The Dude dominates

With overpowering mastery, Cole Ragans shredded the Pittsburgh lineup for seven innings. Then, the bullpen took over. How about we just focus on Ragans?

It’s unfortunate that ball games last nine innings. Especially when the Royals’ bullpen is involved.

On Tuesday night at The K, Cole Ragans dominated the Pittsburgh Pirates. He went seven innings, threw a career-high 108 pitches and allowed just three hits and one walk. He struck out nine and didn’t allow a run.

The Royals required four pitchers to cover the next six outs. Before those outs were recorded, they combined to allow six hits and six runs. Despite the heroic efforts of Ragans and his flame-throwing left arm, the Royals lost 6-3.

Do you recall how I wrote a few weeks ago about starting pitching, relief pitching and offense and how it’s extremely difficult to have just one of those categories show up and get the win? Ragans did his job. Outside of Freddy Fermin who collected two hits and drove in two in the ninth, nobody else did theirs.

The wins and losses stopped being of consequence for the Royals a while ago. Good thing, because if this had been a game of any importance, it would’ve fallen into the categories of “wasted brilliance” and “gut punch.” Since it’s not about dwelling on the once-again all too-frequent losses, let’s look at some of the superlatives surrounding Ragans and what he accomplished in the month of August.

Even though there are two days left in the month, I don’t feel it’s premature to proclaim Ragans the best pitcher in the majors in August. Full stop. He’s been worth 1.8 fWAR this month, almost lapping the field.

That’s the full list of starters who currently have an fWAR greater than or equal to one. What you don’t see in the table is that Ragans has made six starts which explains why he’s thrown more innings than everyone else who has made five. There may be one or two of guys who make a start in the next couple of days (I haven’t checked the probable starters to confirm), but unless they throw some kind of insanely dominant performance like a no-hitter where they strike out 20-plus batters, I don’t see anyone catching up to Ragans.

The table tells a helluva story. Ragans isn’t walking guys and is keeping the ball in the yard, which is limiting any damage. He’s throwing smoke and outside of Freddy Peralta in Milwaukee, is striking batters out more than anyone. It’s just a dominant performance across the board.

If Ragans isn’t your American League Pitcher of the Month for August, I will demand a full investigation.

Ragans finishes the month of August with 53 strikeouts. That’s the third-most in a month in Royals’ history. For fun, I did a Stathead search and filtered pitchers who finished a month with 40 or more strikeouts. It’s been done 35 times in franchise history and the list is full of names you would expect. Kevin Appier. James Shields. Steve Busby. Danny Duffy. Here is the top 10:

There have been quite a few outstanding individual seasons for starting pitching in Royals’ history, but I think Dennis Leonard’s 1977 season gets lost among some of the others. He finished with 244 strikeouts, still a team record. He also was tied for the league lead in wins (back when those were a thing) and finished fourth in the Cy Young balloting that year. He also threw over 290 innings.

You probably remember Greinke’s 2009 campaign where he won the Cy Young. While August was his prime strikeout month, he makes three other appearances on this list of 35.

Back to Ragans, though. What makes his month and strikeout total so impressive is that he did this in just 36.2 innings. That 13.0 SO/9 rate is by far the highest of any pitcher on this list. While Leonard was out there throwing 12 complete games in his 14 starts covering June and September/October, Ragans is averaging around six innings per start. This isn’t me yelling at a cloud and lamenting the disappearance of the complete game. This is me marveling at the dominance even in today’s strikeout-rich environment.

Ragans has been in the organization for around two months and has already emerged as the Royals’ ace. On Monday, general manager JJ Picollo made the declaration that he’s a lock for the rotation in 2024.

Before that, if you’re looking for a reason to tune in to the final month of the season, his starts are a good place to begin.