Royal Scrolls: Izzy's Hot, India's Air-Balling and Ragans is Altering His Arsenal

KC will look for a series win over the Twins Thursday before heading to Cleveland for the weekend

Photo courtesy of AP/Charlie Riedel

Royal Scrolls is a recap of the week so far and a preview of the weekend ahead, along with news, nuggets and notes.

Short of trading Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City should do whatever it takes to pry Joe Ryan away from the Twins.

Kidding. Kind of.

Ryan dazzled at Kauffman Stadium again Wednesday night, putting an end to KC’s three-game win streak. The veteran right-hander served up seven shutout innings, allowing just two hits while striking out four.

Minnesota is now 9-0 against the Royals in games Ryan has started in his five-year career. I don’t know at what point you can safely say a pitcher “owns” an opponent but… we’ve reached that point.

So, perhaps as expected, Kansas City (6-6) will need a win Thursday to take the four-game series and finish its homestand 5-2. Michael Wacha will toe the slab, taking on Bailey Ober, who’s been shelled for a 12.15 ERA across two starts that have totaled just 6.2 innings.

As we’ll do each week in this space, let’s get into the best from the Royals from the last week of action, preview the upcoming three-game series against the Guardians and round it out with fun (or not so fun) nuggets you might’ve missed.

Crowning Achievements

Izzy’s Been Busy

It’s not often we get to discuss Kyle Isbel’s contributions to the Royals. He’s a defense-first (and second and third) center fielder. A Gold Glove caliber one. But in the week since the first edition of Royal Scrolls, Izzy’s been on a heater. He belted his first homer of the season Monday in the series opener against the Twins, a 105.4 MPH sixth-inning blast into the KC bullpen that stretched the lead from two runs to three (which wound up being important when Carlos Estevez stumbled into some danger in the ninth).

In that five-game stretch prior to Wednesday, Isbel hit .500/.500/.750 across 13 plate appearances, driving in three runs while scoring two himself for a 262 wRC+.

The left-handed hitter isn’t on this roster for his offense. Far from it. If he can provide stretches like this, though, it’ll be a huge boost at the bottom of the order and may help him stave off losing too much work to Maikel Garcia in center.

The Starters are Stretching Their Outings

Typically, I’m going to include individual performances in the Crowning Achievements section. This space is intended for highlighting new maximum exit velocities, career highs in pitcher whiffs and the like.

But after a somewhat rocky first week of the season, marred by inefficient pitch counts and subpar command, the rotation posted four quality starts in five outings over the last week of action. It started with Seth Lugo Friday against Baltimore, going six strong with one run allowed behind his deep arsenal.

Kris Bubic, Michael Lorenzen and Cole Ragans then peeled off three consecutive quality starts, allowing HEE (Harvey, Erceg, Estevez) to close out two wins before they gave way Tuesday night to Angel Zerpa, John Schreiber and Daniel Lynch to finish off the Twins.

I’ll be the first to tell you the “quality start” statistic is a bit overblown. It’s far from perfect, at the very least. It does, however, tell you precisely when a starter completes his most important job — keeping his team in the game. And it’s certainly no coincidence KC won all four of those outings.

The three-game quality start streak came to an end Wednesday night when Lugo fell one out short of the six-inning threshold, but Wacha will get a chance to get his first Thursday afternoon.

Lighting the Leadoff Fuse

I’ve probably harped on this too much in this space (and others), but the Jonathan India addition changes the entire conversation around this Royals lineup. He’s been everything Kansas City hoped, sporting a near-.400 on-base percentage while pestering pitchers to the brink. He’s seen 4.38 pitches per plate appearance, 30th in MLB among qualifiers. Next closest among Royals is Michael Massey, who’s seeing 3.88 P/PA, 95th in baseball — an entire half pitch less than India.

But these are the traits you expected. Where India’s showing some progress early (yes, it’s early) is in the batted-ball data; his exit velocity is up 2.5 MPH to 90.7 and hard-hit rate is at 40%, both career highs.

I can’t say for certain whether it’s a good thing yet, but he’s also hitting the ball in the air and pulling it more often than he ever did in Cincinnati. Whether that’s by design or a small-sample fluke, we’ll just have to wait and find out — but it could lead to more power than he’s shown in the past. The good news is, even if the batted-ball profile is signal and not noise, it hasn’t affected his approach at the plate where he’s still staying within himself, seeing a ton of pitches and getting on base at an elite clip.

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Weekend Preview

Games 4-6 of the season series against the Guardians are on tap for this weekend, this time on the road. Cleveland is 5-6, wrapping up its three-game set against the lowly White Sox on Thursday afternoon while Kansas City finishes off its four-game series against Minnesota.

As you likely remember (it was only two weeks ago), KC lost two of three at Kauffman Stadium against these Guardians to open the season. The bats were fairly quiet, save for a Vinnie Pasquantino three-run homer on Opening Day and some late-game heroics to steal Saturday’s contest as the Royals’ lone win of the series.

I think that changes here. The Royals will face two arms who they can (and should) do damage against.

