Taking the Temperature of the Royals Rotation
KC's starters are under backbreaking stress to bear the weight of a bumbling offense. How are they holding up?
Through 23 games spanning seven series, Kansas City is 9-14. Its series record of 2-5 is a disappointment, despite a widely recognized difficult early schedule.
The offense is averaging 2.91 runs per game, dead last in MLB. The Royals are struggling to get on base, their slugging percentage is completely sapped and they’re refusing to swing at the first pitch.
And yet, because it’s baseball and because it’s April and because they roll out one of the best starting rotations in the league, they’re not dead in the water. Not by a long shot.
If you haven’t figured it out yet or you’re new to the site, I’m a glass-three-quarters-full kind of guy. So instead of beating a dead horse with the lineup like we did all weekend, let’s take a spin through the Royals starters and see how they’re faring under the stress of keeping the club afloat.
The Royals Rotation
Believe it or not, but entering Monday’s action (an off day for KC), the Royals were first in MLB in starters innings pitched (129.1). Now, they’ve played an extra game or two compared to most of the league, but they’re still second in innings/start (5.61).
Maybe that doesn’t surprise you — I’m not sure why it caught me off guard the way it did, but it felt like Kansas City’s starters were getting beat up a bit on pitch counts and struggling to get deep into games. Perhaps that’s just the way April games go with teams being a bit more cautious with their starters.
More importantly, the Royals haven’t had a single “dud” of a start, and perhaps that’s why/how they’re pacing baseball in rotation innings. In fact, their shortest outing came from the least likely source when Cole Ragans lasted just four innings Friday in Detroit.
The other pertinent stats and MLB rotation ranks before we get to the individual arms:
2.7 fWAR (3rd)
3.62 ERA (10th)
3.39 FIP (4th)
23.3% K (11th)
8.1% BB (13th)
15.2% K-BB (11th)
88.4 MPH Average EV (Lowest)
38.6% Hard-Hit Rate (6th-Lowest)
7.8% Barrel (10th-Lowest)
28.4% CSW (5th)
One other promising development is how aggressive KC’s starters have been. They’re sixth in MLB in zone rate at 53.3%. Combine that with an 81.9% zone-contact rate, second-lowest in baseball, and the Royals have quite the magic formula working. When you can throw it in the zone often and opponents still aren’t making contact, you’re in big-time business.
That’s heavily influenced by Cole Ragans, of course, who’s second in baseball among 146 starters with 10+ innings with his 75.8% zone-contact rate, but Kris Bubic is 16th, Michael Wacha is 21st, Michael Lorenzen is 69th and Seth Lugo is 88th — that’s 80% of your rotation in the top half of the league.
Cole Ragans
27.2 IP, 3.58 ERA, 1.80 FIP, 1.12 WHIP, 36.8% K, 6.1% BB, 30.7% K-BB, 33% CSW
The ace of the staff has sandwiched three top-tier starts with two subpar outings, at least by his standards, but remains fourth among MLB starters (10+ innings) in CSW, K% and K-BB%.
His ability to miss bats without allowing free passes is what leads to the elite FIP that’s half of his ERA. Despite an 88.1 MPH average EV and 39.1% hard-hit rate allowed, both comfortably in the top half of baseball, he’s on the unfortunate side of the batted-ball luck spectrum — a .355 BABIP is 18th-highest among that same sample of starters.
As the southpaw continues to phase out his cutter, his worst offering in pitch models, he’s ramping up the usage of his 95.7 MPH four-seamer to career-high levels while mixing and matching the changeup, slider and knuckle curve based on matchups.
At 27, Ragans is honing in on the best version of himself.
Seth Lugo
30 IP, 3.90 ERA, 5.43 FIP, 1.23 WHIP, 17.4% K, 9.1% BB, 8.3% K-BB, 26.1% CSW
Pitching like the polar opposite of Ragans, Lugo’s command isn’t where it was in his march toward a second-place Cy Young finish in 2024. His 9.1% BB is the second-highest of his career and the 26.1% CSW is his second-lowest. He’s enjoying the good fortune of a .244 BABIP against and stranding runners at an 81.1% clip to keep his head above water and outperform that ominous FIP.
The stuff looks mostly the same as it did a year ago. His 52.2% zone rate (Statcast) is in line with last season, too. A 76% first-pitch strike rate is a career-high, by far, so it’s not that his control is completely wiped. We can see from his heatmap that he’s routinely filling up the zone.
However, after the first pitch of an at-bat, it looks like he’s starting to nibble at the edges a bit more.
Even at 35, there’s no reason to think Lugo has lost the strike zone. He threw just 29.4% of his pitches from behind in the count last season — this year, that number is up to 32.9%.
