2024 Season in Review - Cole Ragans

The Royals officially have an ace.

If you want the short version of Cole Ragans’ 2024 campaign, he finished fourth in Cy Young Award voting behind only Tarik Skubal, teammate Seth Lugo, and reliever Emannuel Clase. That’s a very, very good season.

I would also argue that Clase had no business getting Cy Young votes. Sure, his 0.61 ERA was fantastic. But his 2.64 FIP is only pretty good, he also benefitted from allowing a sub-.200 BABIP and only having to pitch 74.1 innings. For context, in 2014, Wade Davis had a 1.00 ERA, 43 more strikeouts in 2.1 fewer innings, a .264 BABIP against, and a 1.61 FIP. He finished eighth in the Cy Young voting that year.

But we’re not here to argue about relievers who get Cy Young votes, we’re here to celebrate what a tremendous pitcher Cole Ragans was. The numbers were phenomenal, 10.77 K/9, 20.5% K-BB%, 3.14 ERA, and a 3.49 FIP. He was one of only eleven qualified pitchers to strike out more than a batter per inning. He had the eleventh-best K-BB% in baseball and fifth-best in the AL. He had the twelfth-best ERA in MLB.

It has been repeated endlessly how good Michael Wacha was starting in May, but about that same time Cole Ragans had a similar shift. Sure, his season ERA is 3.14, but after the start where he gave up seven runs against the Angels on May 11, he had a dazzling 2.75 ERA for the remainder of the season - that’s a span totaling 23 of his 32 games started. It also ranked him seventh in all of MLB over that span.

One really interesting tidbit can also be found in those first nine starts. He had a start against the Orioles in which he gave up seven runs in only 1.2 innings. That was good for a 37.80 ERA in that start. But he also had a -1.63 FIP and a 0.18 XFIP. Why? Well, four of those five outs were via strikeout. He also didn’t give up a single walk or home run. He did give up an astounding nine hits, but the average exit velocity against him that day was 86.7, which is pretty dang weak.

Obviously you can’t just cut that start out of his record for the season, but it’s indicative of a player who was enduring some extremely bad luck, not one who was struggling on his own behalf. That wasn’t even the worst luck he endured on the season, of course. If we could excise things from his record that were the most unfair, we could drop the two-run foul ball by Jhonkensy Noel and the Michael Toglia fan interference in Colorado two reduce his runs allowed by three and his home runs allowed by two. Those two home runs account for 13% of the home runs Ragans gave up all season, too.

But, even with those ridiculous replay mistakes, Cole Ragans had a fantastic season, and based on the numbers and his age, you’d expect him to keep having great seasons for years to come. And he isn’t even arbitration-eligible until next offseason. Royals fans have a lot of good pitching to look forward to.

I award Cole Ragans an A+ for his efforts in 2024 and I can’t wait to see if he can somehow get better in 2025.