<\/p>\n
Royals left-hander Cole Ragans<\/a><\/strong> underwent surgery on the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow, reports Anne Rogers of MLB.com<\/a>. It was reported last week that Ragans would be undergoing elbow surgery, but the details of the procedure weren\u2019t clear. The Royals now expect Ragans to miss 10 to 12 months, per Jaylon T. Thompson of The Kansas City Star<\/a>. That suggests Ragans may have undergone the internal brace alternative to full Tommy John surgery, as the latter would require a longer timeline of 14 months or more. Ragans is already on the 60-day injured list and will stay there for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s not quite a worst-case scenario for Ragans and the Royals, it\u2019s pretty close. The lefty hit the 15-day IL in May due to an elbow impingement. He started a rehab assignment a few weeks later but that was paused due to stiffness in that elbow. Subsequent testing led the Royals to determine last week that surgery would be necessary. Now that the exact details of the procedure are known, the Royals will have to proceed without Ragans for the rest of this year and perhaps a decent chunk of next year as well.<\/p>\n For Ragans, it is going to continue an injury-marred stretch of his career. Not so long ago, he looked to be blossoming into an ace. Acquired from the Rangers in the summer of 2023 for Aroldis Chapman<\/a><\/strong>, he posted a 2.64 earned run average down the stretch that year. He mostly kept that going over a full season in 2024, putting up a 3.14 ERA, 29.3% strikeout rate and 8.8% walk rate over 32 starts. He finished fourth in American League Cy Young voting.<\/p>\n But last year, a left groin strain and a rotator cuff strain limited him to 13 starts with a 4.67 ERA. This year, he put up a 4.84 ERA in eight starts before hitting the IL. Now he\u2019s going to miss the rest of this season and won\u2019t be able to pitch a full season in 2027 either.<\/p>\n Contractually, it won\u2019t impact Ragans in the short term. Going into 2025, when Ragans was coming off his best season, the Royals signed him to a three-year, $13.25MM deal for the 2025 to 2027 seasons. That deal covered one pre-arbitration season and two of Ragans\u2019 three arb years. It gave him a slight bump in pay one year ahead of schedule, while providing the Royals some cost certainty over two of his arb years. He will still be arbitration eligible for the 2028 season. His earning power in that final arb year will depend on when he comes back next year and how effective he is at that time.<\/p>\n For the Royals, it\u2019s the latest bit of bad news in what is turning out to be an awful season. The club is 35-52, the worst record in the American League. The Rockies are the only club in the majors below them. Injuries have played a big role in that. In addition to Ragans, Kris Bubic<\/a><\/strong>, Carlos Est\u00e9vez<\/a><\/strong>, Vinnie Pasquantino<\/a><\/strong>, Maikel Garcia<\/a><\/strong>, Jonathan India<\/a><\/strong> and others are on the injured list at the moment. Depth starters like Ryan Bergert<\/a><\/strong> and Ben Kudrna<\/a><\/strong> also required season-ending elbow surgeries.<\/p>\n The club is now destined to go into the deadline as sellers. Hopefully, they can at least recoup some young talent to help them in future seasons, though they may not have much to sell. Bubic, Est\u00e9vez and India are impending free agents and could have been some of the club\u2019s best trade pieces but their injuries have sapped most or all of their value. Other impending free agents have also performed poorly. Trading a controllable pitcher like Seth Lugo<\/a><\/strong> or Michael Wacha<\/a><\/strong> could provide some value but would hurt the club\u2019s 2027 rotation.<\/p>\n As of now, Wacha, Lugo and Noah Cameron<\/a><\/strong> could have three spots in next year\u2019s rotation. With this surgery for Ragans, he could be a midseason addition but won\u2019t be ready by Opening Day. The same is likely true for Bergert and Kudrna. As mentioned, Bubic is bound for free agency. Guys like Stephen Kolek<\/a><\/strong>, Luinder Avila<\/a><\/strong>, Mitch Spence<\/a><\/strong> and others could try to step up and claim jobs in the interim, but the Royals may have to look for more rotation help at this year\u2019s deadline or in the offseason.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Jay Biggerstaff, Imagn Images<\/em><\/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.mlbtraderumors.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Royals left-hander Cole Ragans underwent surgery on the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow, reports Anne Rogers of MLB.com. It was reported last week that Ragans would be undergoing elbow surgery, but the details of the procedure weren\u2019t clear. The Royals now expect Ragans to miss 10 to 12 months, per Jaylon T. Thompson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2486049,"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":[311239],"class_list":["post-2486048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-cole-ragans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Cole-Ragans-Undergoes-UCL-Sugery.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486048","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=2486048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2486050,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486048\/revisions\/2486050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2486049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2486048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2486048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2486048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}