Judging KC's Starting Pitchers Against Cleveland

Analyzing what went wrong for Ragans, Lugo and Wacha in the season's opening series

Photo courtesy of AP/Charlie Riedel

Just like 2024, the Royals started their campaign 1-2 with a series loss to a division rival, this time the ever-competent Cleveland Guardians. “Competent” is hardly a ringing endorsement of the perennial AL Central contender, but it’s true — they’re fundamentally sound in all the little ways that swing baseball games, and too often in this opening three-game set, Kansas City wasn’t.

Cleveland swings at strikes, defends well, runs the bases… all facets where the Royals committed fatal blunders or outright failed entirely.

Another gap between the teams in this opening series: Cleveland’s starting pitchers found the strike zone; Royals starting pitchers did not, and Guardians hitters, as always, laid off pitches out of the zone or fouled them off time after time.

A year after Kansas City’s starting staff carried the team to the postseason, it was a bit jarring to see Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha each struggle in his first start of the season. Let’s look at each outing individually, including what went sideways and how the Royals lead trio of veteran arms can head in the right direction this week.

Opening Day — Cole Ragans

Final line: 5 IP, 3 ER, 5 H, 2 BB, 3 K, 83 Pitches

Ragans faced problems missing glove-side and high, primarily with his fastball. He hinted after the game he experienced some issues with his mechanics, which may have led to the consistent misses above the zone.

From Anne Rogers at Royals.com: “Cole Ragans, making his second consecutive Opening Day start, felt his mechanics start to wane in the middle innings of his five-plus inning outing, leading to poor command.”

In 2024, Ragans pitched with a 45-degree arm angle. In spring, that was down to 42 degrees, which isn’t abnormal for a pitcher to fluctuate 2-3 degrees from year to year. (We’re talking about fractions of inches, after all.) However, he was all the way down to a 39-degree arm angle on Opening Day. Perhaps it was due to the mechanical issues he experienced, maybe related to a bit of fatigue later in the game, who knows.

Cleveland came into the contest with a clear plan of attack: swing early and swing often. The Guardians hacked away at 44 of Ragans’ 83 pitches, one of the highest rates league-wide on Opening Day. More importantly, they offered at 84.8% of Ragans’ pitches in the strike zone, able to blend aggressiveness with swinging at pitches over the plate.

Look, I don’t want to make it sound like Cleveland teed off on the Royals ace. The 82.3 MPH average exit velocity he allowed would’ve led MLB’s qualified pitchers last season. Ragans’ command wasn’t perfect, his stuff wasn’t at its peak and the Guardians dinked and dunked him a bit.

The power southpaw’s velocity was just fine, so I expect Ragans to polish his mechanics and return to his norm on Wednesday in Milwaukee.

Saturday — Seth Lugo

Final line: 5 IP, 3 ER, 4 H, 3 BB, 4 K, 86 Pitches

Lugo followed Ragans with a nearly identical line, one that kept the Royals in the game but leaves you wanting more from KC’s No. 1 and 2 starters. Cleveland stacked its lineup with left-handers, and while Lugo’s splits weren’t quite drastic last season, lefties did manage a .309 on-base percentage compared to .248 for right-handed hitters.

Facing eight left-handers (or switch hitters), Lugo struggled to dot the outer edge of the zone, often missing arm-side by mere inches.

As a result, Lugo threw just 42% of his pitches in the zone, a far cry from his 50.4% mark in his Cy Young runner-up campaign of 2024. In fact, he never finished a start with a zone rate that low all of last season.

Lugo also induced just 16% O-Swing and 22% whiff rates, making it entirely too difficult to get ahead, stay ahead and finish hitters.

The 35-year-old’s command is simply too good to repeat this type of effort. Expect Lugo to pound the strike zone Friday when KC is back at home against Baltimore.

Sunday — Michael Wacha

Final line: 4 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 4 BB, 2 K, 87 Pitches

On a cool, wet afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, Wacha battled and battled against the always-pesky Guardians. He might’ve allowed the least runs among the three Royals starters in the series, but it required some veteran savvy with eight baserunners scattered across just four innings of work.

Wacha got ahead of hitters with a solid 61.1% first-pitch strike rate. He was in the zone often enough at 47%, per Baseball Savant. He allowed a pillow-soft 80.9 MPH average exit velocity.

But he simply could not miss bats. Cleveland managed an 85% contact rate, the 11th-highest mark allowed by a starting pitcher so far this season.

While Wacha’s devastating changeup managed four whiffs on 16 swings, the remainder of his arsenal achieved just three whiffs on 24 swings. Particularly with two strikes, the veteran righty couldn’t sneak a pitch past the Guardians, who fouled off 21 against him.

Perhaps tied to the case of the missing whiffs was Wacha’s fastball. He nearly doubled its usage to 47% on Sunday, up from 24% in 2024. His curveball, cutter, slider and sinker fell by the wayside, despite their relative effectiveness; the curveball and slider each earned a whiff, on three swings and two swings, respectively.

My only guess is perhaps Wacha didn’t have a good feel/grip in the conditions and turned to the more straightforward four-seamer and changeup.

That said, this is the concern with a pitcher like Wacha — when the secondaries aren’t available to him and he’s not getting whiffs, he has a hard time finishing at-bats. The changeup is an elite offering, but if hitters can sit on it as the only offspeed pitch he’s willing to throw, it makes it awfully easy on opponents to keep at-bats alive.

Wacha will presumably start Saturday against a tough lineup in the Orioles, another team that makes two-strike counts difficult on pitchers with a top-10 contact rate in 2024.