Why the Nerds Love Cole Ragans
Cole Ragans pitching for the Kansas City Royals
A double-tapped-by-Tommy John, middling, bullpen trade package piece that helped bring Aroldis Chapman over to the Rangers from Kansas City mid 2023, Cole Ragans has broken out as one of baseball’s unexpected aces. We knew Paul Skenes would shine – it was just a matter of time – but if you just started following baseball today, and I told you Cole Ragans was traded for two-and-a-half months of past-his-prime Aroldis Chapman, you’d probably think the Rangers got fleeced. Today, Ragans seems too valuable a piece to trade for any prospect. But, did anyone see it coming?
Ragans was drafted in the first round as the 30th pick out of high school from Tallahassee, Florida. By the time he made his MLB debut in 2022, he had had two Tommy John surgeries in 2018 and 2019, respectively. From the end of 2017 until 2020, he didn’t throw a single pitch. In 2021 Single-A and Double-A in 2022, his fastball touched 92 MPH. Then, entering the spring of 2023, his velocity jumped. However, no one seemed to notice, as he only got a couple shots as a bullpen mop-up arm for Texas, wringing out a shoddy 5.92 ERA over 24.1 innings pitched.
Suddenly, he was traded to Kansas City for Chapman, and everything changed. On August 23, 2023, Ragans mowed down 11 Oakland batters by strikeout, allowing only 2 hits over 6 innings, K-ing Shea Langeliers on a 101 MPH fastball. Look at his splits since being traded to Kansas City from the Rangers:
2023 Team Splits (Baseball Reference)
What happened?
In an interview with Flippin’ Bats’ host, Ben Verlander, Ragans opens up about two key points. Firstly, after his first start in Triple-A Omaha for the Storm Chasers, where he gave up 8 hits, he asked his coach about developing a slider. His request went up the chain, and it turned out that this was the pitch Kansas City was planning for him to develop – a natural transition. Secondly, Ragans’ conversion to a starter role in Kansas City’s system gave him the time off he needed between outings to tinker with developing new pitches – escaping from the build-the-plane-while-flying eternal present of being an everyday bullpen arm. He eventually got called up to the Royals, and after a couple outings testing his legs with the new slider, he dominated the Mets for a victory with 8 strikeouts, humbly passing the credit to his battery mate: “Salvy made it pretty easy for me. What he called, I threw and tried to execute to the best of my ability.” This was all in 2023, halfway through a season he had forgettably begun in Texas.
Best not to reinvent the wheel here – here’s a graphic from Ben Clemens’ much-acclaimed article detailing the analytics behind Ragans’ rise, showing Ragans’ slider putting him in elite company. Notice, the only other starters on this list are Spencer Strider and Jacob deGrom. Pretty good for a guy that learned it last year.
Cole Ragans’s Slider comparison (FanGraphs)
Ragans lacked the slider in Texas, and for most of his time there lacked his elite fastball velocity. Like a great chef wins palates, plating the juxtaposition of acidic versus rich, savory versus sweet, widening the gulf of contradiction to maximize the absolute value that is flavor between the extremes – Ragans, like all great pitchers, found a way to play his fastball’s yin against an offspeed’s (his slider’s) yang. Greg Maddux didn’t throw fast, but his pin-point accuracy coupled with the knee-buckling, dichotomy of a changeup proved that relativism (as well as precision) are the key ingredients for throwing batters off balance and maintaining momentum in the attack against the batter’s box. But for Ragans’ slider to suddenly play, lacking Maddux’s legendary precision, Ragans needed a fast fastball, and with an average velocity of 92 MPH in 2022, how was he just now hitting triple digits?
In the winter of 2022, Ragans went to the Tread Athletics facility to work with an analytics team that helped hone his form through data. He studied his own bone structure in the kinetic chain. Here he worked with weighted balls and aligned the vector of his movement. Vector. Kinetic chain. Buzzwords in baseball talk shows but vital to the physics of pitching. Examine for a moment, this graphic:
Let’s say the teal arrow is worth 4 points, the purple arrow 3 points, and the black arrow is worth 5 points. For this example, the goal is to maximize points, where we’ll say they add up to how fast you throw the baseball. Imagine these arrows are describing the different forces in Ragans’ throwing motion seen in this screen capture from an MLB Central Al Leiter breakdown.
Screenshot from MLB Central’s ‘How has Cole Ragans improved his windup in 2024?’
In 2022, you can visualize Ragans fighting his body and gravity, where he is more high-up and off-kilter (tilted up and to the right), as if he is only getting through his delivery to get back his balance. Imagine the teal arrow is describing the force direction of how his torso leans off and up to the right, the purple arrow is the force of his arm trying to head towards the plate, and the black arrow is the resultant velocity of the baseball on its way to the catcher’s mitt. The black arrow is the “finishing side” completing the triangle with the other two directions of force. Therefore, Ragans only gets 5 points, in our simplified example. He only gets the black arrow’s worth of points.
