Bobby Witt Jr. and Cole Ragans are amazing

The Royals needed a statement start from their ace. They needed a big swing from their MVP. They got both and they got out of Minnesota with an important victory.

I really wanted to write about Wednesday’s victory against the Twins, but things got in the way. Almost 48 hours later, the game is still occupying space in my baseball brain, so we’re still going to discuss what we saw. At least one moment.

Just pretend you’re reading the print edition of the Kansas City Star.

The 4-1 win against the Twins was important because the Royals desperately needed to escape Minnesota with a win. It was critical. The Royals rolled into town just a half-game behind the Twins in the AL Central, and just as importantly, the Wild Card. A three-game series meant one team was going to make a move and once the Twins took the first two games, they settled that question. What remained was exactly how bad this series would be for the Royals. Win and they would leave Minneapolis dropping just one game in the standings. Lose, and the damage would be three games.

It’s a huge difference.

Thank goodness for Bobby Witt, Jr. and Cole Ragans.

Man, do I love Baseball Savant. I’m not one to tell you how to live your life, but you should probably love Baseball Savant, too.

Yes, this is about Bobby Witt Jr.’s home run on Wednesday. I’m not going to GIF the homer. You’ve seen it at this point. What I will do is freeze-frame the moment of impact with some fancy metrics on either side.

Before we get to the metrics, just look at the position of the baseball. It’s elevated. At the letters. Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers is reaching in anticipation of receiving the baseball. If he doesn’t move his glove up (and Witt doesn’t swing), it’s going to skid off the top of home plate umpire Carlos Torres’ helmet. Elevated!

Fine…Here’s the GIF.

I mean…

Baseball Savant drills down zones around the plate beyond the ones we see on MLB’s Gameday app. It divides the area into four sectors that grow outward. You have the “heart” which is the meaty part of the zone you would see on television. Or close to it as the TV zone isn’t exactly accurate. Then, there’s the “shadow” which is around the edges on the zone. A pitch that a hitter will be tempted to offer at and can definitely make decent contact. Outside of that is the “chase” area. That’s well off the plate where if a hitter is offering, he’s not making any kind of quality contact. Think Salvador Perez on those sliders low and away. Finally, there is the “waste” zone where no hitter in their right mind would swing.

The area of the pitch that Witt hit is in the “chase” area of the chart. This year, there have been 14 home runs hit on pitches in the general location where Witt left the yard. Drilled down a bit further, only four hitters have homered on a pitch greater than four feet off the ground.

And! I’m going to eliminate one of those four because it came on a 43 MPH flutter ball from catcher Ben Rortvedt to Matt Chapman in an eight-run blowout. Position players floating eephus-type pitches account for a few of these elevated dingers.

So against legitimate pitching, Witt’s home run came on the third-highest pitch this year at 4.07 feet. The highest an astounding 4.42 feet off the ground from San Francisco’s Hayden Birdsong to Washington’s CJ Abrams. The second-highest was 4.18 feet off the ground by Toronto’s Ernie Clement off a pitch from Joe Musgrove of the Padres.

I should also mention that Witt started out his at bat in an 0-2 hole. He chased a high fastball and then fouled off the best pitch he saw, a fastball that was in the heart of the zone.

Witt…every single day he does something that makes your jaw drop in amazement.

Another note (again, thanks to Baseball Savant) of interest is that of the nine home runs hit in the similar “chase” area to where the pitch to Witt was located, the delivery at 96.8 MPH was the fastest of the bunch. It’s just not a pitch that you’re supposed to hit out of the yard. Truly, shades of the grand slam Witt hit last year against these Twins on the 101.8 MPH inside fastball from Jhoan Duran.

Follow me down the Savant rabbit hole…This year, Witt is hitting .354 on pitches coming in at 95 MPH or faster. That’s impressive, but there are quite a few guys who hit above .300 on the smoke. How about slugging percentage? Witt is slugging .695 on pitches clocked at 95+ MPH. That’s the fifth-best slugging percentage in the majors. Oh, he has 13 barrels on those pitches, which is the fourth-most in the game.

It seems as though I’m writing about Bobby Witt Jr. every time I send a newsletter. And I’m far from tired. The kid is having a season for the ages. We should be talking about this every single time we gather in this space. If a friend comes up to you and wants to talk about the Royals playoff chances, it absolutely makes sense to talk about Witt’s season. If an acquaintance doesn’t like baseball, you should probably let them know about Witt. It’s possible they’ll convert to the Church of Baseball. If you’re discussing the weather with some rando you encounter, you can punctuate your conversation with something along the lines of, “Bobby Witt Jr. is blowing my mind.”Proselytize!

