Royals Put Cole in the Mets Stockings

Terribly untimely headline aside, the Royals got another great start from a trade acquisition and won their fifth in a row.

Did you all know baseball could be fun? I feel like maybe I knew at some point, but had totally forgotten through the absolutely horrific 2023 season. But last night, the Royals did something they didn’t do at all last year and something they did just twice in 2021. They won their fifth game in a row. For a team that hadn’t even won three in a row until a few days ago, to get the streak to five is pretty impressive. Does it matter? Not in terms of the final standings it doesn’t. Is it fun? You better believe it. The man most responsible for the fifth win in those five games is none other than Cole Ragans, the headliner return for Aroldis Chapman in the trade at the end of June.

Ragans pitched well in his first Royals start on July 15, giving up a run on four hits in five innings with three strikeouts and two walks. But what he did last night was on another level. It’s only fair to note that the Mets were running out a lineup that isn’t exactly scary to face, but the game still counts the same, so I’m not going to be in the business of diminishing anything Ragans did. The overall line was great:

6 IP
7 H
0 R
8 K
1 BB

But digging further into the start, I found myself so encouraged with both Ragans and the Royals pitching development team. If you’ll recall, he was touched for a lot of foul balls, particularly with two strikes. He got whiffs, but he had a tough time putting hitters away because he didn’t really have the putaway pitch. His fastball worked, his changeup got earlier count whiffs, but nothing was really getting hitters to come up empty with two strikes.

Enter the slider. It’s hard to pinpoint each one because the pitch tracking is still showing everything as a cutter, but there’s a very clear difference in the pitch compared to what he had shown earlier this year. Some of what were called cutters actually were that pitch, but overall, his velocity on the “cutter” was down nearly five miles per hour with a big bump in spin rate and a pretty big difference in vertical break. Here’s the cutter from when he was with Texas:

And here’s one last night (this was absolutely a slider):

I hope you can see more drop and general movement on the pitch from these two gifs. It’s not the easiest to pick up, but the metrics show it to be true too, so I hope you’ll trust me.

Give the player credit for making a change, first and foremost. But can you imagine this happening with the Royals last year? They acquired a player who had a pitch that wasn’t quite working. And instead of doing something asinine like making him throw it more to get comfortable with it, the development staff worked with him to change it. A cutter and a slider are similar enough in shape that it’s often something you can do pretty quickly. It doesn’t always work, so that’s why credit goes to Ragans above all, but that’s pretty cool that they have a group capable of helping a pitcher make that change.

He still threw the old cutter a few times. You can generally tell based on the velocity because it’s going to come in a little bit harder and you can also see it with the break, which on the few he threw was right at his year-to-date average. It’s hard to know if he’s trying to throw the slider and old habits die hard or if he wanted to utilize that as a fifth pitch, but either way, there’s a pretty clear difference and basically gives him five pitches.

And that slider was really good for him. As best I can tell in trying to discern between the cutter and slider, he threw 13 sliders, got three called strikes, six swings and four whiffs to go along with a lazy flyout to center. I wanted a swing and miss pitch to go with the changeup, which was also fantastic and I got it. That makes me pretty darn happy to see.

His changeup was excellent. The Mets put five in play and none were hard hit. They whiffed on five of 13 swings and there were a couple of called strikes on it too. I think a changeup has to be pure filth to work as a putaway pitch and I don’t think what Ragans has is quite that good, but it’s a really good pitch, especially when paired with a mid-90s fastball and that new slider at a similar velocity. It gives hitters a whole lot to think about.

Now let’s talk about the fastball. We were all in awe of the velocity in his last start, but it wasn’t there last night. I don’t think that’s something to be concerned about and I think it had to do with the conditions. The game started in rain drops and there were off and on sprinkles through the first two or three innings. My theory is that there was some moisture on the ball and that was suppressing velocity some. I’d feel like that was a bit of an excuse if not for Kodai Senga also being way down early in the game. Both pitchers bounced back as it dried out, so I’m willing to chalk it up to that and keep an eye on it in the future.

Even so, averaging 94.7 MPH on a fastball with the kind of spin Ragans has is going to do the job, so I’m not terribly worried if that’s where his fastball ends up settling. I just don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about either way. In the end, Ragans got two whiffs but 12 called strikes on the fastball, five whiffs on the changeup, four on the slider and two on the curve that I didn’t even mention, but it was working as well. He gave up just three hard-hit balls all night and had the Mets guessing wrong basically all night. With power stuff and pitching savvy, you can go a long way.

He’s certainly earned himself more turns in the rotation and will find himself with a huge test on Monday (if the rotation stays on turn) when he’ll get the start in Fenway Park against a Red Sox lineup that’s been clicking. I love young guys getting tested, so I’ll be excited to see what he does in that one and hope for the best.

He was able to get his first win as a Royal because the offense came out with an excellent gameplan against Senga. They left runs on the table without a doubt, but they were able to neutralize his best pitch, the forkball, early. In the very first at bat of the game, Maikel Garcia was down 0-2, but took two forkballls to get the count to 2-2 and ultimately end up reaching with a single. Bobby Witt Jr. took a forkball to left and hit it 106.1 MPH to get the first two on. And after a pretty brutal at bat from Salvador Perez, Michael Massey picked him up.

That was a lot closer to a home run than I realized from my seat. After that, I thought Edward Olivares had a great plate appearance. On an 0-1 pitch, he was fooled badly by the forkball, but then took a couple in the dirt that I think Senga might be accustomed to getting swings and misses on. He worked a walk. And Drew Waters walked on four pitches, but Matt Duffy ultimately was fooled by the forkball to leave the bases loaded. In the second, Kyle Isbel led off by shortening his swing and making contact with the forkball with two strikes. Then Garcia and Witt hit two more singles to score the third run of the game.

I wouldn’t say Senga ever really settled in, but he figured some things out and got on track, pitching into the sixth. The Royals hit into a couple of double plays, left some guys on base and ultimately drove him out after getting 11 hits off him, which was three more than he’d allowed in any other game this season. It wasn’t until the bottom of the eighth against newly acquired Phil Bickford that Waters helped to add some insurance.

Taylor Clarke got two quick outs in the ninth and then loaded the bases before getting a groundout to preserve the shutout and the win. I did find a couple of things noteworthy but didn’t mention them above. First, Angel Zerpa made his 2023 big league debut in the seventh and did pitch two scoreless innings.

He showed his typical fearlessness at going after hitters, but I think it’s worth mentioning that he did give up some loud contact. I still want to see if there’s more swing and miss with him. I haven’t seen quite enough to think he can really be a reliable bullpen arm, but it looks like he’ll be in the role of multi-inning reliever for the time being. Matt Quatraro would like to keep him as stretched out as possible so if they do transition him to the big league rotation, it won’t take a long time. I’m curious to see how he does in that role.

The other thing to mention is that Waters made just an outstanding throw to end the night for Ragans. With Mark Vientos on second, Jonathan Arauz hit the third hard-hit ball of the night, a 96.3 MPH line drive to right field. Waters took care of things, though.

He put that throw right on the money. The Royals outfield has been throwing exceptionally well lately, and while there are things more important than that, we’ve seen so often in Kansas City what a strong arm can do. It stops teams from even trying to run and both Melendez and Waters have shown off cannons lately.

And that’s the anatomy of a 4-0 win to push the Royals to the longest winning streak in all of baseball. As crazy as this would have sounded a week ago even, the Royals will take the field this afternoon behind Brady Singer for a chance to sweep their second-straight series. I don’t know what world we live in, but I’m going to enjoy it for as long as we get to live in it.