With big-name arms joining up for 2023, however, it appeared that Ragans would be destined for the Texas bullpen or Triple-A. He had made his MLB debut for the also-ran Rangers and compiled a 4.95 ERA over nine starts. Ragans entered last offseason in a sort of limbo. It is pressure and release, charge and discharge. Lightning makes itself known by wearing down the atmosphere’s defenses. “For all that power, there have been very few pitches where you feel like he overthrew and made a noncompetitive pitch.” 'Cole Ragans for arguably the most dominant reliever of our generation?'

“Very few of those,” Lefebvre intoned at the time. It’s the pitch that helped Ragans accelerate to a cruising speed of “scoreless innings with lots of strikeouts.”īut, approaching the 100-pitch rubicon, Ragans let a 99 mph fastball sail high and wide against Davis Schneider as he put a second man on base via walk one batter before he truly lost his footing. Combining slider levels of drop with fastball-type velocity is an overpowering weapon, one wielded by Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, Corbin Burnes, Zack Wheeler and the like - you know, the best pitchers in baseball. It’s a pitch that would’ve made pitchers from even 25 years ago blush, and it’s a pitch that just about every major-leaguer today would sign up to throw. On the next pitch, he whiffed Bichette on a diabolical, 94 mph cutter/slider thing.Ĭole Ragans struck out Bo Bichette with this cutter/slider. But you could spot the first sign of trouble Sunday on a 2-2 pitch to Bo Bichette, as Ragans chucked a pitch in the dirt and dropped his gaze straight down to toe at an apparent disturbance with his landing spot on the mound. Ragans sits 96.5 mph with his fastball and occasionally touches triple digits - blazing speeds for a starter, especially a left-hander. Working deep into games is, of course, less common in an era when pitchers pursue maximum velocity and movement with ever advancing levels of vigor and sophistication. The Royals, the announcers explained in commending Ragans for his consistent work, are instilling a mindset in their young pitchers to go deep into games. With the 6-foot-4 lefty through five clean innings and his scoreless streak at 26 innings on Sunday against the Blue Jays, Lefebvre and analyst Rex Hudler spent the start of the sixth talking about George Kirby, the stellar young Seattle Mariners pitcher who set off a flurry of discussion by saying he didn’t think he should’ve been sent out to pitch the seventh in a recent loss.

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