KANSAS CITY – After walking a career-high eight batters in New York last weekend and using the word “unacceptable” to describe the performance, Cole Ragans badly needed a bounceback start, and the Royals badly needed one from their ace, too.
Mission accomplished.
Ragans twirled six innings of one-run ball with 11 strikeouts on Saturday night, leading the Royals to a 12-1 win over the Angels at Kauffman Stadium and just their second series victory of the year. It was Ragans’ first win of the season, too – and the first time Kansas City won a game with Ragans on the mound.
In other words, Saturday’s start was what the Royals expected a lot of in 2026 and finally got: Cole Ragans dominance and a big team win.
It was clear early on that Ragans was working with good stuff when he struck out the side in the top of the first on 14 pitches. All three came on fastballs 98 mph and above, including the 99.2 mph heater Jo Adell swung through to end the frame. That was Ragans’ hardest pitch of the night, but he averaged 96.5 with his four-seam, 2.3 mph above what his season average had been.
Ragans worked his way through trouble in the second and made his biggest mistake pitch in the fourth with the curveball that Adell sent over the center-field fence for a solo home run. But Ragans came back to strike out three more batters that inning. The most impactful frame was probably the fifth, when Ragans needed just nine pitches, allowing him to go back out for the sixth, notch the quality start and save the bullpen.
It helped that Ragans was working with an early lead, one the Royals would keep adding onto in their fifth consecutive game of scoring five runs or more. Salvador Perez hit a frozen-rope home run in the second inning, putting him just 10 homers behind George Brett’s franchise record of 317. Nick Loftin drove in a career-high four runs. Kansas City drew 10 walks, including two bases-loaded free passes, and saw production up and down the lineup, whether it was a walk, a hit that kept the line moving, an RBI or simply taking advantage of the Angels’ mistakes.