The Royals’ five-game win streak came to a screeching halt on Saturday evening, as Kansas City lost 10-1 against Boston at Kauffman (they ended up losing the series on Sunday after a 3-1 loss). It was a deflating loss for the Royals in what was a matchup between two aces: Cole Ragans and Boston’s Garrett Crochet (who pitched for the White Sox previously).
To Royals fans’ chagrin, Crochet was sensational against the Royals on Saturday.
In seven innings of work, he allowed one run on seven hits and one walk while striking out nine. He produced a strike rate of 70.8% in the Red Sox’s nine-run win and generated 18 whiffs.
Here’s how the rest of his pitch metrics looked on Saturday via TJ Stats.
Crochet’s stuff looked excellent on Saturday, much to the Kauffman faithful’s dismay.
The Red Sox lefty had four pitches with grades of 60 or higher (only his sweeper had a sub-60 grade), and he also produced a chase of 31.1% and whiff of 30.5%. The Royals made hard contact on Crochet, producing a xwOBACON of 0.468 overall. However, Kansas City could not make Crochet and the Red Sox pay, as demonstrated by generating only one run and going 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
As for the Royals, most of the significant damage came against reliever Angel Zerpa and Chris Stratton. The reliever pair allowed six runs in a combined three innings of work. However, it was a third-straight “inefficient” start for Ragans, who failed to go six innings for the fourth-straight start and sixth time this season.
In eight starts and 40.2 IP, Ragans is producing a 4.20 ERA and 1.23 WHIP, higher than his marks a season ago (3.14 ERA and 1.14 WHIP). On one end, Ragans has been striking out batters more than ever. His 38% strikeout rate is 8.7% higher than a year ago and ranks in the 98th percentile of the league. Furthermore, his walk rate is 7.6%, 1.2% lower than a year ago.
Thus, it’s not surprising that his xERA 2.31 is not only 1.90 points lower than his actual ERA but is also a career-best. His overall TJ Stats summary card from this year also looks more impressive than his ERA indicates.
Unfortunately, Ragans’ run prevention results haven’t been there, especially recently. Therefore, many Royals fans are worried that either Ragans is struggling with his groin/cramping issue or is regressing after a solid first 1.5 seasons in Kansas City.
(He has eight starts this season, but counting is hard, I guess.)
Thus, I wanted to dive into Ragans’ last two starts, the issue, and whether or not Royals fans should be worried about Ragans for the remainder of the season.
The 2025 Data for Ragans Looks Pretty Similar to 2024 (Though PLV Differs the Most)
It’s easy to think that Ragans has regressed heavily this year, especially when looking at his game logs from this season via Savant.
In Ragans’ last four starts, he’s given up 13 runs on 19 hits and nine walks (this includes one shutout outing against the White Sox on May 5th). His ERA rose from 2.28 on April 13th to 4.21 on Sunday. According to Fangraphs, Ragans has arguably been the Royals’ worst of the group, at least on an ERA basis.
While the ERA doesn’t look good (he ranks last in that category of Royals starting pitchers this year), the rest of Ragans’ metrics still look solid.
He leads all Royals starting pitchers in fWAR (1.45). That includes Kris Bubic, who has a 1.69 ERA and 2.70 FIP in 48.2 IP. When looking at Ragans’ 2024 and 2025 via TJ Stats’ Compare app, nothing particularly sticks out with Ragans’ performance this season, especially on a pitch quality basis.
At first glance, Ragans’ 2024 and 2025 metrics look identical on a Statcast and TJ Stuff+ end. His overall TJ Stuff+ is one point higher than a year ago. His zone rate is 4.5% higher, his whiff rate is 1.7% higher, and his xwOBACON is 17 points better. His chase rate is slightly down at 0.5%, but that’s not a dramatic difference to be alarmed about.
On an individual pitch basis, he’s cut out his sinker and throwing his cutter less (4.8% this year compared to 11.3% in 2024). He also throws his four-seamer 6.9% more than a year ago (48.7% usage in 2025). Despite the lower cutter and higher four-seam usage, both pitches are better than a year ago. His four-seamer has a 59 grade (1 point better than in 2024), and his cutter has a 50 grade (seven points better).
Thus, it’s not as if Ragans has seen a decline in pitch quality or is utilizing the wrong offerings, at least on a TJ Stuff basis.
On a PLV pitch quality end, he has seen some regression across the board, which could explain his inconsistency in 2025.
Conversely, on the PLV end, his pitches have declined in quality from a year ago.
His overall PLV is down from 5.24 in 2024 to 5.11 this year, a 13-point decline. Unlike TJ Stuff+, his four-seamer PLV is only 5.17, a 14-point regression from his 2024 PLV grade. He has seen an improvement in cutter PLV; its 5.23 mark is better than his 5.02 one in 2024.
Unfortunately, his overall PLA of 3.95 this season is also 1.02 points higher than a year ago. That shows that while Ragans isn’t as bad as his ERA indicates, PLV doubts Ragans’ pitch quality more than TJ Stuff+, which shows that there should be some cause for concern (though how much is to be determined, especially so early in the year).
Efficiency (And Foul Balls) Contributing to Recent Issues
In Saturday’s recap on Royals Review, Jeremy Greco said this about Ragans in his article.
Cole Ragans, in what was supposed to be a matchup between pitchers who should receive Cy Young Award votes at the end of the season, did not look the part. He struck out eight, but also allowed seven hits and four runs in only five innings to raise his season ERA to 4.20. At some point he’s going to have to get better at consistently finishing off hitters. We’ve seen him do it; we even saw him do it tonight when he fanned his final two batters in the fifth inning on seven total pitches. But the fifth inning went off the rails when he couldn’t finish off Narváez, allowing the number eight hitter to take a walk after fouling off four pitches.
