{"id":1809885,"date":"2026-07-02T11:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/?p=1809885"},"modified":"2026-07-02T11:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:03:20","slug":"como-a-lesao-no-cotovelo-de-cole-ragans-afeta-os-planos-de-longo-prazo-dos-royals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/como-a-lesao-no-cotovelo-de-cole-ragans-afeta-os-planos-de-longo-prazo-dos-royals\/","title":{"rendered":"Como a les\u00e3o no cotovelo de Cole Ragans afeta os planos de longo prazo dos Royals"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The worst five-game span baseball has seen in nearly 11 months began in Tampa Bay last week, traveled to Chicago over the weekend and, at last, extended its stay in Kansas City on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

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The Royals were outscored by 40 runs \u2014 40! \u2014 over six games alone, and they actually won one of the six. You have to trace back to early August 2025 to find a stretch that underwhelming \u2014 courtesy of the Rockies, of course.<\/p>\n

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The Royals own the worst record in the American League at the onset of July, and a team in desperate need of a jolt instead opens the month enduring precisely the opposite.<\/p>\n

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Cole Ragans, the Opening Day starter for three straight seasons, underwent elbow surgery Wednesday<\/a>. The details will be more precise later this week, but he\u2019s done for the year, and general manager J.J. Picollo said the Royals are operating with the assumption they won\u2019t have him when next season begins, either.<\/p>\n

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What now? The Royals say they will wait until the All-Star break to determine whether they plan to sell at the trade deadline, a comment from general manager J.J. Picollo that might have caught your attention, but the most pertinent conversation is not where they stand in 2026.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s where they\u2019re headed beyond.<\/p>\n

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How the third elbow surgery of Ragans\u2019 career affects next<\/i> season is not only a relevant topic of conversation but a mandatory one.<\/p>\n

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The pulse of this iteration of the Royals, even though it includes an annual MVP candidate occupying shortstop, has been built on the back of a rotation that finished second in baseball in ERA in 2024 (playoff berth) and seventh in ERA in 2025 (above .500) but now ranks 23rd this year (worst record in the American League). The rotation has not only been operating without its best talent for most of this year \u2014 it will likely need to do the same for at least part of next year.<\/p>\n

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Can they be competitive without him?<\/p>\n

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They haven\u2019t been.<\/p>\n

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\u2022 In the last three years, the Royals are 136-122 (.527) when Ragans is part of the rotation; and they are 67-85 (.441) when he\u2019s on the injured list.<\/p>\n

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\u2022 In the last four years \u2014 the Royals acquired him midway through their 2023 rebuild \u2014 they are 166-163 (.505) when Ragans is a member of the rotation and 93-150 (.383) without him.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s drastic<\/i> \u2014 because his absence might be mostly about not handing him the ball every fifth day, but it also affects the roles of several others to account for it.<\/p>\n

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The rotation is the pulse, and Ragans is the heart of it.<\/p>\n

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Or he was.<\/p>\n

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Without him, the Royals need to soon decide not only what they want to be in 2027 but how they can get there \u2014 or if it\u2019s even realistic to get there without their oft-injured ace. They are already talking about the offseason and things to prioritize, and they\u2019re still framing that as win-now mode.<\/p>\n

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Bobby Witt Jr., Jac Caglianone, Carter Jensen and Maikel Garcia is not a bad place to start. The bullpen will be the highest priority.<\/p>\n

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But the Royals are likely to enter next year without an apparent ace; and Kris Bubic is a free agent; and Ryan Bergert, a potential option as a fill-in piece in the rotation, also had Tommy John surgery this year and is expected to miss the first half of next season.<\/p>\n

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Should the Royals really be in win-now mode without Ragans? I can\u2019t answer that definitively, because I don\u2019t know how much the Royals are willing to spend next offseason to overcome what they just lost \u2014 though it\u2019s reasonable to wonder how much any team will spend with a potential lockout.<\/p>\n

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What I can say definitively is the path back to the postseason just got harder. It would require more than what they have on the roster\u2014 because of who they won\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

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That needs to be in their minds.<\/p>\n

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Now.<\/p>\n

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There will be calls for Seth Lugo and particularly Michael Wacha at this trade deadline if they\u2019re on the market \u2014 and probably calls for them even if they\u2019re not on the market. Those two are tied to the Royals through 2027. When (or if) Ragans is fully healthy again, those guys might be on the way out.<\/p>\n

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For now, they\u2019re two of the few known pieces of the 2027 rotation that probably also might also feature Noah Cameron (though his ERA is nearly 5), Stephen Kolek (4.15 ERA) and, well, who exactly?<\/p>\n

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Theoretically, That would make it harder to part with Wacha or Lugo \u2014 if<\/i> the priority is to run it back in 2027.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think this is going to be a little tricky \u2014 keeping an eye on what we have in \u201827,\u201d Picollo acknowledged of this year\u2019s trade deadline, speaking more generally. \u201cKnowing we have to improve our bullpen \u2014 there\u2019s no doubt that\u2019s going to be a major part of our offseason, to improve the \u2018pen.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen you look at the deadline now, you\u2019re also thinking about those things for \u201827. If you just punt on everything for \u201826, now you have to climb a big mountain for \u201827.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That is indeed the trick.<\/p>\n

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And it\u2019s the 2027 trickle-down effect of one left elbow surgery on July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s an immediate blow to any ill-conceived notions they can return to the race this year, even among a weak AL field. But the real repercussions extend far beyond.<\/p>\n

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Hist\u00f3rias relacionadas de Kansas City Star<\/h5>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sam McDowell<\/a><\/p>\n

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A estrela de Kansas City<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sam McDowell \u00e9 colunista do The Star e cobre esportes de Kansas City h\u00e1 mais de uma d\u00e9cada. Ele ganhou pr\u00eamios nacionais por colunas, reportagens e trabalhos empresariais. O Headliner Awards o nomeou o colunista esportivo nacional do ano em 2024.<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

‘O artigo anterior pode incluir informa\u00e7\u00f5es divulgadas por terceiros’ <\/em><\/p>\n

‘Alguns detalhes deste artigo foram extra\u00eddos da seguinte fonte www.kansascity.com’ <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 O artigo anterior foi obtido e traduzido do site internacional da celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The worst five-game span baseball has seen in nearly 11 months began in Tampa Bay last week, traveled to Chicago over the weekend and, at last, extended its stay in Kansas City on Tuesday night. [–> The Royals were outscored by 40 runs \u2014 40! \u2014 over six games alone, and they actually won one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1778142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1809885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-realeza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1809885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1809886,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809885\/revisions\/1809886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1778142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1809885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1809885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1809885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}