following a report from a few weeks<\/a>, Ragans turned down an opportunity to represent the United States in next month’s World Baseball Classic in order to get properly prepared for the impending Royals season.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Would it be an insane experience?” Ragans said to Rogers. “Abso-freaking-lutely. But just after last year, after being hurt, I think it\u2019s the best decision to stay back.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After only making 13 starts in 2025, due to first a left groin strain followed by a more lengthy IL stint due to a left rotator cuff strain, Ragans unsurprisingly said that a healthy season is at the forefront of his mind this spring.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“I want to be healthy. I want to have a good buildup. I want to be strong going into the season, and I want to be strong in October,” Ragans said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was easy to tell that even when Ragans was on the mound in the early stages of 2025 that he wasn’t himself.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In his 10 starts before hitting the shelf for the second time, despite remaining strong in the strikeout department – he held a 14.05 K\/9 rate – his ERA was sky-high at 5.18 and he paired that with a 1.29 WHIP, which isn’t the worst mark, but it isn’t nearly to the ace-worthy standard he’d performed to the year-and-a-half prior.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, in his final three starts of the year in September, it was easy to see how effective a front-line arm he can be when fully healthy. In this span, he threw to a 2.77 ERA, 0.77 WHIP and .136 WHIP, while even managing to better his already strong K-rate earlier in the season, posting a whopping 15.23 K\/9.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He by nature is a game-changer and as valuable a piece to this roster as any other top-tier name on it. Considering they only missed out on a Wild Card spot last season by a matter five games, imagine how a full healthy season of Ragans might’ve improved that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And the fact he’s already discussing October just days into camp will surely fire up the Royals faithful.<\/p>\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 kingsofkauffman.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Kansas City Royals look to get back into a place of contention again in 2026, following a disappointing 2025 season where they only just salvaged a winning record, they’ll first and foremost need their big names to perform like big names. One name in particular they’ll need to be at his best this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2279665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2279664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Royals-fans-should-be-ecstatic-with-Cole-Ragans-mindset-entering.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279664","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=2279664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2279666,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279664\/revisions\/2279666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2279665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2279664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2279664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2279664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}