{"id":2330401,"date":"2026-03-16T02:37:36","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T02:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2330401"},"modified":"2026-03-16T02:37:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T02:37:36","slug":"a-healthy-cole-ragans-will-immensely-help-the-2026-royals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-healthy-cole-ragans-will-immensely-help-the-2026-royals\/","title":{"rendered":"A Healthy Cole Ragans Will Immensely Help the 2026 Royals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 32 starts and 186.1 IP, the left-hander struck out 223 batters and posted an ERA of 3.14 and 1.14 WHIP. He also posted a 2.99 FIP and accumulated 4.9 fWAR, showing that he was not just a strikeout artist but also an incredibly valuable pitcher. As a result, Ragans finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting that season and also made the All-Star team for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n

Things regressed a little for him in 2025, though the vast majority of it was due to injury. Ragans made only 13 starts and pitched 61.2 innings due to a groin strain (initially in May) and then a rotator cuff strain, which put him on the 60-Day IL from June 11 to September 17.<\/p>\n

However, when he returned from the IL, Ragans looked like his 2024 self. In three starts and 13 IP in September, he posted a 2.77 ERA, a 0.77 WHIP, and struck out 22 batters. Overall, in 2025, the former Rangers draft pick posted a high 4.67 ERA. That said, his FIP was much better at 2.50, and he also produced a K rate of 38.1% and a 30.4% K-BB%, both better than his rates in 2024. <\/p>\n

When Ragans is healthy, the Royals are a much better team. It is likely that if he were fully healthy in 2025, they would\u2019ve been much better than their 82-win record and could have surpassed their 2024 86-win mark.<\/p>\n

Thus, what should Royals and baseball fans expect from Ragans in 2026? What does he need to improve, especially from a year ago? And what has Ragans\u2019 spring performance been like so far in Cactus League play?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at the answers to those three questions concerning the two-time Royals Opening Day starter. <\/p>\n

Ragans\u2019 Pitch Quality and Mix Make Him Elite<\/h2>\n

Ragans has always been a pitcher who heavily relies on his four-seamer for success. Last year, he threw the four-seamer 49.5% of the time. That was a 7.8% increase in usage from the previous year and a career high at the MLB level, as shown below in his pitch% chart from Baseball Savant. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n

Last year, using the four-seamer more seemed to make sense for Ragans. The pitch generated a whiff rate of 28.6%, a put-away rate of 23.1%, and had an xwOBA of .286. That was better than all his marks in those categories from the previous season. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/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.justbaseball.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 32 starts and 186.1 IP, the left-hander struck out 223 batters and posted an ERA of 3.14 and 1.14 WHIP. He also posted a 2.99 FIP and accumulated 4.9 fWAR, showing that he was not just a strikeout artist but also an incredibly valuable pitcher. As a result, Ragans finished fourth in AL Cy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2330402,"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":[],"class_list":["post-2330401","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\/03\/A-Healthy-Cole-Ragans-Will-Immensely-Help-the-2026-Royals.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330401","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=2330401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2330403,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330401\/revisions\/2330403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2330402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2330401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2330401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2330401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}