Royals Report Cards 2024: The Starting Rotation. – Farm to Fountains

With the 2024 season coming to an end at the hands of the Evil Empire, the New York Yankees, let’s review how the various position rooms did this year. We will start with the Royals’ boon on the year with the starting rotation. How these articles will go is going over the team numbers first then diving into the specific players for more in-depth analysis.

To say the Royals rotation did a complete 180 from 2023 to 2024 would be an understatement. 2023 saw the starting rotation’s ERA be 5.12 and only accumulate an fWAR of 7.3 as a whole. That rotation had three starters throw over 130 innings with a five ERA, Zach Greinke, Brady Singer, and the “Chad Innings eater” Jordan Lyles. The most valuable starter that season was Cole Ragans, who had 12 starts, as he finished the 2023 season with a fWAR of 2.4.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the rotation turned into a monster. They ended the year as the second most valuable rotation in the MLB behind the Atlanta Braves with 16.7 fWAR. Headlined by two aces, the Royals rotation got value from everyone in the rotation. Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans led the way as both were close to five fWAR seasons. As a whole, the rotation limited home runs, 0.96 HR/9, struck out a fair amount of batters, 8.65 K/9, and limited walks, 2.73 BB/9. Now that the team stats are here, let’s dive into the meat of this piece the players themselves.

Coming into the year, it was determined that Cole Ragans would be the only ace on the Royals with a solid cast behind him. Seth Lugo denounced that idea quickly into the year as in the first two months of the year he had a 1.73 ERA. This would firmly place him in the early Cy Young discussion. June would be not as good for Lugo with a 3.11 ERA, but he was putting together a career season to start.

Heading into the All-Star break he was a dark horse candidate for the Cy Young but needed to recreate his first half. After the break, however, is when he struggled the most as in July and August he had an ERA of 4.84. At times in the second half, he looked like a pitcher who has never thrown over 140 innings, which he hasn’t done until this year. He would finish the year strong helping the Royals clinch a playoff position with his 2.28 ERA in the final month of the year. So, how did he have this kind of year?

The short answer is that he threw the kitchen sink at everyone. Lugo’s repertoire is lengthy and most of the pitches were very good. On a run-value basis, Lugo had six pitches that had at least a positive three value with five of them having above a value of five. Mind you, that means over 2/3 of his pitches worked positively in preventing runs. That is insane for any pitcher, let alone one who throws nine pitches.

Another reason for his ace-like year lies in his swing/take profile. Before this season, Lugo had built a career as a control guy with an elite curveball so he lived in the shadow of the plate to get his outs. In his swing/take profile his highest run values lie in the shadow and this year alone he was the second-best pitcher in the shadow of the plate with a value of 42. This means he got batters out swinging, on weak contact, or looking on pitches on the borders of the zone. He also had the seventh-best swing/take value in the MLB with 29.

These two key statistics explain a fair amount of Lugo’s career year. With the first ace out of the way, let’s dive into the future of the Royals.

Now, the headline might be a bold prediction given the Royals only have four Cy Youngs in team history. There is also reason to believe that Cole Ragans could be the fifth one soon. In 2024, Ragans was pegged as the number two starter behind Lugo, but many had him being the more valuable pitcher. The main question heading into the year was whether or not he could handle a full season’s workload. He did that and was the most valuable pitcher on the Royals.

The 2024 season for Ragans could be defined as a couple of things and one of those things could be limiting hard contact. Per Baseball Savant, Ragans was in the 79th percentile in barrel% and the 76th percentile for hard-hit%. Throw in the fact he struck out nearly 30% of the batters he faced and generated a whiff rate of 31.8%, you see why he had the year he had.

Going along the lines of the K-rate and whiff rate, Ragans was, to put plainly, filthy with his stuff. In terms of overall movement, Ragans has one of the best fastballs in the league with his fastball not dropping as much compared to others and having 12.6 inches of arm-side run. Oh, and he also has a top-notch curveball and changeup based on movement. Putting the filthiness to numbers, Ragans run values on his pitches match that movement.

Ragans has a run value of 16 on his fastball alone, which would be the eighth-best fastball in baseball. His changeup is his second-best pitch with a value of 7, and his curveball has a value of 4. The rest of the numbers, however, are a tad weird for Ragans. He has negative run values on his slider and cutter, being at negative six and five respectively. The reason it is weird is because on his slider, no one could hit it. Opposing batters hit .210 off his slider and didn’t exactly hit them hard slugging a paltry .305. His cutter was bad though, this writer won’t question those numbers.

Minus the one bad pitch, it was a year for Ragans where he should be getting some Cy Young votes. It also showed he can handle a full season’s workload. Next up we got the “Pac-Man” himself.

AP Photo: Colin E. Braley.

On many other teams, he would be at least the number two arm in the rotation, but on the Royals, he is the third arm. Wacha has become a pinnacle of consistency since turning 30 and has improved from year to year. If we look at fWAR this season, 3.3, with the Royals would be his highest total since he was 25 with the Cardinals which was 3.1. While he had a good season it is a little difficult to point out why he succeeded, outside of the obvious point in the headline.