Expect him to start challenging hitters a bit more regularly, as opposed to picking at the corners so frequently and putting himself behind in the count. That alone will help shore up the walk rate and allow Lugo to more effectively pitch to contact.
Michael Wacha
26 IP, 4.15 ERA, 3.15 FIP, 1.31 WHIP, 18% K, 9% BB, 9% K-BB, 25.9% CSW
Wacha helped put an end to KC’s six-game skid with his 5.1 innings and two earned runs allowed to Detroit on Sunday. He’s yet to put together a quality start but has been serviceable in the middle of the rotation.
The arsenal looks good with tjStuff+ marks up across the board, though, like Lugo, the command is a bit down from 2024 with the walk rate jumping from 6.6% to 9% through five starts.
He’s ramped up the usage of his four-seam fastball from 23.5% a year ago to 37.5%, paring back his sinker, slider and curveball in the process. As always, Wacha’s lethal changeup is the main attraction. He’s tossing it effectively to both righties and lefties; it’s returned a .172 batting average and .241 slug against and remains one of the best of its pitch type in the game.
The changeup chase rate is down a bit, but it’s registering a career-best 70% Z-contact rate — meaning he’s able to use it effectively in the zone while still missing bats and dodging barrels.
Kris Bubic
24 IP, 1.88 ERA, 2.70 FIP, 1.21 WHIP, 26.2% K, 8.7% BB, 17.5% K-BB, 32.4% CSW
Now four outings into his return to the rotation, Bubic is proving those first couple starts weren’t outliers. His entire five-pitch mix is grading better than it did in 2024, despite the longer outings, with the high-ride heater paving the way for changeups and sweepers to put righties away while leaning on the sweeper and slider against same-handed hitters.
His ability to generate fastball ride from a lower arm slot remains an anomaly in the game. Among pitchers who’ve thrown at least 50 four-seamers with an arm slot of 45 degrees or lower, Bubic is averaging the third-highest induced vertical break (19.1 inches).
That’s what allows the low-90s heater to blow batters away despite its relative lack of velocity, as opponents don’t expect it to maintain plane at the top of the strike zone.
There are no signs of slowing down for the 27-year-old southpaw, who’s been a revelation for the back half of the Royals rotation.
Michael Lorenzen
21.2 IP, 4.57 ERA, 3.63 FIP, 1.43 WHIP, 17.1% K, 7.3% BB, 10.4% K-BB, 24.9% CSW
Dating back to last season’s trade with the Texas Rangers, Lorenzen has given Kansas City everything it could ask of its fifth starter. Upon arriving in KC, he turfed his slider to instead go to a bigger-breaking sweeper and positive results have followed.
It’s a major weapon as Lorenzen’s most trusted pitch against right-handed hitters, using it roughly a quarter of the time to generate a 36.8% whiff.
The right-hander is also working with added horizontal break on all three of his fastballs — four-seamer, cutter and sinker — helping him play the east-west game effectively to both sides of the plate. As Alec Marsh and Kyle Wright continue to work back from the injured list and Noah Cameron nears Major League readiness, Lorenzen is showing he won’t relinquish his spot in the rotation easily.
Colorado Rockies Series Preview
Finally, after a nightmare 2-8 road trip, the Royals return home to take on the lowly Rockies before a three-game weekend set against the Houston Astros. As always, we’ll have a deeper look at the weekend series in this week’s Royal Scrolls, but I’m running out of room in the newsletter to include breakdowns on the Rockies starters.
Suffice it to say, Kansas City has to get two of three (if not a sweep) from Colorado, which possesses the worst record (4-17) and run differential (-51) in MLB as of Monday.
Tuesday, 6:40 p.m., Bubic vs. Ryan Feltner (4.82 ERA)
Wednesday, 6:40 p.m., Lorenzen vs. German Marquez (8.27 ERA)
Thursday, 1:10 p.m., Ragans vs. Chase Dollander (7.36 ERA)
Royals Data Dugout Updates
With a day game Thursday, Royal Scrolls will be published Friday morning to recap the previous week and look ahead to the Houston series.
A new section, Backdoor Changeups, is live on the site. These short-form posts won’t be sent via email to avoid spamming inboxes. Instead, check back regularly for new posts or follow on socials to find links to the latest content. The first two editions analyze the Royals unwillingness to swing at the first pitch and explore Michael Lorenzen’s latest start.
On Saturday morning, the Royals will be 27 games in — a perfect time for my first mailbag of the year. If you have a question — any question, any topic! — drop it here in the comments or reach out on X.
Just so long everything keeps showing up in the "archive"...I'm good. That's the page I bookmark to keep up with things.
Also, I think the header on your "Royals Scrolls" page doesn't always reset/fix itself when you come from one of the other sections (like "Saturday Study Hall").