Pitching Probables

Friday: Kris Bubic vs. RHP Tanner Bibee

Bubic will look to continue his torrid start to 2025 in which he’s racked up 16 strikeouts across 12.2 innings. While his stuff has looked downright nasty, particularly the four-seamer and changeup, perhaps equally impressive is his ability to work within the confines of the strike zone without allowing damage — he’s carrying a 78.6% zone contact rate, a top 15 mark across MLB, along with an 84.8 MPH average exit velocity allowed, fifth-best in the game.

Climbing the mound in the top of the first will be Bibee, the scheduled starter for Opening Day who bowed out with bowel issues. Instead, he pitched in the series finale against KC, shutting the Royals out through 5.2 innings with just two hits and two walks allowed. Bibee juxtaposed that line in his following outing against the Angels, getting bombed for seven runs (including four homers) in four innings of work.

Saturday: Michael Lorenzen vs. RHP Luis L. Ortiz

Ortiz will make his third career start against the Royals with the previous two coming in his time as a Pirate. He’s totaled nine innings against them, allowing eight runs (five earned) on eight hits with 10 strikeouts and four walks. The 26-year-old right-hander pitches to a lofty 80.6% contact rate with his three fastball variations and turns to his mid-80s slider for chase/whiffs. Ortiz’s 58.5% zone rate (Statcast) is fifth in baseball — this is the type of arm the Royals should find success against as they can aggressively hunt those offerings that are so frequently over the plate.

Sunday: Cole Ragans vs. RHP Ben Lively

An Opening Day rematch is in store for the series finale. Ragans is on a tear, piling up strikeouts at a near league-leading rate with 24 Ks through three starts. Lively is… the polar opposite. His 19.3% K rate is 60th among 77 MLB qualifiers.

Like Ortiz, Lively prefers to bombard hitters with strikes and a 56% zone rate, per Statcast. It’s hard to say if Kansas City struggled with the late swap when Bibee was scratched or if it was bound to be a sluggish day offensively either way, but Opening Day was a bit of a letdown. The aforementioned Pasquantino bomb was the only damage Lively allowed on that unseasonably warm Thursday afternoon.

The 33-year-old employs one of the least imposing arsenals among full-time starters with none of his six pitches surpassing a grade of 40 in TJ Stats’ system. While game one of the series may be a low-scoring affair between Bubic and Bibee, I expect the Royals’ bats to come to life over the weekend.

Guardians Notes

• News-wise, things have been pretty quiet around Cleveland. The Guardians made a minor move on Tuesday for right-handed reliever Cody Bolton who was immediately assigned to the minor leagues.

• Kyle Manzardo returned to earth after pummeling Kansas City in that opening series. He’s slashing .150/.240./300 since April 1.

• Jose Ramirez is doing the Jose Ramirez thing. He’s slashing .310/.417/.793 with four home runs and is third in MLB with his .483 ISO.

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Data Mining

Unearthing always fun, sometimes meaningful Royals stats.

• Cole Ragans may be moving away from his cutter to increase the usage on his four-seam fastball and secondaries.

  

  In his April 2 start against Milwaukee, he posted the highest four-seam usage rate in his time as a Royal at 58%. Shelving the cutter would help explain the increased four-seam reliance, and a potential pitch mix change makes sense. The cutter is his worst-graded offering by both FanGraphs and TJ Stuff+. It’s returned the lowest O-Swing and whiff rates among his arsenal while hitters tend to bang it around with an 89% zone contact rate. Will be keeping an eye on this in his next few starts.

• There’s a lot of consternation around Sam Long’s rough start to 2025. Kevin O’Brien at Royals Reporter did a great job breaking Long down in-depth, and one note I’d add to Kevin’s work is the lefty’s first-pitch strike rate is down more than 8% year-over-year. It’s led to him having to lay pitches in the zone for hitters to tee up; they’ve obliged with a 97.1% zone contact rate against him. After earning four straight outs Wednesday night against Minnesota, Long allowed a lefty-lefty bomb to Matt Wallner at 107.7 MPH off the bat.

• For as adept as Vinnie Pasquantino is at making contact and avoiding whiffs, chasing pitches out of the zone has always been part of his game. It’s reached even higher levels in 2025 with a wildly unsustainable 41.7% O-Swing, per Statcast. He’s in the eighth percentile of qualified hitters in chase rate. His swinging strike rate has nearly doubled from 2024, but I’d pin that more on his swing decisions than a newfound inability to make contact. The good news? His bat speed is up nearly three ticks to 74.4 MPH, elevating him from bang average to a top-40 swing speed in MLB — once he cuts down on the chase, I expect we’re going to see more power from the Pasquatch than years past.

• There’s no debating it’s been a disastrous start to the year for MJ Melendez. I’m not here to tell you otherwise. However, there are some signs of an emergence.

  

  Again… these are tiny samples. I’m not attempting to convince you a .154 batting average is something to be excited about. But Melendez improved across the board here from the first week of the season to the second, and perhaps isn’t pressing the way he was early. He’s running out of time, quickly, to maintain his roster spot.