Now look at the 2023 image. Here Ragans intuitively seems set more in his legs, his torso and arm balanced over the hips in unison heading towards the plate. This is as if we took the teal arrow and purple arrow and added them adjacently, because they were pointed in the exact same direction, in unison. In this scenario, Ragans gets 7 points. No black arrow is needed to join a triangle of separate force directions together, since his motion is all headed towards home plate (teal + purple in a straight line).
The “in unison” in this description is the kinetic chain, the “pointed in the same direction” is the vector. By aligning the forces of his pitching motion to head in one direction to home plate, Ragans stops fighting himself and gains the biggest jump in the MLB in fastball velocity in a single season.
By the beginning of 2024, by aligning his kinetic chain for a more efficient delivery and adding one of the best sliders in baseball, Ragans was leading the MLB in FIP at 2.61, only behind Tarik Skubal. His work at Tread Athletics can be glimpsed here. His work with weighted balls and developing the kinetic chain means that energy isn’t bouncing off in different directions during his delivery. Why does that matter aside from velocity? Well, energy going off in different directions is how injuries happen, as the minor ligaments (UCL) and more vulnerable joints (elbow) bear the brunt of those disruptions. Think of a car. Imagine one tire is flatter than the other. Over time this will cause the steering column to vibrate and the car to veer towards one side, creating faster wear and tear on the various joints inside the vehicle. It’s the same reason a no-doubter home run has a tell-tale and delightful crack of the bat; it’s all physics. And with bloop foul balls and injury, the converse is true, where dull sound (and ringing hands) or blown out elbows are the respective side effects of force that isn’t aligned in the best possible direction.
Here’s one more graphic from the MLB Central show that was not discussed on the segment. It shows earlier in the delivery. It reminded me of something Trevor Bauer often discusses in his videos: torso and hip separation. In the 2022 graphic to the left, even with the angle of the camera giving his shoulders a more plate-facing view than they really have, one can see Ragans’ hips and torso glued together, facing more towards first base. In the graphic to the right, from 2023, his hips are facing the catcher whil his torso is almost there. That’s ideal. Torso and hip separation (where the hips fire first) maximizes the whip of his motion, adding even more velocity.
Screenshot from MLB Central’s ‘How has Cole Ragans improved his windup in 2024?’
What’s most interesting is what Ragans says about his gigantic jump in average fastball velocity to 96.5 MPH in 2023: “[i]t’s the same effort that it was when I was throwing 92”. That indicates to me that his work at Tread Athletics is paying off not because of some tips and tricks to squeeze out a MPH. It speaks to me of Ragans finding a holistic and sustainable approach to pitching that is more about addition via subtraction. Less vectors of body force going off in different directions equals more velocity. Ragans’ weighted ball work at Tread has him improving his form. Bauer is often speaking about his weighted ball routine as a way to trigger hip separation and maintain the efficiency of his physics, but it’s also interesting that Bauer has never yet had Tommy John surgery nor a debilitating arm injury around the elbow. Ragans, a two-time TJ victim with a record-breaking season-to-season spike in fastball velocity, seems on the surface a guy who is about to hit a wall. Yet, he’s ramped up his innings and emerged as a workhorse ace for the Royals, so far, while exhibiting an electric fastball. It seems Ragans’ work on the physics of his delivery is driving not only velocity, but his durability, as well.
Cole Ragans (Baseball Savant)
I’m excited by Cole Ragans. I hope he can maintain his health and continue to hone the raw materials of excellent stuff. His Baseball Savant page looks like a big red pill. If Ragans continues to become a lefty ace, a flamethrowing, durable resurrection from the bullpen of the Rangers’ organization, I’ll continue to be amazed, but not surprised. Indeed, to be elite, it takes unique skill (Ragans’ slider, for example) and the right set of factors (an opportunity to work on things as a starter and pitch to veteran Savlador Perez). Yet, perhaps Ragans’ biggest step forward isn’t just his velocity, but his ability to avoid furthering his injury track record. Maybe the stars didn’t need to align for Cole Ragans – it was always just the kinetic chain.
Sources:
YouTube - Flippin’ Bats with Ben Verlander Cole Ragans interview
Kansas City Star - Breakdown of Ragan’s 2023 start against New York Mets
FanGraphs - Cole Ragans, Highly and Appropriately Hyped by Ben Clemens
MLB Central YouTube - How has Cole Ragans improved his windup in 2024?
MLB - Throwing fire! Ragans (11 K's) sets career mark with 101 mph heater
Baseball Savant - Cole Ragans
YouTube - Trevor Bauer’s Daily Weighted Ball Routine and Drill Breakdown
*Stats are as of 7/15/2024
