Why Royals’ Ragans will be especially tough for Yankees

For MLB hitters, there is never a good time to face Cole Ragans.

Since coming to the Kansas City Royals midway through the 2023 season, Ragans has given his club 268 innings of 3.00 ERA ball and ranks third among all qualified starters in strikeout rate (28.8 percent) and fWAR (7.3).

A Ragans start usually means a long day at the office for any opponent, but the New York Yankees have caught the dominant left-hander at a particularly inopportune moment in Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday night. In his last five starts, Ragans has an ERA of 0.87 — and his first career post-season appearance was outstanding.

It’s the type of stretch that ace-level pitchers sometimes put together, but there are a couple of things happening under the hood that have made Ragans even more difficult to hit lately that the Yankees will have to grapple with.

One of them is a pitch-mix tweak that emphasizes his fastball and curve, which were his two best pitches during the regular season by Statcast’s Run Value metric (+1.2 RV/100  and +1.1 RV/100 respectively). From the beginning of the season to the end of August, those two offerings accounted for just over half (51.3 per cent) of his pitches. Since the start of September, that number is nearly 60 per cent (59.3).

That difference isn’t radical, with it comes the way Ragans has unlocked his curveball as a two-strike weapon. The lefty’s hook was a tertiary option all year, but it’s playing a more prominent role as a strikeout pitch in recent outings. 

In Ragans’ last five starts, he has as many Ks with the curve (11) as he managed in his first 28 outings of 2024. To put that in perspective, during his hot streak the pitch has accounted for 32.4 per cent of his strikeouts while that number sat at 5.6 per cent from April through August.

When a pitcher is already a successful strikeout artist, it’s unusual to see them pluck a new two-strike, go-to out of their repertoire, but Ragans had the luxury of finding an offering that had above-average induced movement verticals (+4.7 inches) and horizontally (+2.8) that looks like a pain to hit…

… and works off his fastball in an intuitive way:

This pitch is not a silver bullet for Ragans, but it’s something for the Yankees to be aware of in big spots. 

For instance, the last time they faced him on Sept. 11, the southpaw pulled the string on Aaron Judge in a 3-2 count for a strikeout:

Judge was right to be surprised because he’d only thrown the curve pitch in that count in two of his previous 29 starts. He shouldn’t be shocked if Ragans gives him similar treatment if they reach a 3-2 count on Monday.

Beyond adjusting to a slightly altered approach, the Yankees will also have to deal with a much more general problem: squaring Ragans up.

Ragans has posted above-average contact management numbers all season long, but those metrics took a turn for the elite in the final month of the season:

This success continued in his playoff debut on Oct. 1 as he held a Baltimore Orioles team that ranked third in the majors in average exit velocity (89.7 m.p.h.) to 85.3 m.p.h. with just three hard-hit balls conceded.

In a small sample it’s tricky to pin down the root cause or sustainability of improved contact management, but Ragans deserves credit for generating some many harmless batted balls — and keeping the ball in the park. Since the beginning of September, he has allowed only one ball to clear the wall — a ball that notably came off the bat off Juan Soto.

The Yankees may enter Monday’s game with a 1-0 advantage in their ALDS series, but the presence of Ragans makes the Royals a significantly tougher challenge in Game 2 than they were on Saturday.

Not only did Ragans establish himself as an ace this year, he’s also been even better than his yearlong numbers would suggest recently, and New York was far better against right-handed pitchers in the regular season (120 wRC+ — 1st in the majors) than lefties (107 wRC+ — 11th).

The Yankees will still be considered the favourites to grab a 2-0 series lead. But the way Ragans is going, it’s tough to think of any team starting him as too much of an underdog.