Holy smokes! Cole Ragans may just be a Dude

With an unhittable fastball that reaches 100 MPH, the lefty shreds the Oakland lineup with a dominant performance.

Cole Ragans opened his afternoon of work against the Oakland A’s with a 96 MPH fastball. He finished with one clocked at 100 MPH. For 99 pitches, he absolutely flummoxed Oakland, mixing a changeup, slider, cutter and curve to record a career-high 11 strikeouts, helping the Royals salvage a win against the worst team in the majors.

Since arriving from Texas at the first of July for reliever Aroldis Chapman, Ragans has been a revelation in the rotation. In six starts for the Royals, Ragans has thrown 34.2 innings with a 2.08 ERA and a 1.80 FIP. He’s struck out 47 and walked 10. He has allowed just a single home run. He has taken the velocity increase found in his offseason workouts while still with the Rangers and pushed it another step forward. Not only is he throwing hard out the chute and maintaining that velocity for most of his starts, he’s getting stronger as the game rolls on. Wednesday against the A’s, Ragans threw 12 four-seamers that are now among the 20 fastest pitches he’s thrown in his career.

I am of the firm belief that Cole Ragans is officially a Dude.

Let’s break it down.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pitcher dominate with his four-seamer like Ragans dispatched Oakland. The hitters were absolutely overmatched against his heater.

Ragans threw 33 fastballs on the afternoon, averaging 98 MPH. That was up almost 2 MPH from his seasonal average. The spin rate on the pitch, already elite at the 90th percentile, was up almost 106 RPMs. That was an increase of around 4.3 percent. We know that an elevated spin rate on a hard fastball gives it that illusion of rising. What Ragans did was make that rising fastball explode. Witness.

This is a belt-high fastball at 99 MPH. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that’s an easy pitch to hit, but the location was looking middle-middle. If this was your garden variety 99 MPH heater, that pitch in that location is probably going to get put into play. With the spin that Ragans was putting on that pitch, it had a little extra get-up-and-go. It was also some fine pitch sequencing, with the previous offering off the plate on an 88 MPH changeup. There was no way Aledmys Diaz was going to catch up to that.

The A’s, to their credit, battled against Ragans. He generally required around 15 pitches to get through an inning. His first couple of pitches in his sixth and final frame were down in velocity to around 95-96 MPH. (I’m laughing that I just wrote that sentence.) Somehow, he found that final bit of adrenaline to get across the finish line. This was his final pitch of the afternoon.

That is an absolutely unhittable pitch at that velocity and at that location.

The fact that Ragans was able to hit triple-digits (officially that pitch registered at 99.5 MPH, but I am definitely rounding that one up) on pitch number 99 is ridiculous.

Of the 33 fastballs Ragans threw on Wednesday, six were called strikes. Oakland hitters offered at 14. They fouled off five and swung and missed at nine. I am here to help you with the math…A’s hitters didn’t put a single Ragans four-seamer in play.

Dear reader, that is insane.

Here is visual proof of the four-seamers Ragans threw for strikes.

That’s a 45 percent CSW% (called strikes plus whiffs). Again…INSANE.

Man cannot live on fastballs alone. Even ones that spin and explode. The chase pitch for Ragans was his changeup, coming in at a healthy 86 MPH, representing about 10 MPH of separation from his fastball.

The A’s stacked their lineup with right-handed bats against the lefty Ragans. The changeup living on the arm side was just another weapon in his arsenal.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I’d be leaning for a changeup away if the pitcher is busting triple-digit heat on the inner half. Dropping a pitch in that location is just unfair. Again…sequencing. Ragans started this plate appearance against Esteury Ruiz with a pair of curveballs down. The first one missed but the second caught the bottom of the zone. Even at 1-1, Ragans went cutter (that was fouled off) followed by a fastball up and out of the zone. The kill pitch came at 2-2.

I mentioned that the changeup was Ragans’ chase pitch. Of the 27 he threw on Wednesday, 15 were out of the zone, but Oakland hitters went after 40 percent of them. Yes, it’s a small sample but it was the pitch where Ragans had his highest chase rate. Overall, he had seven whiffs on the change.

On the pitches in the middle, imagine watching a pitch coming in at that location and having less than a fraction of a second to decide if it’s trucking at 100 MPH or 86 MPH. Good luck.

I’m going to close out this breakdown with Ragans’ slider. He threw 14 of them and it was a nice compliment to the other four pitches he offered on the day. He got a few swings, he got a few misses. Some were fouled off, some were chased and a couple were put into play.

This one made me gasp.

I thought the slider was a bit firmer than his previous starts, but still…Boring into a right-handed hitter when you’re dipping changeups on the outer half and throwing smoke in the middle…I’m laughing right now thinking about how helpless the A’s were against Ragans. Oh, that pitch was clocking almost 3 MPH faster than his average. Ragans was amped up.

From Anne Rogers:

“What sticks out to me is that it’s fairly effortless when he does it,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “All of his pitches are between 96-100 [mph] with the fastball, and you can’t tell a difference on which one will be which. It’s a credit to his delivery, the efficiency of it, his release, how his arm works and his conditioning.”

Quatraro hit on something I was seeing while watching. The consistency and repeatability and ease of Ragans’ delivery is fantastic.

This is his release on his four-seamer.

Contrast that to his slider.

The extension is the same with really the only difference coming from the pronation of the wrist and the grip. I want to use the adjective “effortless” in describing his delivery, but I think that sells him short. It is easy, though. That plays into his deception that helps the baseball explode when it reaches the zone.

Maybe a good way to describe it is “effortless explosion.”

For a team desperate for pitching, the Royals seem to have found a live arm. All it cost them was a reliever who was signed last winter for the specific purpose of, if he was successful in Kansas City, spinning him for a player who could fit on the roster and improve the club. Ragans may not just improve the rotation, it looks like he has the potential to lead it. He can very well be a Dude.