13.2 percent in Texas. It takes the player working with the team to help, of course, but I just can’t get over that the Royals identified what he could be and then helped turn him into that in basically two months.

Ragans wasn’t the whole game, though he could have been with how well he pitched. They did get a little offense. Dairon Blanco turned a zero on the back of his baseball card into a one with his first career home runs. It was a no-doubter too.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re selling Blanco a little short in calling him a fourth (or fifth) outfielder. I still think that’s what he is, but he’s also hitting .247/.316/.438 with 11 extra base hits in 99 plate appearances. His defense in center doesn’t rate as well as it does in the corners, but I wonder if that’s a sample size issue. I don’t know. Sometimes guys are just used correctly and that’s that, but I think Blanco’s offense has been a fair amount better than expected.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Royals game without something from Bobby Witt Jr. He had two more hits including this home run:

That didn’t even look that good off the bat. I feel like I’ve spent a fair amount of time giving you Witt’s numbers since this date or that date. His season numbers are .280/.320/.506. That’s a .350 wOBA (which is still 23 points behind his xwOBA) and a 120 wRC+. With great defense, he’s now been worth 5.1 fWAR, which is good for sixth best in baseball and second in the American League behind only Shohei Ohtani, which basically means that Witt is first in the mortals category (though Ohtani does have a torn UCL now, so he’s only a hitter again).

Those homers along with a sacrifice fly from Maikel Garcia (his 10th to lead all of baseball) and an RBI triple by Drew Waters gave the Royals the 4-0 lead that the bullpen actually protected. Taylor Clarke looked good again in his return from the IL. He’s working his way back to a tender candidate in November as someone who could actually help the bullpen.

It did get a bit dicey with Jackson Kowar struggling with control in the eighth, but Carlos Hernandez was very impressive. He came on with the bases loaded and one out in the eighth and a four-run lead, so the tying run was at the plate. He got Seth Brown on a weak popup and got Zack Gelof to ground out to end the inning. He did hit a batter in the ninth, but got three more outs to secure his third save and the Royals win. It was a good win and now they get a day off before they head to Seattle to undoubtedly play some weird games because the Royals and Mariners only play weird games.