It’s important to note that WAR is not a counting stat. It’s an accumulation of performance. In other words, it ebbs and flows as the season unfolds. Just because a player has something like 2.2 fWAR today, doesn’t mean they can’t have a few bad weeks and retreat below 2 fWAR. So I’m loathe to use that metric to declare anything at this point. Still, I’m agog at this, the top 10 seasons by a position player in Royals history as defined by fWAR:

(Apologies for the zeros on the batting average and such. It’s a pain to get rid of those in my spreadsheet.)

For one thing, it was an absolutely amazing time to watch those late ’70s Royals. That’s why you’re reading this newsletter. So you can thank (or curse) Brett, Otis, Mayberry, Wilson and Porter for that.

So while Witt may stumble at some point (oh god, I hope not), it still remains that we’re watching a historic season here in Kansas City. Oh, his 5.8 fWAR last year would rank as the 15th-best season by a position player in franchise history.

Greatness. We are witnessing greatness.

Witt’s home run, as amazing as it was, wouldn’t have mattered as much had it not been for Cole Ragans. The lefty shoved. It was his easily his best outing of the season’s second half. Given the stakes, it was his best start since May.

Ragans went seven innings with the only blemish being a fourth inning home run off the bat of Carlos Santana. In fact, to that point, Ragans had retired 11 consecutive batters. The Royals needed a statement start. Ragans delivered.

Ragans finished with eight strikeouts and didn’t allow a walk. Most importantly, his velocity was right in line with his seasonal average.

The Ragans four-seamer averaged 95.3 MPH, just below his seasonal average of 95.6 MPH. Of course, that seasonal average has been dropping his last several starts because his heater has lacked that certain speedy oomph. And Ragans needs that velocity for the fastball to be nasty. On Wednesday, he recorded nine whiffs on his four-seamer and finished with an impressive 37 percent CSW% (called swings plus whiffs).

I highlighted the June 29th start from Ragans in his Pitch Velocity chart because that was the first time we saw what would be a concerning drop in said velocity. He had been averaging well above 95 MPH to that point. It just so happened that the dip coincided with Ragans coming off four consecutive starts where his pitch count topped 100. Prior to that stretch, he had never gone more than two starts in a row with a pitch count greater than 100.

I’m not pointing a finger here. I think Matt Quatraro has managed his rotation and his bullpen about as well as could be expected. This isn’t Trey Hillman letting Gil Meche shred his shoulder. Ragans, in order to maximize his potential, has to be able to get deep into games and in 2024 that means he needs to be able to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 105 pitches. Clearly, if he wasn’t up to it, Quatraro and his pitching coaches wouldn’t push to make that happen.

Still, it’s probably not a coincidence that Ragans’ velocity dip coincided with an increased pitch count. On Wednesday in Minnesota, he was pitching on six days of rest. He hit 98 MPH in the sixth inning. His range of velocity was from 93.4 MPH to 98.6 MPH. The latter fastball was delivered in the sixth inning, on his 87th pitch of the afternoon. While Ragans certainly wasn’t living in that upper-90s neighborhood, it sure seemed like he had enough in the tank to reach back for it when he wanted.

Everything plays off the heater. It makes his changeup and other secondary pitches that much better. Overall, Ragans recorded 18 swings and misses, seven on his change.

It was a huge moment for the Royals and Ragans stood up and met the challenge. That’s ace material right there.

Central Issues

Mariners 1, Tigers 2

Alex Faedo, working as an opener for Detroit, walked four batters in the first, resulting in Seattle’s only run. Kenta Maeda came in behind Faedo and shut the Mariners down on just one hit in 5.2 innings. Is this a good place to note the Mariners’ team batting average of .217 is the worst in the majors? Seattle held the edge until Javy Báez drilled a two out, two-run home run off Andrés Muñoz. The Tigers did the Royals a massive favor, sweeping their three-game series against the Mariners.

Twins 3, Rangers 2

Texas jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first and tried to hold on the rest of the way. Interesting gambit that rarely works. In this case, the Twins tied things up in the second on a Willi Castro home run and a Kyle Farmer Little League home run that was scored a triple and an error. The game stayed knotted at two until the ninth. Two walks, a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly from Carlos Santana got the Twins the win.

In another game of note, the Orioles dropped the Red Sox by a 5-1 scoreline. The Royals put a half-game of distance between themselves and the Sox and the Mariners in the Wild Card race.

The Royals head to Cincinnati for a three-game weekend series. The Reds are hovering around the fringes of a Wild Card spot of their own and are coming in hot. They swept the Cardinals this week and have won four in a row. With their own budding superstar shortstop in Elly De La Cruz and some decent starting pitching, this should be an entertaining series between two up-and-coming teams.