To get it out of the way, Michael Wacha has one of the best changeups in baseball. It is top three in run value with a value of 17. It has the third most vertical drop with 36.2 inches of drop and it was the second least hit changeup for a starter in the league being hit at only .169. Since turning 30 it seems that his changeup has become the go-to pitch as he has thrown it 32% of the time or more in that time. What about his other pitches though?

That is where this writer questions how he did so well this year. No other pitch of Wacha’s was great, he had a couple of average offerings with some below-average ones. All of which got hit by batters at a .250 average and his breaking balls got slugged over .600 by batters. The way this is going to sound is weird, but Wacha had a very average year for his standards. He stayed around his career averages for a lot of numbers, but outside of the absurd changeup there isn’t many other standout numbers.

While that is the case for Wacha, he did stand out in two categories. He landed in the 89th percentile for average exit velocity and the 92nd percentile for hard-hit%. That makes his season make a lot more sense because, at the introductory level of stats, it looks like an average middle-of-the-rotation starter. The fact that he had a top-tier pitch and limited hard contact makes this season more understandable. He also has an interesting decision to make this offseason since he has a player option for 2025.

Next up is an interesting arm in the rotation who hasn’t been a bad pitcher, but a flawed one throughout his career.

Ed Zurga, AP Photo

Ever since Brady Singer debuted in 2020 it seems that one question has followed him. Will he ever throw more than a sinker and slider? In 2024, he did throw a tertiary pitch more often and balanced his approach. He did throw his sinker and slider 80% of the time, but he mixed in a 4-seam fastball and sweeper 16% of the time.

At this point in his career, Singer probably tops out as a number three starter if he continues to build a third pitch. 2024 was a good starting point even if the 4-seam and sweeper weren’t great. If they are even slightly competitive then it gives him more ability to throw his deadliest stuff. While Singer doesn’t have the overall stuff, what he does have is the control aspect in his game.

A sub-stat of Stuff+ is Location+, it puts value on pitchers locating pitches, and Singer has a value over 100 for both his sinker and slider. That means he tends to locate those two pitches better than the league average which explains a couple of his other numbers. His CSW% (called/swinging strike rate) is always above league-average and for his swing/take profile he always has good values in the heart and shadow of the plate.

2024 proved to be a good year for Singer as it showed he is willing to learn and develop a third and even fourth offering. He put together a year that could be a jumping-off point. While a lot of the numbers don’t favor his game there is potential. The only thing that went drastically wrong with this season is he struggled in the last two months of the year, sporting an ERA over five.

Now, for the next pitcher, this year was a mixed bag, but there were sparks of potential.

Now, before fans say “Oh, but he wasn’t good this year,” and other pleasantries. Marsh wasn’t great overall but some of the numbers mixed with a little bit of the eye test tell something different. He sported an ERA of 4.53 and produced an fWAR of 1.4 which is progress for a pitcher who just eclipsed one year of service time.

Let’s start with the positives for Marsh, starting at the start of the year. Marsh came out firing on all cylinders posting an ERA of 3.28 through the first two months of the season. One reason for this start was his control as he struck out 43 batters to walking 14 while also not allowing many hits. Putting those together he had a 1.06 WHIP in that time while limiting home runs for part of that stretch. Speaking of home runs, that is still the bane of Marsh’s game as he had a HR/9 of 1.33.

The start of the year saw Marsh look in control for the most part then he fell back to Earth. He had a terrible middle of the year with a couple of months with an ERA over six before being sent down for a bit. At the end of the year, he would get back on track and post some solid numbers to end the year. Let’s discuss some positive growth for Marsh in this season.

A couple of things stand out with Marsh’s game in 2024. One, his fastball was pretty good actually. It had a run value of 3 and it only got hit at a .208 clip while not being slugged. Two, his changeup looked good compared to last year, and it had similar metrics to his fastball. Another key development for Marsh is his walk rate decreasing immensely from his 2023 season. He only walked 7.1% of batters this year compared to 11.4% last year.

This writer thinks Marsh has the overall makeup of a solid pitcher, but needs to develop in a couple more areas to get there. Right now, his game reminds this writer of a diet Michael Lorenzen with more strikeout ability. With that stuff, however, he could translate to the bullpen if needed.

Now, for the final player in this list. While his time with the Royals was short this season his impact was helpful for the playoff push.

This one will be short for obvious reasons, but Michael Lorenzen was a good pickup at the deadline for the Royals. In six games started, and seven appearances overall, he amassed an ERA of 1.57 and only had one bad start with the team. He would get hurt against the Cleveland Guardians, however, and would miss about a month before making two appearances out of the bullpen to finish the year.

That wraps up the main contributors in the starting rotation. Overall, it was one of the best years of pitching the Royals have seen in a long time, and it didn’t have to come from one pitcher. It was a team effort with two aces, two good to solid middle-of-the-rotation arms, a pitcher with some potential, and a sneaky good trade acquisition.

Feature Photo credit: (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

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