Pair Of Royals Rank Among MLB's Best Starting Pitchers, Says New Report
Sure, the Kansas City Royals have a Most Valuable Player candidate on their team, but the starting pitching has been equally huge to their success in 2024.
After a 106-loss season, it seemed far-fetched to think the Royals could become playoff contenders just one year later, regardless of how much they altered their roster coming into the new year. But they're proving everyone wrong, shutting the best lineups in the league down on a nightly basis.
The two biggest moves the Royals made to shore up their rotation happened roughly five months apart.
In July of 2023, they traded closer Aroldis Chapman to the eventual World Series champion Texas Rangers for rookie flamethrower Cole Ragans. Then, in December, they signed veteran Seth Lugo, formerly of the San Diego Padres, to a three-year, $45 million contract.
Those two have been the unquestioned linchpins of the Kansas City pitching staff. And on Thursday, they both earned their recognition among the best in the entire sport.
In MLB.com's starting pitcher power rankings, conducted by an expert panel and ranking the 10 best pitchers across all of Major League Baseball, Lugo and Ragans finished sixth and seventh, respectively.
Lugo moved up two spots in the latest expert poll amid perhaps his best three-start stretch of the season. In his last 21 innings, he has allowed just two earned runs, walked two, and struck out 23.
"Every time it seems as if the 34-year-old former reliever has run out of gas, he finds another gear," the report said of Lugo. "Entering Wednesday, he was tied for the MLB lead with 16 wins and was in sole possession of first with 193 innings pitched."
Ragans, meanwhile, was left out of the experts' previous poll, but climbed to seventh following a pair of powerful six-inning outings, one against the rival Minnesota Twins, and one on Wednesday night against the Yankees.
"(Ragans has) proven that his late-2023 performance, after arriving in the Aroldis Chapman trade, was anything but a fluke," MLB.com said. "After taking on the Yankees on Wednesday night, Ragans owns a 3.32 ERA and ranks second in MLB in strikeouts (211, just two behind Sale). He is only the fifth pitcher in the Royals’ 56-season history to reach 200 K’s-- the first since Zack Greinke in 2009."
With Lugo and Ragans both locked in for playoff spots, the Royals could have a nasty surprise for the presumptive American League favorites come October.
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JACKSON ROBERTS
Jackson Roberts is a former Division III All-Region DH who now writes and talks about sports for a living. A Bay Area native and a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, Jackson makes his home in North Jersey. He grew up rooting for the Red Sox, Patriots, and Warriors, and he recently added the Devils to his sports fandom mosaic. For all business/marketing inquiries regarding "Kansas City Royals On SI," please reach out to Scott Neville: scott@wtfsports.org