Royals Deep Dives: Cole Ragans Ascension to Being an Ace – Farm to Fountains

Welcome back to another installment of the deep dive series. This week we cover the other ace of the Royals, and now first-time All-Star, Cole Ragans. Traded for last year in the Aroldis Chapman deal, the Royals are ecstatic that Ragans has panned out to become one of the aces in the rotation. That begs the question, what do the numbers say about his ascension to becoming an ace?

At the top of the deck, Ragans numbers are great. He has an ERA of 3.28, 1.16 WHIP, 11.00 K/9, 3.04 BB/9, and 0.66 HR/9 so far on the year. These are the numbers of a certified ace and it doesn’t really look like Ragans will slow down anytime soon. Let’s begin the dive.

On the surface the numbers are great and diving even a little the numbers tell the same tale. He is striking out 29.7% of batters, and walking only 8.2% of them as well. Another number that shows his dominance is his FIP at 2.74. Throw in his ERA- and FIP- are 78 and 67 on the year, meaning he is well above league average in both of those categories.

Diving a touch deeper now, Ragans stuff+ numbers are also elite on most of his pitches. His fastball alone has been a revelation as its stuff+ is 109, up from 71 when he was a Ranger. His slider has a stuff+ of 136, which is up 10 from last year, and his changeup has also seen an increase in stuff+ from 90 to 109. Even his knuckle curve value is at 100, but his cutter is where things get a little dicey as it sits at 90 in stuff+. Leading to one of the only negatives in his game.

Looking at Ragans run value numbers won’t show this, but his cutter has been below average. Per the run value chart, his slider is his “worst” pitch at negative-9 and his cutter sits at 0. This is due to how run value is calculated. Per Baseball Savant run value is “the run impact of an event based on the runners on base, outs, ball and strike count.” This means his slider is probably giving up some walks and home runs.

Ragans slider has been a touch unlucky as the expected numbers back up that it isn’t his worst pitch. Hitters are expected to hit .205 off it and expected to slug it at .347, so he is a bit unlucky with it. That tangent is done, back to the cutter. The reason his cutter hasn’t been good is due to multiple factors. Batters are hitting .333 off of it for one, and it doesn’t have any horizontal movement at 1.6 inches of break.

That is pretty bad, and the expected numbers show Ragans getting a touch lucky. The opponents expected batting average against Ragans cutter is .354 and is expected to get slugged to the moon at .456. It hasn’t really held Ragans back it could come back to bite him as he throws it 11% of the time. One thing he could change is to keep the cutter and ditch the slider or vice versa because both have similar movement with a slight difference in vertical movement.

Anyway, staying with run values, when I mentioned that his fastball was the key to his ascension I wasn’t kidding. When he was a rookie his fastball was bad, it had a run value of negative-13. Now, his fastball is unhittable. Ragans fastball run value this year is 14, which is top two in baseball behind Reynaldo Lopez’s fastball.

Outside of a pitch or two being subpar, the “biggest” issue for Ragans is giving up some hard contact. For this season, his hard hit% is at 38.8% which is in the 49th percentile per Baseball Savant. Too bad it is offset by all his other numbers, especially his whiff% and K% being in the 90+ percentiles. Even if we look at his splits there isn’t a bad one in sight, except a weird one.

For some reason when Ragans is in the confines of Kauffman, he struggles to get lefties out. When facing lefties at Kauffman, they are hitting .396/.431/.542, but everywhere else they aren’t hitting him. It might be a little fluky as in those matchups Ragans BABIP against is .529, which is a little high. The only other split that is concerning for Ragans is his medium leverage splits where he is league average.

The origins of Cole Ragans began in Texas where he was a top prospect who struggled in his first cup of coffee in the Majors. Now, he is probably on track to get Cy Young votes this year and for years to come. Hindsight is 20-20 and all, but the Royals might have buried the Rangers in this trade long-term. Ragans is under team control until 2029 and who knows he might have an extension coming his way sometime soon. Right now, it’s Cole’s World and we are living in it.