I was curious about this comment and wanted to see the difference between Ragans’ start against Boston and one against Chicago, where he finished batters off better but couldn’t go beyond the fifth inning (due to pitch count).
Based on TJ Stats’ summary data, in his two most recent starts, Ragans had difficulty getting hitters to chase out of the zone (which is tied with “putting away” batters, especially in two-strike counts). His two-strike zone charts also confirmed his put-away issues. Ragans only generated one swinging strike on a pitch out of the strike zone with two strikes against the Red Sox (which was a knuckle curve).
His pitch type and description zone charts against the White Sox also demonstrated a similar-looking profile, even though he generated 10 strikeouts in that outing.
Once again, in two-strike counts, Ragans only generated one swinging strike on a pitch out of the zone, which was a knuckle curve down around the plate. White Sox hitters either laid off on pitches out of the zone or fouled off many pitches that could’ve been strike three.
In fact, in his last two starts, hitters have fouled off many pitches, as demonstrated in the Statcast zone charts from both outings.
The chart against the White Sox is a little more ideal because Ragans was locating pitches up in the zone, which isn’t bad, especially when it’s the four-seamer. However, against Boston, more of those foul balls were lower in the strike zone. Thus, it’s possible that Ragans’ outing could’ve been a lot worse if the Red Sox had squared up a bit more on those pitches they ended up fouling off.
Ragans’ inability to blow the four-seamer by Red Sox hitters led to walks twice in the game: in at-bats against Omar Narvaez and Wilyer Abreu.
Ragans located four-seamers with 96 MPH velocity up in the zone in 3-2 counts. However, he couldn’t pinpoint them high enough to get them to chase. While they didn’t square up on the pitches, it prolonged the at-bats, which led to critical walks.
Here’s a clip compilation of fouled off four-seamers by Abreu and Narvaez, respectively.
They aren’t bad pitches by any means. However, Abreu and Narvaez weren’t easily overwhelmed by the stuff or location and could keep their respective at-bats alive by fouling off those four-seamers. While he wants to throw strikes in 3-2 counts, the command and pitch quality of the four-seamer in these cases are not enough to put away quality hitters.
Furthermore, his fastball has also seen a decline in in-zone swing-and-miss percentage this season. Conversely, the changeup and slider have seen greater success, as demonstrated in the pitch arsenal trend data via Savant.
Ragans has focused more on his four-seamer to establish himself against opposing hitters this season. While that has led to some strikeout success, it has also resulted in hitters fouling balls off a lot, especially in two-strike counts.
Perhaps modifying the mix a bit would help Ragans generate more chase on secondaries and thus, help make his four-seamer more effective in generating more whiffs (and fewer foul balls) going forward.
Can Ragans Minimize the Hard Hits?
Last season, Ragans did an excellent job of preventing hard-hit balls. His hard-hit rate allowed was 35.4%, ranking him in the 77th percentile via Savant.
This season, that hard-hit rate has spiked to 40.2%, which ranks in the 55th percentile. His career hard-hit rolling chart via Savant also shows the big spike in hard-hit rate allowed compared to last season in 2023 and 2022.
At the end of last season, Ragans did an excellent job of minimizing the hard contact. His hard-hit rate remained below average from roughly his 700th batted ball to his 850th batted ball (the end of 2024). After minimizing hard contact initially this year, it’s spiked since the 900th batted-ball and has reached career-highs (which includes his limited time in Texas).
Regarding the difference between the hard-hit rate allowed this season and last, his hard-hit zone charts from 2024 and 2025 can give Royals fans an idea of why hitters are doing better against him in this area this season.
In 2024, Ragans was much better at avoiding hard contact in the upper part of the strike zone (1-3). This year, he’s getting walloped in those upper three zones. He has seen a 19%, 32%, and 31% increase in hard-hit rate in zones one through three, respectively.
Based on these increases, it makes sense why hitters are not just hitting Ragans’ stuff harder, but also finding more success. This is especially true regarding wOBA, which shows a more spiked trend chart than last season and 2023.
Ragans has the pitch quality to bring down these concerning hard-hit rates. However, if hitters are mashing him up in the zone, it likely means that his command or pitch sequencing against hitters needs some refinement.
Final Thoughts on Ragans’ Outlook
It’s easy to dismiss Ragans’ start in 2025, especially after his injury against the Rockies and his efficiency issues in his most recent outings. That said, even in his “rough” start against the Red Sox on Saturday, Ragans was still one of the leaders that day in whiffs generated.
There is still a lot to pay attention to with Ragans as he makes starts this season that could determine what kind of pitcher he will be by the season’s conclusion.
Is the cramping in the groin still affecting his performance, even if the pain isn’t bad enough to put him on the IL? Are hitters adjusting and keying in on his fastball more, especially with him throwing it a lot more than he did in 2024? Can he iron out the command a bit in future starts so he can generate more whiffs and perhaps more chase, an area that hasn’t been as effective in his last two starts?
I don’t think Ragans is “regressing” yet (or at least the data isn’t showing that). He’s still the Royals’ best starting pitcher when it comes to generating whiffs and strikeouts, and he remains the “ace” of this rotation, even if his latest stretch of starts hasn’t been his best. Bubic, Seth Lugo, and Michael Wacha are excellent starting pitchers. However, it was Ragans who shoved in the postseason last year.
Ragans deserves more time to see if his cramping issues are behind him. If they aren’t, it wouldn’t be surprising to see JJ Picollo put him on the IL sooner rather than later (to save him and his health for a postseason run in the second half).
Photo Credit: Benny Sieu-Imagn Images
[…] Cole Ragans started on Friday, and it was another “mediocre” outing for his standards. […]