Let\u2019s start with a story about Horace Stoneham.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Stoneham owned the New York Giants starting in the mid-30s through the mid-70s. After the 1957 season, Stoneham and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O\u2019Malley moved both of their teams out of New York and into California, settling in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Before the move, though, Stoneham received an offer from the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, August Busch Jr. The offer: an ungodly amount of money in exchange for the team\u2019s star center fielder, Willie Mays.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The move tempted Stoneham. After all, the amount of money offered would enable Stoneham to keep the Giants in Manhattan for the foreseeable future. No, the team would never be as popular as the Yankees, but with the Dodgers leaving for the West Coast, the Giants would be the only National League team in town. Plus, the team had enjoyed recent success, reaching the World Series in 1951 before taking home the crown in 1954.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Still, the team\u2019s success\u2014let alone its relevance\u2014depended on Mays.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Would the Giants still be the Giants without him?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for Stoneham to answer that question.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
As Willie Mays goes, so go the Giants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
As Cole Ragans goes, so go the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This isn\u2019t to say that the Royals wouldn\u2019t be the Royals without him. No, Cole Ragans is not the face of the Royals, nor is he the team\u2019s most popular player, nor is he the team\u2019s most valuable player. I am not<\/em> comparing him to Willie Mays, the greatest player to ever grace the diamond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And yet: as Ragans goes, so goes the team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He\u2019s not untouchable. No one on the Royals is untouchable. No one in baseball<\/em>\u2014save a certain player on the Dodgers<\/a>\u2014is untouchable. If one of the other league\u2019s general managers or baseball czars or team presidents or whoever picked up the phone and called J.J. Picollo with an offer for Bobby Witt Jr. or Salvador Perez, J.J. Picollo would listen. It would take a lot to pry such a player away, not to mention, in his case, Salvy\u2019s approval, but Picollo would listen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Brian Cashman would listen on Aaron Judge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Chaim Bloom is willing to make him offers on Nolan Arenado, Brendan Donovan, and others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Arte Moreno, I imagine, couldn\u2019t care less if Mike Trout finished his career outside of Anaheim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Want Jackson Chourio? Nick Kurtz? Paul Skenes?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Matt Arnold will listen, please hold for Mr. Forst, Ben Cherington is on the line.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Need a left-handed ace? Sure, Picollo will palaver with you, but you\u2019d better have a godfather offer, a king\u2019s ransom, because a deal straight-up for a 29-year-old left fielder won\u2019t get it done. Or, at least, it shouldn\u2019t<\/em> get it done.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, I\u2019m talking about Jarren Duran<\/a>, the starting left fielder for the Boston Red Sox. Much to my chagrin, rumors continue to swirl<\/a> about a potential Duran-for-Ragans swap between the Sox and Royals. I\u2019d hoped that the incredible\u2014and confusing\u2014trade the Royals swung with the Brewers<\/a> would\u2019ve put these rumors to bed, especially when coupling said move with the signing of Lane Thomas<\/a>, but alas: it\u2019s the offseason, which feeds on one thing and one thing only: rumors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rumors, yes. Not facts. I have no idea if trade talks are truly still happening between the Royals and Red Sox that involve Ragans. An insider, I am not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The fact that others, though, continue to mention such a trade\u2014that fact worries me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Royals can trade Cole Ragans, sure. He\u2019s not untouchable. If they trade him, though, they need a substantial return, not merely a guy who struck out 109 more times than he walked in 2025, a guy whose slugging percentage dropped 50 points from 2024, whose OPS plummeted 60 points.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Ragans goes, so go the Royals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Or: if Ragans stays and pitches well or is traded and returns multiple pieces, the Royals will be in a better position than the one in which they found themselves last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If he\u2019s ineffective or is traded for just another player, well, if you enjoyed the slog that was 2025, I have some good news for you about 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A buddy of mine asked me, \u201cIs Ragans an ace? Or has he had one good year?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He is the Royals\u2019 ace and during his one good year, they reached the playoffs for the first time since 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Cole Ragans goes, so go the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s start with a story about Horace Stoneham. Stoneham owned the New York Giants starting in the mid-30s through the mid-70s. After the 1957 season, Stoneham and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O\u2019Malley moved both of their teams out of New York and into California, settling in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. Before the move, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2207114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[340874],"class_list":["post-2207113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-royals-editorials-reactions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Royals-success-relies-on-Ragans.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2207115,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207113\/revisions\/2207115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2207114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n